Oxford: Franks or Freedom?
By BRYAN WILSON
WHATEVER else is said of the Franks Report, experts in public relations will envy the 'ballyhoo' and the 'gimmickry' with which it has arrived. Was ever a Royal Commission launched with all the fuss attendant on this purely internal university report? All of this should mislead no one. The report, despite the imperious tone in which it is written, is recommendatory, not mandatory. Oxford has the reflections of seven people before it : since all their evidence has been published, Oxford will sift it, and then reach its own conclusions—which may be different.
A lot of the evidence has been ignored by the commission : perhaps the purpose of the exercise was to give dons the idea that they were being consulted, rather than to distil their lengthy answers into policy. The commission both ignores some issues on which it has abundant evidence and came to judgments for which it look no evidence. Thus, lavishly provided with secretarial facilities themselves, the Commis- sioners do not even refer to Oxford's lack of adequate secretarial services, which are worse than in any other British university, and about which a lot of evidence was submitted. On he other hand, the Commission makes drastic recommendations on the elimination and reallo- cation of various classes of fellows at All Souls, Without having taken evidence on the part these groups play in the life of the college.
Oxford has a different organisational structure from most other universities, and it was this which prompted criticism in the Robbins Report. The Franks Commission was Oxford's response. It should not be forgotten that Lord Franks and another member of his commission were two of the three-man committee which proposed that there should be a commission, and which drew up its terms of reference. Many of the report's recommendations are meant to bring Oxford into line with other universities. Such administrative reform would involve the increase of hierarchy and bureaucracy, at the cost of democracy. It is Oxford's extensive democracy which makes its external relations difficult. Government depart- ments, the University Grants Committee and Robbins have been used to dealing with vice- chancellors who are not inhibited by the checks and balances that have grown up at Oxford, and who do not have to take into account the type of freedom and diversity that prevails in Oxford colleges. In the rationalised world for which, despite the parade of democratic sentiment, Franks contends, freedom somehow becomes an anomaly and a nuisance.
Oxford's Convocation is the only body in which lay opinion can be voiced in the university—but Convocation is recommended for elimination. Congregation would remain 'sovereign,' but its sovereignty would become more remote and 'hedged about'—another step in the rationalising process of steadily rendering democratic assem- blies otiose, so that at a subsequent so-called 'reform' they might be recommended for dis- bandment. No doubt it would be useful to have the powers of Oxford's central governmental bodies more clearly defined, but many will wish to retain Congregation's present authority uncur- tailed. The report complains of 'pressure-groups' in Congregation as now constituted : but pressure- groups create 'counter-pressures,' they permit Dr Wilson is Reader in Sociology at Oxford and a Vow of All Souls.
opinion to crystallise, they are a healthy feature of democracy. Dislike of them is no reason to create, as would the report, a permanent protected pressure-group of administrators pressing from the top.
The report's first recommendation is an air' assertion that Oxford should 'develop and improve its collegiate structure.' Almost every point thereafter would entail, in fact, a radical inroad on the autonomy of the colleges. There is lip-service to college virtues. The report com- mends a system which allows tutors an interest in selecting, teaching, and sharing in the success of their pupils, all of which produces in the tutor 'a sense of responsibility for them which is lively as only parochial feelings can be.' Else- where they condemn the colleges for being 'in- fected by parochialism,' and make it clear that the very parochialism that produces a lively feeling of responsibility is what their reforms would destroy —`a community of the universities should replace Oxford's lingering traces of parochialism.' Un- fortunately the parochial liveliness is a reality which could be destroyed, the 'community of universities' is a piece of empty rhetoric, with no relevance for the day-to-day work of teaching students.
Many of the recommendations would reduce the independence of the colleges in one way or another : admissions would be put into the hands of a central university body; the adoption of aptitude tests for admission (which are at best dubious indicators of who can really profit from an education) is recommended; the reduction of college scholarships, which would cause candi- dates to narrow their preparation for entrance, by throwing more emphasis on 'A' levels; the standardisation of scholarships at f50 which would diminish the stimulus of the present system, and reduce the importance of choice of college and commitment to it.
Colleges would become more uniform under the Franks regime: their auditors would report to the university about college accounts; similar standards of board and lodging are recom- mended, even including bulk purchase for colleges. As the Warden of one of several halls of residence on which joint bulk purchasing was imposed by my old redbrick university, I saw the destruction of the morale of the domestic staff and the gradual loss of their sense of responsi- bility as students' complaints mounted. It, is a strange psychological insight which proposes measures that destroy liberal initiative, commit- ment and the maintenance of that 'sense of res- ponsibility . . . lively as only parochial feelings can be.'
A new type of college diversity is suggested in the report—their increasing specialisation by sub- ject. Again, the cost is college autonomy; students would be switched from college to college; personal relations of pupil and tutor would suffer; college allegiance would dissolve. Part of the purpose of the new specialisation by colleges would be to allow Oxford to take in a lot more graduates. That increase would mean that undergraduates would suffer in two ways: there would be fewer places for them, at least for men in arts subjects, and endowments would be reallocated from undergraduate scholarships to post-graduate awards. Colleges could not but decline in importance: graduates demand less from college life; more of them are married; their academic activity usually lies outside college walls. Graduate studies will obviously grow in Oxford, but ought they to grow so directly at the cost of undergraduates and as a threat to the college system?
The colleges are recommended to form a council to express a new metaphysical property— 'the collective wisdom of the colleges.' The university must be able to commit the colleges when it makes a statement of policy. But it appears that such a Council of Colleges would have few powers and little influence. It is sup- posed that that council could put one man for- ward to the higher echelons of administration, who would then 'carry the college point of view right into the centre of the administration.' These are fine phrases, but there is, and can be, no one college point of view—there is a desirable diversity, dissent, and non-conformity within the prevailing permissive and unauthoritarian struc- ture of the university.
To complete the destruction of college autonomy, most appointments would become those of fellow-lecturers, made jointly by colleges and the university. The diversity of college prac- tices which include many fringe benefits to fellows would go, and instead Oxford would pay its dons salaries 10 per cent higher than those in other universities. But the fringe benefits have a func- tion. They are part of the fabric of the college diversity and college commitment, and they relate to the immense amount of willing 'over- time' which dons put in for their pupils and their colleges. They mean a great deal more than the impersonal 10 per cent. But, of course, they are part of those corporate allegiances which the report would ultimately destroy. Joint appoint- ments fit in with the recommendations that all dons should engage in teaching at all levels. That, too, is standardisation without regard to aptitude and disposition, designed not to benefit students but rather to promote the centralisation of uni- versity authority.
When the Franks Committee set up the Franks Commission, many felt that this would save Oxford from a Royal Commission. The advant- age of a Royal Commission would have been parliamentary debate, and the expression of lay interest: there would necessarily have been time for mature reflection. Oxford must ensure that that occurs now. The recommendations must pass through the sieve of the wisdom and experience of others. The Franks Report does not conclude— but rather precedes—discussion. Much will be disputed, both by those whom it directly affects, and by the nation, which is not unjustly proud of what Oxford has been and is. Let discussion commence.
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