We have received a reply from Adam Wheeler, our DVC, to our offer to assist with the review:

Finally, regarding your question about the Business Model Review, UCU have received a number of briefings [I think these were verbal reports at JNC/JJNC: Denis] from management on the purpose and scope of the Review and the progress of this work. UCU members have also been involved in the work by virtue of being staff involved in the review. The University will in time seek to engage with the Trade Unions on next steps, once PWC has finished its report.

Meanwhile, I have been chosen as one of the sampled staff to provide data for the review. There is a pretty obvious bias in the way data is requested. There is just one box for time spent teaching; there is another single box for time spent on research. On the other hand, there are 49 boxes allocated to detailed ancillary, administration, and support activities. We are asked, at short notice, to distribute our average monthly hours amongst these tasks, with a granularity of no less than one hour per activity. As I calculate it, based on the University’s assumption of a 35-hour week, we should have 134 hours to distribute. So we will have to scatter ones and zeros around the support boxes. Given that there are lots of such boxes, I can only assume that the purpose of the data gathering is to generate high apparent support costs to justify the purchase of Watson and other expensive outsourced products. To be paid for, presumably, by a further reduction in academic-related staff.

There are, however, a few free-text boxes. Perhaps colleagues might use them to explain the amount of time they spend “fighting” managed print? Or struggling to get a timely and effective response from our already shrunken central services—counselling, legal, and HR come to mind. Or dodging the alarming number of rats that are scurrying across campus.

Denis Nicole