The news that Ministers have fired a shot across the bows of universities about the pay of vice chancellors should come as little surprise. Pay, especially in the public sector, is a key political issue and will continue to be. But what the Ministerial intervention really shows is that universities are the next political battleground.
It is obvious to everyone that universities have changed. The introduction of student fees and the broken Lib Dem promise over increases to them has made the sector much more of a political issue.
Students now increasingly expect a level of service delivery for the money being paid and the demands they are making on the universities are increasing. Bluntly, they want a return on their significant investment.
Just as Eric Pickles wanted a nation of ‘armchair auditors’, students will increase the demand for data made available by universities so that they can make assessments before choosing and hold them to account during their period of study. Information is critical.
So universities themselves need to move away from old-fashioned processes, especially around decision-making, and open themselves up to greater student input and scrutiny. A university’s executive leadership team has to be more easily indentified by their student body and open to greater levels of direct engagement.
The consequences of not taking these agendas seriously will mean that politicians will not just talk about their expectations but will take action. With public funding for higher education being cut it is unacceptable to Ministers that senior pay is increasing, especially if you consider that the pay of other staff is being held down.
Just as those in local government and the civil service have already had to come to terms with, senior pay is not just a product of market conditions but of political priorities and expectations.
The issue of public sector pay and conditions will continue well into the next government and beyond. Labour’s current consideration of a zero-based spending review is possibly the most important piece of work that is taking place in preparation for their manifesto. Higher education could well find itself the victim of more cuts and public sector pay is bound to focused on as well.
But Government, and the higher education authorities, also have challenges around how to ensure the quality of teaching and research in universities in the new climate, how these are assessed and how they meet the requirements of students.
Government also has to be careful not to drive a wedge between the internationally agile universities with a brand that can be exported across the globe and those that focus on the domestic market.
Reputations for universities are becoming critically important and any damage inflicted either as a result of poor engagement with students or a failure to deal with political priorities could be fatal.
This means a failure to consider the politics of the sector and the full range of implications for reputation management is a serious failure. Universities in many ways operate in complicated mix of the highly commercial and competitive whilst sitting in the public sector. This does not give them any special dispensation.
Just as other parts of the education sector have had to consider issues such as governance and the behaviour of staff (past and present) this too is bound to come to higher education.
With so many issues relevant to Ministers, and potential voters, occurring in the university sector, it is only a matter of time before the political and media focus is centred on it.