The bitter battle over the future of Oxford University will come to a head next week when academics vote on plans to end almost 900 years of self-governance.
If John Hood, the vice-chancellor, gets his reforms through Congregation on Tuesday, the university will see external or lay members in a majority on its council for the first time. Success for the reforms will immediately raise questions about the future of governance at Cambridge University, which has just two externals on its council - and no plans to reform. A failure to push them through will raise questions about the future of Dr Hood.
By the beginning of this week, the university had received six amendments to the reforming statute, published this term. But the vice-chancellor, in consultation with the university proctors whose role it is to ensure that the university operates according to its statutes, has the right to reject amendments deemed "inconsistent with or irrelevant to the principal of the proposal". As a result of these deliberations, just four amendments are going forward to Congregation.
Two key rebel amendments, which would have put internals back in control of the council and made the council subservient to the academic board, have been rejected. But an amendment allowing a slight rebalancing of council in favour of internals in five years' time has been allowed. It is understood that opponents of the reforms are now considering whether to withdraw all their amendments. This would mean that the vote next Tuesday would be more likely to be a simple yes or no decision on the original proposals. This is a high-risk strategy for both sides, reducing the opportunity to compromise.
A letter published in the Oxford Magazine last week and signed by 40 Cambridge academics, including a former college head and former chairman of the university's board of scrutiny, warns: "If Oxford gets a council dominated by external members, it will be significantly more difficult to resist the same in Cambridge. In this sense, the Oxford electors may be deciding for Cambridge as well as Oxford."
Emerging as a key issue is whether either university really needs to reform. Oxford took the unusual step of publishing an extract from a Higher Education Funding Council for England report on the university in its white paper on governance earlier this year. In it, Hefce states: "The present governance arrangements still differ markedly from the sector norm (in part, because the university is self-governing), or [from] that which Hefce would consider good practice." It goes on to say that the reforms will end the anomalies and will conform to good practice. it does not say what action it will take if the reforms are rejected.
A Hefce spokesman said this week: "It is not our practice to force change in these areas. We prefer to work alongside universities." Susan Cooper, professor of physics and an opponent of the reforms who has been elected to Oxford's council, said: "My understanding of the Hefce position is comply - or explain. We should be explaining."
A spokesman for Cambridge said that it would be inappropriate for it to comment on Oxford governance, but added: "This university is on an entirely different cycle of governance compared with Oxford." Oxford insisted this week that its reforms were driven primarily by is own internal governance priorities. A spokesperson added: "But we do need to act with reference to the outside world and do seek to comply with best practice."
Oxford also maintains that it needs to change its governance as a result of forthcoming charities legislation, which makes Hefce, rather than the Charity Commission, principal regulator for universities. Some academics fear that abandoning self-governance could spell the end of Congregation and Regent House - the two great democratic forums that make Oxbridge unique.
Oxford's reforming white paper makes it clear that Congregation is to be preserved and, if anything, strengthened. But Alan Ryan, warden of New College, Oxford, noted that the powers vested in these forums did not comply with the Hefce best-practice model. "Is this intended as a thin end of the wedge so that it's a council today, no Congregation tomorrow?" he asked.
John Hood's nightmare scenarios: Amendments go to Congregation, are debated and passed. The revised legislation is printed in the Gazette, allowing for further amendments. The legislation would then go back to Congregation and then to postal vote. Or amendments are rejected, but so are the original reforms. There would then be a postal vote.
Then what? By law, amendments to Oxford's statutes that effect major constitutional changes must be approved by the Privy Council. This could delay change until 2008.
* Andrew Graham, master of Balliol: "I find the new proposals a sophisticated and intelligent package."
* Gillian Shephard, former Education Secretary: "A rejection would make it so much harder to do what we passionately want to do: help Oxford to thrive and prosper in the demanding world that beckons."
* Peter Lampl, director of the Sutton Trust: "The white paper's proposals provide the sort of modern and dynamic structure that Lambert calls for, while ensuring academic values remain at the heart of the university."
* Susan Cooper, a council member: "The structures we adopted in 2000 are more modern and streamlined than those proposed in the white paper."
* Nicholas Bamforth, a council member: "The gap between the formal appearance of a sovereign Congregation and the political reality of an executive-dominated university would become radically wider than is presently the case."
claire.sanders@thes.co.uk
A look at the US shows why handing the university to a board of trustees controlled by outsiders is a bad idea. All American universities are run by boards consisting entirely of outsiders. And one in 20 of them is currently under formal censure by the American Association of University Professors for offences against academic freedom, tenure and professional rights. The boards of 183 have been censured at some time, some repeatedly. And there are many more problems that are never reported.
US university boards have interfered with curriculum, with marking and with sabbatical applications. They have repeatedly voted to deal with increased student numbers through temporary low-wage "adjuncts" rather than by hiring new dons. They have fired dons for their political views, curtailed tenure rights, imposed non-academic criteria in hiring, played financial favourites among departments, and spent millions on sport, executive salaries and severance.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department are probing cases of trustee corruption that have cost universities millions of dollars - it's a problem that is sufficiently widespread that the US Congress has launched a general investigation.
A Brit once asked me if this might all be cultural. This was a delicate way of suggesting that as the British are better behaved than the Americans they would not do such things even if they had the opportunity. Although on the whole the Brits do behave better than we do, such consequence does not follow. An academic from another UK university has told me of interference with the appointments process more extreme than anything I've heard about in the US. It is not just a problem of American temperament.
External control, then, raises the prospect of interference with academic matters by people not competent to do so. Furthermore, it does not produce academic results. The Times Higher World Rankings placed Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford first, second and third: the world's two don-controlled universities came ahead of everyone save the world's richest university. Dozens of institutions with many times the money of Oxbridge could not overhaul them. Brains, hard work and resources chiefly determine a university's success. Oxford has much less money than its competition and as money buys brains, it's unlikely that the university's dons are much cleverer than those of Princeton, Stanford or Yale. And there is no reason to think its staff work harder than those of its rivals. So if external control brings real academic advantage, how can Oxford's success be explained?
The arguments offered for an outsider-controlled board tend to be specious. We're told that external trustees can be friends to speak for us. This is true, but they need not form a majority to do so. We're told that such trustees can speak for us without being seen as biased. This is also true, but they needn't be in control to be seen so. In fact, if they run the institution then, by praising it, they're also praising their own work and so look just as biased as the dons supposedly do now. We're told that the externals can reassure potential donors that their money will be well spent. Again, they can do this best if in doing so they aren't praising themselves: what's needed is scrutiny, not control. We're told that outside bodies demand this change - but as far as I can see, the Higher Education Funding Council for England's only request is that we do this or explain why we haven't. For an explanation, we need only point to the US.
It is also claimed that a move to external control would bring in money to raise academic salaries. But whose? Even if top-up fees were doubled - which they won't be - the revenue wouldn't enable the university to do anything substantial about academic pay. As for private donors, to raise the salaries of 3,700 academics by £1,000 each, they would have to contribute something in the order of £93 million (assuming 4 per cent interest after tax) earmarked for no other purpose. The university shouldn't hold its breath.
In sum, moving to outsider control would bring no genuine benefit without the significant risks noted above. Not one of the US academics that I polled volunteered a good word for the idea.
Brian Leftow is Nolloth professor of the philosophy of the Christian religion and a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.