{"id":6690,"date":"2016-06-20T08:22:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T08:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6690"},"modified":"2017-06-25T15:03:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T15:03:43","slug":"the-road-to-serfdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/06\/20\/the-road-to-serfdom\/","title":{"rendered":"The road to serfdom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, The Guardian carried an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2016\/jun\/07\/universities-higher-education-bill-award-degrees\">article<\/a> by Peter Scott (no relation) with the title:\u00a0<em>This bad bill will put universities on the road to serfdom. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It begins:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The government\u2019s argument that its new\u00a0higher education bill\u00a0will give legal backing to both academic freedom and institutional autonomy, as\u00a0well as supporting research, needs to be treated with caution and a good dose of cynicism. \u00a0Many parliamentary bills read like Soviet-era diktats. \u00a0In clause piled on sub-clause, secretaries of state give themselves powers that they claim (and\u00a0may even believe) they do not really want and will hardly ever use. \u00a0Even by these low standards, the present bill is a shocker. \u00a0Does the secretary of state really need powers of\u00a0\u201centry and\u00a0search\u201d?\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am always amazed that parliament allows governments (of all stripes) to ram bills full of powers that someone may need in the future to spare them the trouble of having to go back to MPs for approval. \u00a0It is as if the Monarch and the Privy Council [PC] had never evolved into anything more subtle and democratic. \u00a0Mind you, the Cabinet is only really a sub-committee of the PC so perhaps we should not be surprised.<\/p>\n<p>Scott says that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"Buried under this mound of new regulatory powers are a few limp restrictions intended to protect academic freedom and institutional autonomy. \u00a0But the whole thrust is to do precisely the opposite by making universities more accountable \u2013 to students notionally, but really to politicians. \u00a0With the introduction of the\u00a0Teaching Excellence Framework\u00a0a new tyranny of metrics is actively being prepared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed, and would you trust the new-style HEFCE with any of this when conflicts of interest are built into its remit? \u00a0I think not. \u00a0It won't be spending much time speaking truth to power.<\/p>\n<p>Let us hope that some backbone in to be found in the House of Lords to prevent at least some of this degrading, egregious, meretricious nonsense passing\u00a0into law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, The Guardian carried an article by Peter Scott (no relation) with the title:\u00a0This bad bill will put universities on the road to serfdom. \u00a0 It begins: \"The government\u2019s argument that its new\u00a0higher education bill\u00a0will give legal backing to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}