Swiss cheese

Now the brief euphoria at Weinberg’s resignation has faded we look to the future with rising anxiety. One might have hoped that the Governors were unhappy with the effect the old VC was having on the morale and wellbeing of the staff, but the fear is spreading that Ratty was not hard-nosed enough in converting the University from an educational institution into an edu-business. The board members are predominately from business; one spent his career at Ernst & Young, the dodgy accountancy firm fined for incompetent auditing of Equitable Life, which led to big pension cuts for many policyholders. A Board populated with business men and women with no expertise in higher education is hardly encouraging for Kingston staff.

So what happens next? The recent email from the Chair, signed with the letters of his mandarin’s gong, announced Steven Spiers, Dean of FADA, as interim VC with the predictable waffle about accomplishment and high standards. Spiers has a reasonable number of articles in architecture journals, and boasts special expertise in Swiss design, which may well be ‘accomplished’ by Kingston standards. His best known accomplishment to date, however, is the closure of the School of Surveying and Planning on his watch. Is this a hint of things to come? Is the ground being prepared for the closure of more schools, so that when the new VC arrives, chosen by the Governors for the size of his axe, the real bloodletting will begin?

We shall see. In the meantime we must hope that the business types who comprise our Board are imbued with more humanity than Ratty, and that the man who knows his Swiss chalets also understands that staff supported and treated well are the foremost requirement for a successful university.