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I thought (naively) that one of the roles of a VC was to ‘do’ politics, both in the sense of being well-networked with politicians and community/industry leaders, using those networks and skills to promote your institutional agenda. 1/ #savehighered
Yet the current crisis is suggestive of how little that is the case. The govt actively used the crisis to undermine unis, VCs were markedly absent as political and community voices (and even in terms of intellectual leadership), and they have not mobilised community supports. 2/
So what is the role of the VC if not this? When we look inwards, we see a remarkable effort to respond to CoVid at an institutional level, but also surprising gaps - did no one have a pre-existing policy for an outbreak of infectious disease? That happens a lot in unis 3/
A pandemic is surprising, but it’s amazing how little the sector had in place to think through a crisis. The Adelaide scandal’s recommendations are the more concerning for how basic they are. There is mountains of scholarship on harassment in unis, so where was the policy? 4/
Recently I’ve been reading on educational leadership, which draws on latest management literature and current business practice, and am struck at how HE management is so old-fashioned in its assumptions and practices. But we produce this knowledge- why aren’t we cutting edge? 5/
So I’m left wondering what the role of the VC is if the things I thought they were meant to be doing aren’t really what they do. And I wonder how do we break from a model/narrative of HE management that appears to be widely shared into something else 6/
I’m interested in moving away from the short-termism of current practises - from the 5 year plan to the 100 year plan. Where are people who have a vision for institutions that were meant to last a thousand years? That were meant as a public good, not a private resource /end
