We say, you pay

Dear Colleagues, severed and unsevered

Plan 2020, launched in February 2017, will ultimately improve our academic performance and the student experience by losing large numbers of staff, which will hardly help raise our academic reputation but we need to save cash. Since we began delivering the plan we have implemented academic improvement programmes that rehash and dumb down the old courses while also working to cut the effectiveness and efficiency of our professional and support services by cutting staff numbers there too. Some of what we have done has been ‘just putting stuff in quotation marks’, failing to address serious shortcomings quickly. For example we have looked at timetabling but done nothing about it, recruitment and conversion (students numbers still falling), and management information systems (disastrous as ever), and created better academic support to deliver student success (does anyone know what that actually is?)

I am pleased that we look likely to meet our (reduced) recruitment figures this year and are still bouncing around the bottom of the Sunday Times Good University Guide, evidence that we may just have arrested our decline (well someone should be arrested – my ex-friend Martin for instance – oops, must keep shtum over that one). However, to move forward together and reclaim our position as one of the country’s fastest plunging universities we need to work for my survival. To facilitate this we must waffle about our mission and then waffle more about the actions we need to take to deliver it, and for this we need your help. Starting in late October, the Senior Management Team with other senior staff will be leading a number of workshops with staff and students to get your ideas on what actions these might be; then as before we will do exactly as we please and to hell with you.

If you’re still here (don’t count your blessings too quickly) please do take this opportunity to make your voice heard in helping design our future.

The Chief Architect