The first ever academic redundancy happend as recently as 1988
In 1990, the leader of a campus trade union argued that action by an arms length body of the government meant that universities could “manipulate financial planning to make staff redundant and endanger academic freedom”.
This was not a response to funding cuts. It was in response to a little remembered section of the 1988 Education Reform Act that gave a body called the University Commissioners the power to amend university statutes and constitutions.
The issue was academic tenure, an idea that the government of the time was (to say the least) not a fan of. The 1985 Jarrett Report described the issue as follows:
Essentially, tenure gives permanent employment in the employing university, with a contract that can only be broken in special circumstances. These are frequently restricted to various forms of misconduct, or inability or unwillingness to do the job; in general, tenure does not allow for dismissal on grounds of redundancy.
Then Secretary of State Keith Joseph had already indicated a willingness to legislate on the issue, but only in a way that would affect the terms and conditions of employment of academic staff after a certain date. This was framed as a part of wider plans to drive down the costs of the sector by making efficiencies – the huge cuts of the early 80s were not followed by the funding stability that many had hoped for.
In the popular imagination, tenure meant that after a short probationary period period a new member of academic staff could only be removed from their post for reasons of reasons of “complete incompetence or gross immorality”, and even then only after an enquiry with a right of appeal. It basically was understood by commentators and politicians to mean that academics had a job for life, something which seemed at odds with the prevailing employment trends of the first Thatcher administration.
In practice, these rights were not (at any point in history) extended to all staff at a university, or even all academic staff at a university. And what tenure meant (and how easy it was, in practice, to stop employing an academic) varied widely from university to university: very ancient university typically offered a “hard tenure” that sailed close to what is described above, others had less watertight “soft tenure” where in some cases (depending on how statutes, charters, or conditions of services were interpreted) redundancy was possible. And there were some universities – Hull, as we shall see – that claimed not to offer any form of tenure at all.
In an environment where universities were expected to find significant operating savings, it was clear to many that a “job for life” (or the more nuanced actuality) outside of gross misconduct was not tenable. But mere redundancy (the job that needed to be done no longer existing) did not uniformly work, even where a course or department had closed. So something had to change.
The terms of this tenure were set out in the kinds of university governing documents (royal charters, statutes) that needed to be changed by the university itself – often with the permission of the Privy Council or of parliament (when rules were set out in an act of parliament). Rooting out tenure was not something that the government could do by passing a law or setting out a funding requirement.
Sections 202 to 207 of the 1988 Education Reform Act held a potential solution. A body of commissioners (the University Commissioners) were given the right to demand that university statutes included the ability to dismiss academic staff for reasons of “redundancy” or “good cause” (such as a want of capability or qualifications), to allow for disciplinary processes (and appeals) to respond to complaints made against an academic, and to give academics the opportunity to see redress for their own grievances.
Changes made to university statutes to enact these changes did not need to (as was the case with other statute changes) be laid before parliament (in the case of a university established by an Act of Parliament) or submitted to the Privy Council.
There was a caveat. These changes could not apply to academics who had been appointed to their current role before 20 November 1987 – unless the person in question had been promoted after that date. But other than that, it was pretty cut and dried. There wasn’t even the ability to appeal to the university visitor (which was the old system of redress for members of staff). The first and second chairs of the Commissioners were former Lord Justices: Ian Fraser, followed on his death by John May. Others Commissioners included Jack Butterworth (formerly vice chancellor at Warwick), Alan Gregory (a former chair of BP Oil), James Munn (chairman of the Training Commission), and David Williams (president of Wolfson College, Cambridge)
It is odd to think that the first ever compulsory redundancy for an academic happened in living memory. Edgar Page, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Hull, was given his contractual three months notice in 1988. He appealed this situation, believing his employment could only be terminated with “good cause” as laid out in the university statutes, and that he was being victimised because of his age (he was the only academic over 50 in his department) – first to the university visitor (officially this was the Queen!) and then to the High Court.
His complaints were upheld by the High Court and the Court of Appeal, but the visitor backed the university’s position and the Law Lords (then the highest court in England) agreed. Though this case did not relate to the new powers – Hull was a special case in having a very “soft” approach to tenure – it was routinely connected in the press to the new measures.
The many protests (and demonstrations) concerning the Page case also connected the issue to academic freedom – if a university could dismiss an academic for just about any reason, was this an invitation to punish or shut down academic research that it did not like? With this in mind, the government eventually yielded to pressure and included (in section 202 of the Act) a requirement that the Commissioners had regard to the need to ensure academic freedom, justice, and fairness – balanced against the need to enable universities to do what they did “efficiently and economically”.
By October 1992, after the circulation of various draft statutes to universities, the Commissioners had made firm decisions on just 26 of them. Powers originally extending only to 1991 were extended until 1 April 1996, with funding cut after the 1994-95 financial year at which point the chairman worked, ad hoc, on an unpaid basis. But the initial hostility and scepticism petered out over time – the dissolution of the Commissioners was not even mentioned in parliament.
Likewise, the press turned out to be less interested in university governance than they initially thought – later references to the Commissioners tended to be as background to coverage of the far more newsworthy Conservative efforts to make membership of Student Unions optional for students by, once again, amending statutes.
The remaining lecturers that were protected by tenure gradually retired or lost their protections on promotion. Fears that academic freedom would be lost, or that universities would routinely fire older academics to make way for cheaper, younger, ones proved largely unfounded. These days, a rhetorical lash at “jobs for life” for academics serves merely as a way of indicating that the speaker doesn’t know what they are talking about.
We seem also to have abandoned the idea that enforced changes to university statutes are a way to compel universities to do what the government of the day wants them to do. Conditions of funding, regulation, and regulatory conditions have done more to shape governance and activity in recent years, even on issues – such as academic freedom and freedom of speech – where you would expect to find material in statutes and governing documents. Of course, visitorial jurisdiction remains – something that looks set to cause problems
It is notable that, while there were many concerns expressed about the impact of changes on academic staff – and the debate also introduced the “chilling effect” to a grateful world – concerns about institutional autonomy did not get as much of an airing. If you imagine the furore if today’s government decided to get stuck into your governing documents you can see how strange this was.
There was an element of fait accompli – pretty much nobody was arguing for the retention of tenure especially given the undertakings the government gave towards safeguarding the rights of those lucky souls who had it – but the episode was a marker on the way the universities have grown closer to the state over the past half-decade.
Academic redundancies, and the closure of departments and courses, now feel as commonplace as layoffs and restructuring in other parts of the economy. And it has become harder to make the argument that universities are materially different from any other large employer.