Question of balance

For Richard Austen-Baker's proposal (Letters, 18 June) to really work, surely all academic appointments should also be half administration? Much better, surely, for all concerned to recognise that there are plenty of roles in higher education that require specialist skills rather than Renaissance men and women.

My university needs my skills in management and administration more than it needs my abilities as a philosopher, partly because it has a number of good philosophers already, and partly because my relative ability as a manager outweighs my relative ability as a philosopher. But then I have no aspirations to become a professor and hope to be accepted by academic colleagues on my merits rather than my title.

Michael Flack, Milton Keynes.