24 November 2004

Report of the Working Party for

Academic Career Management in MPS

Introduction

Overview

A. Administrative burden

A.1 Reduction in administrative burden

A.2 HR funding

A.3 Other support

A − Appendix: Ideas for reduction of administrative burden

B. Teaching System

B.1 Overall teaching scheme

B.2 Cost of teaching

B.3 Comparison with teaching at other universities

B – Appendix 1: Comparison with Cambridge

B − Appendix 2: Numbers of academics and students

C. College aspects

C.1 Total college load

C.2 Tutorial fellows per subject

C.3 Tutorial teaching

C.4 Department/college interface for tutorial and class teaching

D. Department/college flexibility

D.1 Flexibility in types of academic posts

D.2 Buyouts

D.3 Buying out college time

D.4 Buying out departmental time

D.5 Fellowships as a source of buyout funds

D.6 Other buyout arrangements

D – Appendix: Buyout Rates, Costs and Availability of Replacement Effort

E. Departmental aspects

E.1 Total departmental workload

E.2 Support Staff

E.3 Support of Research

E.5 Flexibility

F Rewards

Introduction

The working party[1]was asked to develop recommendations for career management for academics in permanent posts in the MPS Division. It considered a broad range of issues which members felt were the main elements affecting the ‘quality of life’ for academics in MPS.

This report attempts to give a clear statement of our views, not softened by the usual Oxford committee language. We hope that this directness will stimulate further discussion on the issues we raise and ultimately lead to solutions.

We realize that some of the issues are already under discussion in other parts of the University. Here we state our views independently, hoping that they will in many cases be supportive of discussions elsewhere.

Many of our areas of concern are not susceptible to solution by direct action by MPS, but would require action by other parts of the university. Other areas are primarily issues for departments. We feel that MPS can be useful in providing:

  1. A forum for discussion among MPS departments, allowing each department to learn from the experience of others, while retaining its right to independent decisions. Discussions within the panel have already shown that the MPS departments have much in common but also many differences.
  2. A voice with the strength of numbers and experience to present “our case” to higher authorities in the collegiate university.
  3. Support based on broad experience to MPS academics and departments in their individual negotiations with other parts of the collegiate university.

In the following sections, our main recommendations are in boldface.

We welcome the “bottom-up” approach that MPS has taken by appointing this panel, but we want to point out that the panel members can only represent a small sample of the MPS academic community. We did not have the time or remit to consult more broadly. Nor were we able in all cases to come to a definite conclusion and recommendation. We request that our report be made available to all MPS academics and hope that it can thus act as a catalyst for broader discussion. The report could also provide useful input to other bodies in the University.

Overview

We believe that change is urgently needed to allow Oxford academics to maintain excellence in teaching and research in the face of increasing adverse pressures.

The academic/student ratio and funding support to departments have been steadily decreasing, at the same time as both external and internal developments have been increasing the administrative burden. Academics have valiantly tried to maintain teaching and research quality, with resulting increasing levels of stress, overwork, and frustration. More flexibility in academic duties is required, but without a reduction in the overall workload this alone cannot solve the problem, and may even worsen it for a substantial fraction of academics. The poor financial compensation and lack of any merit award system further contribute to lowering morale.

The situation has reached the breaking point and it is an illusion to think that it can continue without significant change. If nothing is done, people will increasingly look for better conditions elsewhere, and those who remain will be forced by overwork to underperform. 5* research cannot be expected to continue in the current climate.

A highly motivated academic staff is of paramount importance at a university, where the work relies heavily on their creativity. Yet it is not clear to the academic staff that the collegiate Universityunderstands the depth of the problem. Many indications are to the contrary: falling numbers of academics, increasing imposed “oversight”, increasing central bureaucracy, increasing financial constraints both personal and departmental. The University must decide whether it wants to let the situation continue to decay, or to invest in the academic base which should be its prime reason for existence.

The causes of academic dissatisfaction include the following:

1)The total workload is too high.

2)Each academic has a large number of different duties (see Table 1).

3)There is little flexibility in choice of duties or in trading some duties off against others.

4)Those duties are split over different employers (department, college) who seem to not care about each other.

5)A substantial and ever-increasing workload is administrative burden rather than productive teaching or research.

6)Increasing pressure to bring in research income and RAE credit comes at the same time as decreasing funds for needed departmental support staff and infrastructure.

7)Pay has fallen far behind living costs adding financial stress, especially for recent appointees due to the extreme rise in housing costs.

8)There is no financial merit award system for academics, although their duties sometimes include recommending merit awards for other categories of staff.

(2) and (3) lead to inefficient working, and in combination with (1) mean that one is reduced to trying to meet the minimum requirement in each duty, without feeling able to excel in any. This results in non-optimal performance and a lack of job satisfaction. (4) combined with (1) mean that one cannot satisfy the demands of either employer, leading to feelings of inadequacy. Job satisfaction is further decreased by inappropriate work (5), lack of support (6),and inadequate pay (7,8).

Academics should be treated as respected colleagues, the intellectual assets of the institution, not simply as employees.

  • Decision-making processes in the University need to be changed to ensure the academic goals of the University carry sufficient weight. The balance between the central services and the departments is a particular concern − departments need sufficient funding to reduce the administrative burden and support the research and teaching of their academics.
  • The University needs to “fight our case” for financial survival and restraint of excessive regulation. For morale purposes, its efforts also need to be communicated to academics.

The remainder of our report is divided into sections A-F to address the main areas of concern:

  1. Administrative burden:A reduction or at least a stop to the increase in administrative burden (5) is required to avoid decreasing productivity and morale. Tasks should be analyzed to see which really require the effort of academics. Non-essential tasks should be eliminated, procedures streamlined wherever possible, and sufficient support provided for the remainder.
  1. Teaching system:Tutoring and the college system are majorcauses of our high workload (1) and associated problems (2,3,4,5), yet are highly valued by some. It is important to the motivation of academics that they feel that their teaching effort is optimally used in a well-designed teaching scheme. It is probable that the optimal mode of teaching varies between subjects, even within MPS, and needs to be considered at departmental level. The costs of teaching need to be understood and compared to the income.
  1. College matters:Colleges need to look at how they manage the duties they control (2,3,5). The current definition of the “stint” in almost all colleges includes only tutoring and leaves the amount of other duties unregulated. Duties not requiring academic input should be transferred to non-academic staff where possible. Possibilities for increased use of graduate students and post-docs in teaching should be investigated to help bring academics’workload down to a level consistent with Oxford’s goal of excellence in both teaching and research.
  1. Department/college flexibility: Mechanisms for flexibility between departmental and college duties must be sought (4). In our current system this usually means a buyout, which needs to work both ways between department and college and be fairly priced. College and departmental teaching (C,E) need to be organized in such a way that flexibility for some does not cause undue burdens on others. Other feasible mechanisms need to be investigated, such as transferring between undergraduate and graduate colleges, and provision of some posts with teaching emphasis. Any more fundamental change to the university-college system depends on the outcome of the teaching system evaluation (B). If we continue with separate employers, we can only hope that fairer mechanisms for flexibility reduce the conflict.
  1. Departmental matters: Departments need to look at how they manage the duties they control (2,3,5). Mechanisms are needed to evaluate the workload, ensure a fair distribution, and allow academics some choice in their teaching and admin duties. Departments need to consider how they can better support academics in their research.
  1. Rewards: The appropriateness and effectiveness of the reward system for academics, both financial and other, need to be examined. A reasonable level of pay is important not only for recruitment and retention, but also for improving the morale of the academic staff of the University (7,8).

Most of our recommendations described in the following sections attempt to give achievable concrete suggestions for improving aspects of the current Oxford system. The one that is potentially revolutionary addresses the first step towards more fundamental change in the University-college structure: in section B we recommend that individual departments be encouraged to conduct an ab initio examination of how their subject should be taught. Only with such information can one examine the resources required compared to those available and sensibly decide what to do about the discrepancy and evaluate the department and college roles in the teaching of that subject.

Table 1: Typical duties of an MPS academic

  • College tutoring
  • College tutoring administration (organizing, reports, collections, etc.)
  • College pastoral duties
  • Undergraduate admissions
  • College committees and other administration
  • Departmental lecturing
  • Departmental classes
  • Departmental demonstrating
  • Departmental examining
  • Departmental administration and committees
  • Graduate student administration (admissions, reports, thesis drafts)
  • Graduate student research supervision
  • Conducting research
  • Research proposals, reports, administration
  • Divisional and University committees
  • National and international committees
  • Other (e.g. access and outreach activities, journal editorship)

A. Administrative burden

A.1 Reduction in administrative burden

A reduction or at least a stop to the increase in administrative burden is required to avoid decreasing productivity and morale. Tasks should be analyzed to see which really require the effort of academics. Non-essential tasks should be eliminated, procedures streamlined wherever possible, and sufficient support provided for the remainder.

The prime goal should be to eliminate the non-productive parts of the administrative burden and streamline the rest. Even when carried out by support staff, unnecessary administrative work harms academics because it consumes resources which could otherwise be put to constructive academic use. Creative ideas for the reduction of administrative work are needed. A designated person in the MPS office and in each department should be asked to actively seek ways to reduce admin as well as to collect ideas from others and investigate their feasibility. Without a clear drive to reduce, ideas tend to stay at the “coffee table” level and never reach the people who could actually implement them. Ideas that we have collected so far are discussed in the Appendix to this section.

Remaining essential aspects should be given to support personnel where possible and cost-effective – care must be taken not to further remove funding for academic activities as a result, nor to allow an uncontrolled and ineffective increase in central administration.

Communication between departments about of their administrative practice could help spread good ideas − a discussion meeting of Heads of Departments and Senior Departmental Administrators might be useful.

In many cases, additional personnel are needed within departments to provide the close contact and local knowledge that is needed to effectively support the work of academics. Examples of this are academic administrators to support the teaching; research facilitators and/or financial administrators to support grant proposals, management, and reporting; and sufficient secretarial staff available to all academics. It is essential that appropriate additional personnel be included in calculations of the full economic cost (fEC) for future grant proposals.

Colleges should be encouraged to provide adequate support personnel; this aspect will be covered in section C.

It is essential that the University take more care in future in the implementation of new programmes such as OSIRIS, which has caused a very significant increase in work and reduction of information available. This has a very large impact on academics in managing their research grants. Given the bad experience with OSIRIS, we are very concerned about the imminent implementation of the student records system ISIDORE and about the intention to replace the personnel and payroll system OpenDoor.

A.2 HR funding

The Human Resources (“HR”) funding may provide an opportunity for urgently needed additional support personnel despite the current restricted financial climate. For convenience the options specified in section B.2 of the “Oxford Human Resources Strategy 2004-9”[2]are extracted and numbered here:

“B.2 To seek to reduce and/or vary the range of demands on academic staff so that they can focus on their core role in research and teaching activities key to the institution’s academic mission.

a) Devolve funds to divisions to enable then to select from a number of possible initiatives to meet the local needs, including, but not limited to

  1. special research leave
  2. additional or pre-released academic appointments (permanent, temporary, or visiting – such as the international appointments inaugurated under the 2001-4 HR Strategy)
  3. greater use of graduate students for teaching, with appropriate training
  4. identifying particular measures to reduce bureaucratic burdens on academic staff
  5. specific support for newly appointed academic staff
  6. additional research leave for those demitting as heads of department/chairmen on faculty boards
  7. funding to facilitate the development of alternative teaching patterns (“stint reform”)”

We understand that MPS can expect to get £260k in each of 2004/5 and 2005/6 to support these areas and heartily welcome this support.

Our discussions have shown that the most urgent needs vary from department to department within MPS, and suggest that the most effective use of this funding would be achieved by delegating the funding and decisions on its use to departments. Since the funds are meant to support academics, the natural formula for devolving the funds would be proportional to the numbers of academics. Immediately devolving the funds would be the most efficient and avoid the additional administrative burden of an application process within MPS. MPS could provide useful advice to departments on issues such as post definition and grading.

While providing new support “looks better”, on practical grounds in these times of financial stress, maintaining existing support can also be a crucial use of the HR funds.

Discussions within our panel have proven useful in learning from other departments’ practices and we offer the following ideas to departments in considering how they may wish to use the funds. However we would not wish to restrict departments’ freedom to use the HR funds in other ways if most suitable for their particular situations.

  1. An academic administrator can take much of the load of organising departmental teaching, including supporting the admissions and examination processes, scheduling of lectures, and organising assignment and assessment of undergraduate projects. A key advantage is the efficiency gain from centralising related responsibilities and providing year-to-year continuity. Such an appointment can be at various levels, from providing support for a departmental academic committee to assuming the main organising role.
  2. Financial administrator: Efficient preparation of proposals and reports and management of grants requires administrative support on the financial side. The needs here have increased significantly with the implementation of OSIRIS, and the difficulties so far indicate that the level of work is unlikely to return to those under Prophecy. In addition, the coming of full economic costing (fEC) for grants will bring additional work. Local support in departments is required to provide direct assistance to academics in accessing financial information and interpreting how to apply the rules within the local context and type of grants in that department.
  3. Research facilitator: The proliferation of special programmes, short deadlines and detailed requirements for proposals and reports has increased the workload in this area. The main requirement is for support within departments for preparation of proposals, hiring procedures, and grant management. Departments may chose to mix this in various ways with financial and secretarial support duties, or with an academic post to provide specialist knowledge, or have it as a separate post.
  4. Secretarial support can be a very cost-effective way of relieving the bureaucratic burden of academics. Financial pressures are forcing some departments to cut back on this to well below the optimal level, and maintenance or restoration of support could be of significant benefit to academics.
  5. Compensation for academic staff with large administrative responsibilities: Departments will wish to decide according to their own situations which responsibilities to give to support personnel and which to academics. In cases where academics are asked to take on a significant load, some compensating measure can be appropriate. For example, to protect their research programme, a teaching buyout could compensate their own time, or additional funds could supplement a grant-funded post-doc post to attract a more experienced post-doc or Departmental Lecturer to assist in running the research group.

A.3 Other support

Some special programmes for research funding require particular expertise to prepare successful proposals. In cases where an individual department’s use of such funding is rare, experience and support at the University or Divisional level can be efficient.