Letter: Academic standards

Sir: John Patten has refused to meet representatives of the universities to discuss this year's pay settlement (report, 3 August). He says it would serve no useful purpose. Mr Patten is right.

Professor Sutherland's question 'Who manages the universities?' stretches far wider than questions of pay. Universities must operate academic standards: if not, they are trading under a fraudulent prospectus. Only academics can judge these standards.

During the past 10 years, government attempts to reduce unit costs have time and again overridden academic judgement of standards. The Government has imposed an arbitrary time limit on the PhD, and it attempted in the Further and Higher Education Bill to shorten the length of the BA. In its pressure for unfunded expansion, it is attempting to override academic judgement on library resources, teaching methods and syllabuses. Most seriously, it has reduced student support below subsistence level, so undergraduates without rich parents regularly have to earn money during term.

Academics, often unconsciously, have lowered their requirements for work to what their students are able to do, so that an Upper Second in 1992 may involve less work than a Lower Second

in 1984. If we cannot regain control of academic standards, we cannot continue to call ourselves universities.

It is time for universities to consider following the example of the University of Buckingham, which is entirely privately funded and refuses to accept any money from the state. We should not duck the consequences of such a policy: it would probably mean that only two universities would survive south of the border. The question we should consider is whether we would rather have two universities or none.

Yours sincerely,

RUSSELL

House of Lords

London, SW1

3 August