There was no prewarning. At first, it just seemed like one of KU’s usual anodyne staff announcements and was quietly placed on the Uni website with no fanfare. But this is not surprising, because the few staff who spotted it and read it the same day soon realised the enormous implications of what it said. And the clue was in the title: ‘Achieving our ambitions in a challenging national context’.
Although he had kept his distance from it, the grubby hand of Spiersy could easily be seen behind it. The first few paragraphs struck a positive note and sought to present a sunny and optimistic message about how well things are going with the Vice-Clown’s ‘Future Skills’ and Clown House Strategy, how Kingston is being ‘transformed’ and so on. In other words, how well Spiersy’s pet project – the dimunition of the University into a Polyversity or glorified technical college – is progressing.
But, halfway down the announcement, the real purpose behind the warm words emerged, like a sudden dagger plunged into staff hearts. Caroline Harries, the new ‘Chief Operating Officer’, had also been forced to attach her name to it, as the VC, characteristically, was too cowardly to want to have his own name associated with bad news and admission of failure (for that is the only way it can be interpreted). So Spiersy had press-ganged his new ‘Operating Officer’ to do his dirty work (and, according to insiders, she was not very happy).
And, according to the announcement, how is the Uni ‘navigating a way forward’? (the Vice-Admiral just so loves those nauseating nautical terms). Over the next two years, we were informed, the Uni needs to ‘achieve’ £20m in savings across the University i.e. it needs to cut money and lots of it. There will also be a ‘review’ of KU’s course portfolio (again!) and a review of Faculty Budgets.
These have already started. Insultingly, in FBSS, staff were invited to a meeting where they were told the Faculty needs to save over £8m, and staff were ‘invited’ to come up with ideas on how to do this (no, we are not kidding). As one member of staff commented, it was like being asked to build your own scaffold for the public hanging. In KSA, pressure is also now being put on certain subjects to start cutting down module choice and find ways to ‘combine’ courses. Managers have also been told in other Faculties to start looking for ‘efficiency’ savings.
Dissenter warned back in March that the ‘Axeman’ was coming, but few seemed to take our warnings seriously. After all, so some said, the departmental and subject closures of recent years, and the culling of staff through VS or enforced redundancies, surely meant that there would be no more financial squeezes? There seemed to be the complacent attitude among some staff that they were now ‘safe’ and there would no more cutbacks. This was reinforced by reassurances by the Senile Leadership Team around Spiersy. But it was all a lie. We need to face the harsh reality that Spiersy and his gang have well and truly mucked up. The so-called ‘challenging national context’ has been made much, much worse by the inept and frankly useless leadership shown by the Vice-Clown and his Senior Dalek Team. The ‘Town House Strategy’ won’t save the sinking ship.
The multi-million pound costs of the Town House, the huge sums spent on Holmewood House, the ‘transformation’ of Knights Park, the ‘Penrhyn Road Transformation project’, the Uni’s ‘Website Transformation Project’, yet more sums spent on the John Galsworthy Building (to replace all the heating infrastructure) and, now, a proposed multi-million pound ‘high specification building’ for KSA’s Middle Mill site (Spiersy is determined to have his ‘legacy’ building before he retires), have all sucked in, and will continue to soak up, enormous sums. The Uni’s marketing strategy has also been an embarrassing affair, and has failed to attract the numbers of new students KU so desperately needs. The Uni has also gone backwards, not forwards, in recent national Good University league tables. By any measure, the Town House Strategy is simply not working. So something has got to give, and in Spiersy’s mind, culling courses and loyal staff is the only option (no matter how reassuringly it is dressed up). Despite how loyal or hardworking you may be, you are not safe. Spiersy and his overpaid acolytes will be more than happy to throw more staff under the bus to try and save their own skins.
A recent sign of how bad things have become were the changes made in the Summer to the ‘Academic Management Framework’ (Spiersy loves his pseudo-business terminology) and to Faculty leadership teams. This was sold to us a way of ensuring they continue to ‘best support the University’s ambitions’, in line (inevitably) with the VCs pet ‘Town House Strategy’. A host of new roles have been created, such as Deputy Deans and ‘Faculty Operations Managers’. There was also much B.S. about ‘Strategic Planning Partners’. You could hear the groans right across the Uni. Yet more changes to the senior managerial structure? How many have there been over the years since Spiersy has been VC? Yet more money dished out on new senior roles? In the meantime, at mainstream staff level, it is clear that this will all be financed through staff and course cuts, no matter how much the VC denies it.
As he sits in his Holmewood House office, when he can be bothered to appear on campus (don’t forget he has another job on the side) and gazes out on to ‘Striding full-length female nude’, the sculpture located just outside his office, and fantasizes about his ‘vision’ for the transformation of KU into a so-called ‘multiversity’ (yes, the latest sick-making buzz word), the Gold Commandant hates anything that exposes the reality of his poor and inept leadership skills. He likes to rant on endlessly about ‘Future Skills’ and how this has made KU ‘sector-leading’. To add insult to injury, a new staff handbook has even been issued on ‘Skills Development’ to ‘train’ staff for – yes, you guessed it – the Town House Strategy. But he refuses to face up to the fact that he has no managerial skills himself, and that the ‘Town House Strategy’ is really the Clown House Tragedy.
Kingston heading for collapse?