Legal consultation on ACS - we need your help!

Dear Friends,

We are incredibly grateful that you signed the open letter to the University of Aberdeen Court in which we outlined our concerns about the proposed restructuring of the institution. 

While your support and the work of a great many different sources ensured that Court heard these concerns and discussed many of these issues at their last meeting, the body did vote to take forward the proposal to restructure from the current twelve academic schools to four much larger faculties. 

The process to deliver this proposal requires a legally mandated community-wide consultation on the draft resolution, as well as the recommendation of the Senatus Academicus that this should be pursued.

It is on the first aspect of this consultation that we write to you here – and if you continue to share our concerns, we would ask that you write to the Court directly to oppose the plans. You can view the full draft resolution here. Submissions on the draft resolution should be sent directly to the Court at gest@abdn.ac.uk.

Our previous submissions to court were gently chided by the Interim Senior Governor for being ‘remarkably similar’ to one another, so we do not have a template of a letter to follow. 

Rather, colleagues at the university have compiled a list of points that those responding to the consultation may wish to consider in their submission.  We’d recommend that if you are unsure what to write that you might take two or three of the points from here to frame your submission around.

Thank you for your continued support, and we are hopeful that all of these actions will make a difference. 

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Possible points to raise on Four Faculties Resolution:  

1. While there are issues and blockages in processes that make our governance less efficient than it should be, there is no evidence that moving to a model of four faculties (as opposed to twelve schools) will improve this state of affairs. 
2. The model proposed by the Senior Management Team includes the addition of an ‘Executive Dean’ to head each of the proposed faculties – adding a further level of management and increasing the unnecessary bureaucracy in the system.    
3. While people are not opposed to change – change can be good, rejuvenating, positive – change when it is forced through with little community support is likely to cause considerable disruption and damage, and to have a hugely demoralizing impact on staff.
4. There is no direct connection between the proposal to move to a four faculty model and the justification for it (as a necessary component of our ‘need’ to save up to £12m).  Indeed, nothing in the proposals to this point suggest that four faculties will be a cost-saver, and, especially with the addition of four executive dean salaries likely to be in the region of six-figure salaries, there is reason to expect that the proposal will actually cost the university money.
5. There is considerable anxiety around the proposed four faculty idea not because of opposition to faculties per se, but because of the nefarious means by which they have been attempted to be delivered.  There is little honesty around the justification for the proposal, and staff fear that it simply a fig leaf to cover the proposed mass reduction of academic staff.
6. The plans have been rushed through, the consultation process shambolic, little of staff feedback has been listened to much less included in the proposals, and much of the data and evidence that purportedly supports the plans has been shrouded in secrecy.
7. The process by which Court has ‘approved’ the proposal prior to receiving a recommendation from the Senatus Academicus is quite clearly not the intention of the Universities (Scotland) Act 1966 which specifies the process to alter the academic structure of the institution.  
8. Had the Senior Management Team had any confidence in these proposals, it would have engaged the Senatus Academicus in the plans from an early stage and sought their buy in.  The Interim Senior Governor has indicated that he sees Senate as a ‘block’ in the governance of the institution, but the decision to circumvent Senate on this significant restructure was taken by the Senior Management Team, and this has led to the proposals being seen to be lacking in legitimacy and accountability.  It is regrettable that the Senatus Academicus has been sidelined in this process.
9. Entering into this substantive restructuring process as academics are gearing up for the next REF is short-sighted in the extreme.  When staff should be concentrating on producing world-leading research and publishing it in high-impact journals, they are instead forced to look over their shoulders while university managers threaten their jobs.
10. From a financial perspective, the twelve schools have – collectively – increased their revenue significantly over the past few years, answering every ask from management despite significant cuts to staffing across both academic and professional services.  The same cannot be said of the management of the estates and commercialisation of campus – a direct responsibility of the senior management.  A far less disruptive and morale-sapping approach would be for these avenues to be explored, and income maximised, prior to thoughts turning to cutting jobs.
11. The process that has recommended a move towards a four faculties model has not accounted for either health and safety nor equality and diversity issues.
12. When the previous principal and senior vice principal decided they wanted to end language provision at the university, the process was a catastrophe, and a subsequent internal inquiry commissioned by the senior management team had to be established.  The Gordon Report recommendations on change management processes were accepted in full by the senior management team – however, the current approach has completely disregarded these directives.
13. A subsequent review commissioned by the senior management team – the SUMS consultancy firm report into governance processes – was also a damning account of how these the legally and constitutionally outlined processes have been ignored.  This review has been buried in a ‘work stream’ which has barely begun.  Addressing the inability to follow the clearly defined governance processes at the institution should be the institutional priority, rather than a restructure which sidelines these processes and pushes key stakeholders to the side.
14. The ACS process has systematically ignored consistent staff feedback (clearly articulated in the SUMS workshops) on where the problems that need addressing actually are, in favour of a pre-determined four faculty model that has no supporting evidence for its benefits nor any broad support among the community.
15. There is not enough time between now and August (when the model is to be actioned) to both make the required improvements to the proposals and implement them the way they are outlined currently.
16. The move to a four-faculty model, while also attempting a ‘curriculum review’, programme withdrawals, increasing student : staff ratios AND attempting to prepare for a REF submission is a ludicrous strategy that only people who had no regard for the wellbeing of the people they work with could come up with.  The only certain outcome in this combination of process is that staff will completely burn out.
17. The instability of the senior management team in recent years has resulted in:
    • A principal that is halfway through a 2-year contract;
    • A provost, VP for research, and VP for regional development that have only recently been appointed; a vacant VP for global engagement role;
    •  A university secretary that isn’t yet one month into post (a post which has had 3 substantive and 3 interim appointees in the last three years);
    •  A chief operating officer that has been in post for a year;
    •  A director of people that has held the role on an interim basis for the last 12 months.
18. Apart from the fact that the university community doesn’t really know any of these people and they do not really know the university (despite one of them having been employed here for 38 years) it is poor governance of the highest order to have such a new team deliver change of such a substantive character.  
19. The Gillies Report into the financial mismanagement in Dundee highlighted the problems with having such significant restructuring undertaken by interim leadership – and the Scottish Funding Council rejected a recovering plan submitted by Dundee University in part because of the interim nature of the management team.