{"id":7079,"date":"2017-10-25T06:47:24","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T06:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7079"},"modified":"2017-10-25T06:47:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T06:47:24","slug":"prepare-to-bend-the-knee-to-commissar-barber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/10\/25\/prepare-to-bend-the-knee-to-commissar-barber\/","title":{"rendered":"Prepare to bend the knee to Commissar Barber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sir Michael Barber has come a long way: ex school teacher \/ ex NUT officer \/ ex Labour Party candidate \/ ex No 10 Policy Unit \/ ex Pearson \/ ex McKinsey \/ \u00a0ex ... . \u00a0He is the chair of the Orwellian,\u00a0<em>Office for Students,<\/em>\u00a0 the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for HE in England which begins work next year. \u00a0Although it sounds like a piece of software Bill Gates sells, OfS replaces HEFCE and OFA<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But Barber seems to think his remit extended well beyond students, telling\u00a0<em>The Times<\/em> the other day:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cExceptional pay should be for exceptional performance. \u00a0I don\u2019t want to comment on individuals but where you haven\u2019t got the track record and where your pay sticks out like a sore thumb, then you should be asking yourselves questions and we will regulate that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There we are: the promise of government control of Vice-Chancellor's salaries. \u00a0Will universities put up with this? \u00a0Or will some of them revolt? \u00a0My breath is not being held, but I hope some do as I think it's an abuse of the supposedly hands-off relationship between politicians and universities. \u00a0Where, we should ask, will this end?<\/p>\n<p>Equally significantly, in all this rush to be the champion of the student experience, I hope OfS remembers that universities also have responsibilities towards society and the future and that they are not just there for here today and gone tomorrow students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sir Michael Barber has come a long way: ex school teacher \/ ex NUT officer \/ ex Labour Party candidate \/ ex No 10 Policy Unit \/ ex Pearson \/ ex McKinsey \/ \u00a0ex ... . \u00a0He is the chair...<\/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-7079","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\/7079","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=7079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}