UK devolution must extend to its authoritarian universities

What does Andy Burnham’s promise to transfer power from Westminster to local communities mean for academic communities?

In Greater Manchester, the civic university agreement already sees them as anchor institutions, working with local authorities and communities on economic, social and environmental goals. Universities are major employers, landowners, educators and knowledge creators. They shape the places where they are based. But to be truly civic, they need to become more democratic.

I started my university career in Poland in 1988, a year before communism collapsed. I joined an underground anti-communist student association, went on strike and saw my hierarchical, conservative university slowly crumble.

However, even within the oppressive communist regime, Polish universities held on to one core belief: the university belonged to its academic community. Rectors and deans were elected. Senates and faculty councils had real authority. Leadership was temporary and accountable to those it served. The university did not belong to its managers; in fact, it’s hard to say if there was any real management at all.

When I moved to the UK in 2008, I expected universities not just to be more autonomous but more democratic. Instead, I found institutions that were independent from the state but whose autonomy lay with their executive teams and governing bodies, not with the university as a whole.

British universities are clearly part of the late capitalist system, and critics typically point to their neoliberal agenda and managerialism. But I think that description no longer fits. British universities are becoming not so much managerialist as authoritarian. This might sound harsh but I am not talking about dictatorship. The atmosphere of fear and expected obedience reminds me of my time as a student in Poland but the reason I use the word authoritarian is more banal: leadership is immune to any actionable feedback from below. Consultation still exists but nothing anyone says can change the decision or remove those who made it.

A recent action plan at a school I know well shows how this system works. At first, it seemed impressively accountable: every action has a responsible person, a deadline and a measure of success. I read it several times before I realised what bothered me. Many of the measures focus on how well staff carry out the leadership’s programme, rather than on whether the programme makes sense and deserves staff support. Leadership says “jump”; the organisation records how high we jumped – but not whether we jumped out of enthusiasm as opposed to fear.

This is where managerialism becomes authoritarian: staff are judged by their obedience. And the mechanism becomes especially brutal whenever money gets tight. When recruitment grows, research income increases or rankings rise, leaders cite it as evidence of their strategic vision – even though it is far more likely to be the result of staff going above and beyond because we care about our students – or simply because we fear losing our jobs.

Alternatively, when those metrics slip, responsibility is always thrown down on staff. We are made redundant, while the leaders stay in place and are praised for making tough choices. Success moves up the chain; failure moves down. British universities have created leadership without responsibility.

At a time of rising public and political scepticism about the value of degrees, universities need friends. This is exactly why the civic, rooted university is important. Although disempowered staff might deliver civic projects, a truly civic institution cannot be anchored just by an agreement between a mayor and a vice-chancellor.

A university becomes part of its community through the daily work and lives of its members: academics building relationships with schools, councils and businesses; professional services staff maintaining partnerships and institutional memory that long outlast the latest executive plan. A university cannot credibly promise to give power back to communities while keeping it from its own people.

I am not proposing that we go back to rule by senior professors; I remember that system and I didn’t like it. Nor am I suggesting that we flatten the academic hierarchy and hold a referendum on every decision. I do believe leaders should be empowered. I just argue that leadership must be accountable to the academic community for its actions – so that they rule by persuasion rather than imposition.

Candidates for leadership at school, faculty and university levels should publish clear plans before they are appointed: what they want to achieve, how they will measure success and what would count as failure. Once elected they should report publicly on their progress.

Staff assemblies, bringing together academic and professional services colleagues, should be able to call for votes of confidence in them. There should be safeguards, such as requirements for a significant petition, a proper quorum, independent review and maybe a confirmatory vote, but the result must be binding. Students should also have formal powers to review and challenge leaders.

I can hear the objection, of course: give academics a vote and they will always defend the status quo, never attempting anything radical or visionary. Perhaps that will sometimes be true but I am not promising better decisions. My argument is simply about the importance of agency through ownership.

People engage with the world beyond the campus on behalf of an institution when they feel an integral and respected part of that institution – not when they are told to do so by an executive strategy they had no part in shaping. If we don’t recognise that then there will be no truly civic universities to play their part in the UK’s decentralisation of power.

Krzysztof Nawratek is senior lecturer in humanities and architecture at the University of Sheffield.