Conflict on campus: How plans for a business school are ripping Sussex University apart

As Sussex University freshers tumbled out of their parents' cars this week, clutching their shiny new cutlery and duvets, they can have had little idea of the tensions seething under the surface of their new home. For Sussex is in the news again. The new vice-chancellor, Professor Michael Farthing, is trying, as did his predecessor before him, to reform a university that once had a reputation for excellence as well as cool but has, since the 1960s, fallen out of the top 20.

His plan is to lay on new courses in subjects such as business, which international students want to study, and make research more relevant to today's problems in what the lecturers' union is claiming is the fourth restructuring of Sussex in seven years. The students have been holding large protest meetings and have even set up a campaigning website and the academics are anxious about change.

They fear that the pioneering university set up in the Sixties, which is famous for its radicalism and arty trendiness, is being forced into a mould it doesn't suit. "There is great concern about the idea of setting up a business school," says Jim Guild, branch secretary of the University and College Union (UCU). "Business schools are no longer fashionable and the university has no historical market for business."

Farthing thinks otherwise. For some years Sussex has been posting a deficit – although now it is in the black. But it can't afford to be complacent: it is losing £1.4m as a result of the Government's decision to cut funding for students doing another degree and, like all universities, will have to find the money for generous lecturers' pay rises that are pegged to the rate of inflation this year.

More to the point, it does not perform well in the university leagues tables, coming 29th in the "Complete University Table", printed in The Independent this year. "As an institution we have not been performing as we should," says Farthing. "The sense of spirit across the university had diminished. People did their own bit well, but were not terribly interested in how the university was performing. At the end of the day, it's the institution that appears in league tables. It's the institution that our students scan into the internet to see where they should go.

"Sussex may not be doing any worse than it was 20 years ago but compared to its peer group it has slipped."

So, after what Farthing describes as a very intensive consultation exercise lasting a year, he produced a green paper followed by a white paper. Changes have been made along the way and, finally, the university will be publishing a strategic plan. Farthing's most controversial proposal is for a school of business, management and economics that will teach undergraduate programmes to tap the overseas student market.

One-in-seven international students comes to Britain to study business and management, he points out. Sussex is missing a trick by losing out on this income stream. Both staff and students question the wisdom of a new business school. "The plan relies on getting 1,000 international students when we have seen a 50 per cent reduction in overseas students applying to Sussex," says Daniel Vockins, outgoing president of the student union.

"When you are basing the future of Sussex on a new curriculum which doesn't have a relationship with what we have done up to now and on student numbers that are flatlining, how sensible is that?"

Farthing acknowledges the opposition but says that many people at Sussex equate business and management with Conservatism and capitalism. Indeed some critics at Sussex object to the idea of teaching "entrepreneurs", he points out, because the word implies profit. "We have talked all this through and we will deliver teaching in entrepreneurship and management," he asserts.

At the same time, mindful of Sussex's identity, he says that the university will not be abandoning its values in social responsibility, development and public sector management. In fact, its business and management programmes will very much have a Sussex flavour, he says.

"Why shouldn't Sussex have high-quality courses that will help businesses and managers in Africa and other parts of the developing world?"

The lecturers object to another reorganisation, too. As well as restructuring the courses, the new vice-chancellor is reorganising the schools – increasing the number of schools from five to 12. The idea, eventually, is to give the schools control over their own budgets and push decision-making down. Farthing wants all heads of the school to be part of his senior management team eventually.

But the UCU is suspicious and fears that this restructuring will concentrate power further in a few senior hands. The lecturers – and the students – are also sceptical of the vice-chancellor's consultation, claiming that it has been a sham and that Farthing hardly ever talks to them.

"Consultation is the biggest problem," says Laura Tazzioli, Sussex's new student union president. "We should not have to struggle to be consulted or to be given information about what is going on."

But, despite all the opposition, which included a letter from 111 members against the changes, the reforms are going through, more or less as Farthing wants them. Research is being sharpened by a new focus on six interdisciplinary themes, including global transformation (climate change, migration, and so on), security and heritage. To ensure Sussex graduates are equipped for the workplace the university is introducing what it is calling Sussexplus to teach them how to make presentations and give them other skills they need for real life.

The vice-chancellor insisted that the student experience improve so that Sussex did better in the National Students Survey (NSS). "I said that the library would be open 24 hours, Monday through Saturday evening and asked staff to focus on getting students' assessments back in a timely fashion and making themselves more available to students."

The result is that Sussex is the second most-improved university in the NSS. If Farthing is successful on other issues, the university should begin to improve its standing in the league tables. Then he will be able to say that the changes were painful but necessary.

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