No 6792
Wednesday 9 July 2025
Vol clv No 40
pp. 716–758
A Discussion was convened by videoconference. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Lord Woolley of Woodford, HO, was presiding with the Registrary’s deputy, the Junior Proctor, the Junior Pro-Proctor and three other persons present.
Remarks were made as follows:
(Reporter, 6788, 2024–25, p. 636).
Dr J. P. Skittrall (Trinity College):
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this Report arises from the breadth of world-class research, educational and scholarship activity undertaken in the University, and we owe a debt of gratitude to all those who have made applications – regardless of outcome – and to those who have given of their time to assess them.
One of the purposes of collecting and publishing equality statistics is their ability to give early signals of possible undesired inequalities. Especially for relatively small and heterogeneous exercises, such as those being discussed today, those statistics are often underpowered and can be difficult to interpret – this is demonstrated by the number of statistics that have entirely reasonably needed to be withheld from this Report on account of small numbers. However, the statistics only need to be sufficiently robust to function as sentinels prompting further investigation where appropriate.
The one set of gender-based statistics with numbers large enough to be published in full demonstrates somewhat unequal outcomes. This is potentially explained by simple inter-individual variations, by factors related to advice and support to enter the exercise, or by factors within the exercise itself. Without need for additional statistical analysis, these numbers appear to have crossed the functional threshold where it would be beneficial for somebody who holds sufficient seniority to be allowed access to all aspects of the exercises’ detail to undertake a brief review to check which of those explanations is most likely.
I appreciate that even an informal one-person review may take time to complete, and I would not expect the General Board to be able to give a final response to my remarks here in the usual timescale for publication in the Reporter. Bearing in mind that the purpose of these exercises is to ensure the University can recognise and promote the best talent, I very much hope the General Board would agree with the merit of taking the long view here, and allow the time to check whether there are any ways that the process of recognition and promotion could be made more effective, even if the timescale for such a review would not impact individual outcomes from this one set of exercises.
Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), received by the Proctors:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this was formerly an annual Report on ‘Senior Academic Promotions’. It now includes an account of the process followed in arriving at such recommendations:
With the recommendations for promotion, the General Board had the opportunity to view an extensive report that provided an account of the procedure followed for the evaluation and comparison of the evidence for all applicants. The Board was able to see how recommendations had been arrived at so that, without repeating the entire exercise, it could either approve the recommendations or, if it so wished, consider the basis on which any of the recommendations had been made.
This has a history of which a reminder may be helpful a quarter of a century later. In the late 1990s application was made to the Commissary and subsequently to the High Court, during a dispute about the operation of the then ‘promotions procedure’. In a judicial review the judge made recommendations, though he said he did not wish them to be regarded ‘as a sword of Damocles hung over the head of the University’.1
The University took the hint and it became the custom for the General Board to publish each year the assurance that it had:
considered recommendations from the Main Senior Academic Promotions Committee in respect of promotion to personal Professorships, Readerships, and Senior Lectureships. With the recommendations the Board received an extensive report, which ... provided the Board with an account of the procedure followed for the evaluation and comparison of the evidence for all applicants
quoting the judgment that thus:
the Board were able to see how recommendations had been arrived at so that, without repeating the entire exercise, they could either approve the recommendations or, if they so wished, consider the basis on which any of the recommendations had been made.
The judgment therefore continues to leave its mark in the wording of the present Report.
The old concept of climbing a hill by promotion has now been replaced by a different image, of ‘Pathways’ along which there may be ‘progression’. The Academic Career Pathways now include a Research Pathway to ‘align’ with ‘the University’s new People Strategy, specifically the strategic theme of Talent Management’,2 as well as one for Teaching and Research with another for Teaching and Scholarship. The outcomes of these two are the subject of this Report.
University Offices defined in Statute C continue to exist from holder to holder. When a successful applicant holding an Office moves along a ‘career pathway’ to a single-tenure Professorship, the underlying Office is ‘placed in abeyance during the tenure’ and may be filled afresh on his or her retirement or resignation. That will not be the case when progression along an ‘academic career pathway’ is available to an unestablished post-holder ‘whose contract of employment specifies the title ‘Assistant Professor’ or ‘Associate Professor’ (Grade 9)’ that makes him or her eligible to be considered for promotion to the unestablished post of Associate Professor (Grade 10)’ on condition that the funding will last for the duration of a new single-tenure post. 3 This may have implications for the EJRA, which sets a retirement age for Officers but not for those who ‘progress’ in an unestablished post.
There is another constitutional anomaly in need of tidying up. The Reporter of 18 June includes a Notice on the ‘Fellowship Secondment Programme for Emerging Academic Leaders’.4 These Fellowships were introduced on 25 July 2024 with a mere Notice.5 The Fellowships are not Offices to be held under the supervision of the General Board. They are creations of the Council, designed to provide selected individuals already in the University’s or a College’s employ at Grade 10 and above, ‘with experience of working at a senior level within the University and having responsibility for delivering University- or School-wide initiatives’.5
In the Discussion of 21 January this year6 I noted that the Council’s Minute 944 for 3 June 2024 records that it was suggested that the ‘idea of an academic leaders’ programme would also help with succession planning by building a strong pool of candidates for leadership positions within the University’. It was ‘agreed to bring more detailed proposals to the next meeting for consideration’. The Council’s Minute 983 for 15 July 2024 records that the Council merely ‘noted’ the proposals which were then published in the Reporter on 31 July.
Can the Fellowships lie on an ‘academic career pathway’ when they involve not the General Board but the Council? Perhaps in a Notice in reply the Council and General Board will provide the clarification the Council seems to have intended.
Dr W. J. Astle (MRC Biostatistics Unit), received by the Proctors:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, congratulations to all those recommended for promotion by the General Board in this Report.
I am a member of the University Council and of the Executive Committee of the Cambridge Branch of the University and College Union, but I make these remarks as a member of the Regent House.
As a result of applications for promotion against the Teaching and Scholarship criteria, the General Board recommends twenty appointments to academic posts carrying duties equivalent to those of a University teaching officer. Nevertheless, the Board suggests that offices should be established in only three cases. The other seventeen appointments will be made to unestablished posts created under Statute C II. 1 Why?
In two of the three Teaching and Scholarship cases for which academic offices are to be established, the appointees will hold Clinical Professorships coterminous with honorary NHS employment contracts. Two clinical appointments made as a result of applications against the Research and Teaching criteria are to be made coterminous similarly. A non-clinical appointment is proposed to a post established in the Department of History of Art, but it is to be made coterminous with the individual’s unestablished appointment as a curator at Kettle’s Yard, a University museum. In this case, it appears the General Board hopes to avoid the Special Ordinance permitting academics ‘to hold office until the retiring age so long as they satisfactorily perform the duties of the office’ unless ‘the tenure of their office is limited by Statute or Ordinance or by Grace’2 by engaging the individual in employment in two ways simultaneously and making one employment conditional on the other. Presumably the employment in the unestablished post is a permanent one while the University office will be held under a fixed-term contract without a fixed end date. Can this work? What is the point of the Statutes and Ordinances if it can?
Until relatively recently, academic employment in the University was simple: it was in a University office for a fixed term of years or until the retiring age, with duties including teaching and research. Over the past decade it has become increasingly heterogeneous and prescriptive. Various methods are accumulating to transfer the financial risks of academic employment from the University to employees, apparently without regard for the need to protect academic freedom.3 Simultaneous with this off‑loading of costs, non‑academic employment in the University has ballooned.4 Do these developments threaten the academic standards of a University that aspires to ‘the highest international levels of excellence’, whatever that might mean?
2Special Ordinance C (ii) 12 (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 77).
4See Reporter, 2024–25: 6787, p. 610; 6790, p. 687.
(Reporter, 6789, 2024–25, p. 657).
No remarks were made on this Report.