Universities likely to promise to rewrite Mission Statements

Signs of a nervous scramble back to the claims for lofty authority in HE today in the Times Higher Education (THE):

Letting go of acrimony is not easy after three years of trench warfare. But post-Brexit Britain needs academics and their evidence-led approach [!]

It is a day that most in UK universities hoped would never arrive, and which many have fought to resist in the three and a half years since the referendum result rocked remainers’ world....So should remainers in higher education embrace the situation the country now finds itself in? Or should they dig in and continue the trench warfare that has dominated the past three years?

For Simon Usherwood, professor of politics at the University of Surrey, academia has been characterised in the popular mind as a sector of “obstructive remoaners” who have sought to frustrate the “will of the people”, and this week is the moment to “change the debate and show the value of the sector to society as a whole”....By focusing on evidence and impartial expertise, and ensuring that the values of respect, understanding and collaborative endeavour are at the fore, universities can step back from the toxic political division, shore up their own position and better fulfil their role in delivering for the greater good.

How long ago and far away all that last bit is. The THE reminds us of some heroic interventions (and, of course, some academics have produced blogs like Briefings for Brexit or The Full Brexit --often anonymously):

Sir John Curtice, one of the country’s most respected political scholars, [had] argued in 2018 that universities had made a mistake by nailing their colours to the mast in the run-up to the referendum....“Their intervention in politics compromised their staff’s ability to act as a source of policy expertise,” he said.

He doesn't only get polls right. But the universities would not have dared remain [sic] neutral, it seems:

universities would have faced huge criticism from within had they not argued to remain, and had the vote gone the other way, what is now seen by some as excessively partisan positioning would have been interpreted as strength and leadership.

What shameful admissions! They wanted docile students who would just pay up, and hoped to assume the leadership of the new petite bourgeoisie.

[Now the unis fear] the punishment beating that could, in theory, be delivered when the Augar review’s recommendations on funding are finally dealt with at the next spending review....Cuts to funding would accelerate and worsen the impact on institutions that are struggling, and the argument that universities and tuition fees are some sort of pyramid scheme is an easy sell for those culture warriors pushing it.

In a pathetic attempt to undo the damage:

But perhaps we can agree [over dinner no doubt] that their power is best exercised through a reinvigorated [!] commitment to core values of non-partisan and evidence-led expertise....That is the way to avoid the populists' trap, in which they continue to be characterised as agenda-led, activist organisations that reflect the interests of some rather than all.

Modern university management would not have a clue about these 'core values', except as copy for the Mission Statement,nor believe for one minute than any HEI should actually commit to them in practice. Most of the lecturers in my field would dismiss the whole idea as aggressive male colonialism. Students would claim they had been damaged by examining any evidence contrary to their views. Management would cringe in the background or use complaints to settle scores.

Universities, like other 'national' institutions, have a long way to go to repair the damage caused by their ridiculous stances over Brexit. A tweak to the mission statements will not do it. We have seen how cynical and partisan many academics have been, and any commitments to 'non-partisan and evidence-led expertise' will be seen as more cynical PR, prompted by Augur, as the THE almost admits. Populist and commercialised marketing and spineless compliance have led us here, and it is no surprise that the amateurs now in charge have failed to grasp the consequences.

See also the piece in Briefings for Brexit/Britain