Acts of mimicry

Now I get it (“The big business of remuneration”, Features, 3 April). Perhaps as a strategy to enhance their packages, vice-chancellors adopt the language, ideas and practices of their paymasters, putting aside those values that define the university. All that business jargon that litters university mission and strategy statements and the supporting team-building exercises and leadership tests, have a common source – board members from big business.

Perhaps it is the same paymasters who recommend the management and brand consultants that vice-chancellors inflict on their wary and weary institutions. In they come, with their off-the-peg models and clichéd solutions, without a passing glance at the peculiarities of the academy. That’s all right then – or is it?

Geoffrey Channon
Emeritus professor and former pro vice-chancellor learning and teaching
University of the West of England