From ALAN BUNDY
Donald Simpson (Letters, 23 April) is absolutely right in his identification
of the waste in British universities caused by highly trained and (relatively)
highly paid academics doing low-grade administrative tasks. However, the
cause is not just ‘the inability of academics to distinguish between secretarial
work, administration and management’. Most of us are quite able to identify
tasks that secretaries and administrators could do more cheaply (and often
more effectively). Unfortunately, what few secretaries and administrators
there are, are already overworked.
The current problem was exacerbated by the attempts to meet government
‘efficiency gains’ (that is, cuts) during the 1980s. Since academics had
tenure, the first target of cuts was often nontenured support staff. It
will take us a while to recover from this situation, but, as Simpson rightly
implies, the first step is to recognise the problem.
Alan Bundy University of Edinburgh
