University independence
Sir: [too share Professor Griffith's concern (20 June). The present threat, in a contracting market, to the power of academics to make their own decisions is very real.
However, it must be said that the writing has been on the wall for a long time and by and large academics have failed to take notice of it and act in accordance with it. The first warning was, if memory serves, around 1950 when for the first time more than 50 Per cent of the universities' income came from public sources. Few governments are prepared to spend vast sums of money on activities over which they have no control.
Since then members of the university community have shown how fiercely they will defend freedom and autonomy. A few examples from memory will indicate their attachment to licence. Once before there was a 'freeze' on new appointments. In my university three new chairs in theology were established. The shortest meeting I have ever attended was the one during which the government's 13 points were dismissed without discussion. Finally, was it entirely unreasonable to ask universities to restrict the proportion of heavily subsidised overseas students to around 10 per cent?
Under conditions of expansion members of the universities were allowed to make their own decisions. Some people outside the universities might think not all of them were in the 'national interest'. It does not surprise me, though I regret it, that government is now unwilling, given the security of tenure we enjoy, to allow university politics, which have become highly politicised, to determine how contraction should take place.
We have, I think, only ourselves to blame.
Brian Holmes 31 Freegrove Road, London N7
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