left to my own devices – occasional thoughts on higher education

Image from Pixaby

There’s no doubt that the rate and extent of change in education, and the wider political and social contexts in which it exists, means that universities have long since moved to an ‘always on’ mode.  And yet there remains, of course, a distinctive rhythm to the academic year.

For universities July is marked by the rush of marking, examination boards and graduation.  But alongside the annual activities marking the end of the traditional undergraduate academic year, there’s a similar familiar pattern in corporate governance with the final meeting of the academic year of the board of governors; and the build up to this.

This has its own repeating features, not least the approval of the forthcoming year’s budget and five year financial forecast (which almost certainly explains the spate in the past few months of grim news with (yet) further rounds of cuts and staff losses).  However, rather than focus on the continuing financial crisis in higher education, the closing of the corporate governance year prompted slightly different thoughts for me.

Looking back

I’ve been a further education college governor for seven years, and just as is the case in universities this month sees the close of the corporate governance year in further education.  This always prompts at least some reflection on my part.  And perhaps particularly so for me at the moment as I’ve just completed the third year of my second four year term of office as a governor, and (just like Trump) I’m limited to two terms (hopefully the only similarity between us).

The question I tend to ask myself at this point is whether from a governor’s perspective things are better now than they were at the start of the year (on this occasion the answer is a clear yes).  And as I approach the end of my term I start to think about that question from a longer term perspective; how are things now compared to when I joined the board seven years ago?

For me this is the perspective from which I understand the idea of stewardship in an organisational context: the balancing of what an organisation was, what an organisation is and what an organisation can and should become in order to leave it at any given point in time in a better position to fulfil its purpose than it was before.

three is the magic number?

Of course there are many definitions of stewardship, so here’s a more formal definition:

Stewardship means governing the organisation in the best interest of its stakeholders, ensuring it is strong and sustainable so it can continue meet stakeholder needs now and in the future

G Brown, A Kakabadsse and F Morai, The Independent Director in Society: Our Current Crisis of Governance and What to Do About It (2020), p.73

For me, though, this reflects in its first clause too narrow a view of stewardship.  This type of perspective on stewardship is also evident in this quote from Sir David Watson:

if governance is about stewardship, and leadership is about stretch, then management is about institutional strength

D Watson, The Question of Morale: Managing Happiness and Unhappiness in University Life (2009), p.118

Watson is invoking another of those sacred trinities, governance, leadership and management; and echoing the first quote by very firmly, if not solely, locating stewardship in the first of the three activities in this trinity.  And for me that’s problematic, overlooking the critical importance of stewardship across all three activities, making it a forgotten child of the characteristics healthy and successful organisations display.

sometimes four is a magic number as well

Going back to my reflections as a board member, thinking about whether things are better or worse over the period in question doesn’t stem from a (delusional) sense of my own importance and impact.  But rather it is based on a knowledge that the answer to that question reflects the collective effectiveness and impact across the organisation of all involved across governance, leadership and management.

Stewardship as I’ve defined it, and as it’s been defined in the first quote above, is as important to effective leadership and management as it is to effective governance.  This perhaps reflects my view that while different in important ways, governance, leadership and management are all in many ways just aspects and forms of decision-making so that there is a greater unity across the three than we sometimes acknowledge.

Across all organisations, not least our universities, we need greater acknowledgment of the importance of stewardship across governance, leadership and management.  And to understand both the value and potential dynamism of this.

what we lost

And it’s not just within our universities.

At sector level stewardship has been deliberately and consciously neglected in English higher education sector.  The abolition of HEFCE and its stewardship role, to be replaced by a market regulator, has been an unqualified disaster.  It does not entirely explain the awful current state of the sector.  But it has contributed to this, and its absence makes the current situation far more difficult to address.

The profound absence of this stewardship function at sector level is one of the glaring holes in the current government’s higher education agenda.  Little wonder that earlier this year there were even calls for a higher education commissioner to be appointed mirroring the model in further education. This call had a slightly Panglossian perspective on the role of the further education commissioner, but that it came reflects the ongoing loss of the changes implemented in the English sector in 2018.

Stewardship of the sector has been replaced by market regulation that does not meet the needs of students, universities or the country.  Calls for further, harsher central regulation will not solve this  Instead, creative thinking of how sector stewardship can be achieved is needed – with perhaps creative responses to the coming skills devolution agenda offering one way ahead in this regard.

what we need

Whether higher education is at as significant an inflection point as some excited commentators have argued is a moot point.  The current crisis is, however, undeniable.  There are no easy ways forward, but determining what these should be, whether at institutional or sector level, needs to rediscover and re-emphasise the centrality of stewardship, too often the forgotten child of organisational thinking, to underpinning decision-making.