Perilous waters

Next week the leaders of Britain's universities will meet to decide on their collective policy for the coming year. The Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals will be presented by its officers with an elegant corporate plan setting out a number of unexceptionable priorities.

This appears to be a device for avoiding anything difficult. For university leaders face a number of issues which could tear their fragile organisation apart. First, as Diana Green points out (page 16), what are they going to do if their bluff is called on last winter's threat to impose a levy on new students unless funding cuts are reversed in the Budget? They may face a legal challenge if they impose charges next autumn unless they have warned potential students this autumn. That means decisions this term. A number of institutions are preparing the way, the latest being Huddersfield (page 3). But they are reluctant even to admit such planning.

The subject is not on the CVCP's formal agenda. And the committee's submission to the Dearing committee, which is on the agenda, is likely to duck the isssue by continuing to demand that the Government act on its behalf.

Second, the CVCP must decide what to do about quality assurance. This is on the agenda. The universities are faced by full-time Government funding agencies with power in their hands and full-time, permanent staff to pay. The councils have unsurprisingly fought hard to keep control. An amateurish CVCP, its leaders necessarily preoccupied with other things, has largely failed to wrest control from the funders. It will take a row next week if the joint planning group's proposals are to be revised in the universities' favour.

The CVCP should have set up a proper accreditation agency years ago along the lines of the professions, as the Higher Education Quality Council is now advising (page 3). The Americans have had such a system for 100 years, though it now needs reform. And the Dutch offer a newer model closer to home. Over the past decade they have set up a system based on internal evaluation both of teaching and research programmes monitored through external reviews which, it was rightly suggested at a recent informal conference of Dutch and Flemish university leaders, could provide a model for the rest of Europe.

The Malaysians too now look set to beat the United Kingdom to it with their proposals for an accreditation agency (page 11). The agency, which the Government has wisely decided to put under the aegis of the king (Malaysia has a rotating monarchy confined to a group of families) rather than the minister, will accredit both public and private institutions. This will permit expansion at low cost to the public purse and encourage both autonomy and diversity. (Those who rely on recruiting Malaysian students to study in Britain or who do not have their franchised courses under rigorous control had better beware.) Third, the CVCP is threatened profoundly by the research issue. The big decisions will be taken for it. The Higher Education Funding Council will publish its research assessments at the end of the year and dish out the money accordingly in the spring. None the less decisions are pending within the committee on such apparently technical matters as performance indicators for postgraduate study following the Harris report. Such indicators, if they are to be useful, cannot favour all contenders.

The heat was turned up last week when Sir Ron Oxburgh, rector of Imperial College, member of the Dearing committee and this year's president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, suggested that not more than half of today's university academics could be regarded as "research active".

Unlike quality assurance or funding, the research issue is truly without obvious solution.