Student abuse

We might think that Kingston’s VC is bad but there may be even more hostile and abusive university heads out there — hard to believe I know. The big bad wolf at Sussex, Michael Farthing, a man whose management skills aren’t worth tuppence, has been told by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education to compensate the students he suspended in December 2013 for peaceful protesting

“Penny” Farthing’s determination to stamp on these students has cost Sussex University £50,000 in legal fees. Even before this tuppenny-ha’penny VC took charge, Sussex had a reputation for treating its students with at best indifference and an unfortunate habit of employing some postdoctoral researchers on rolling short term contracts, so as to deprive them of standard employment rights such as pensions. Not content with that reputation, old “Penny Pincher” now wants to shell out large quantities of the University’s money on chastising its own students. I imagine the 200 academics who wrote objecting to the VC’s action could think of better ways to spend that money. They can probably imagine a whole lot better managers too.

Let’s hope that Ratty doesn’t get ideas from the behaviour of Sussex’s own management lunatic.