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"Oxford is beginning to seem like a place under siege," notes Novelist A.N. Wilson. He might have said the same for all British universities. Low salaries, shrinking research facilities and the grim general outlook have driven thousands of British academics into industry or overseas teaching positions.
Government funding officials are considering the closure of one-third of all university physics and chemistry departments. Six philosophy departments and seven earth-science departments are shutting down. The University of Edinburgh's top Soviet military expert is barely hanging on, having accepted an annual pay cut from $42,750 to $10,260 -- and the assurance that he can keep his research collection there. "The university is short $6 million," he says. "Someone's got to go."
In Wales last year, the whole of the University College at Cardiff nearly went into bankruptcy and was saved by an emergency infusion of government cash that may not be there next time. To help head off any such crisis of its own, Oxford will launch a fund-raising campaign next October -- after getting some consulting help from Harvard and Princeton.
Ominously, bright young scholars are not coming into the system: in all of Britain, only six university historians are under 30. "It's a failure to recruit a whole generation or two of talent," says Patrick Collinson, professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield. "And those generations will have been lost."
Education Secretary Baker and other Conservatives insist that GERBIL's tough provisions can in fact rejuvenate the system. The act's advocates believe tenure denial and early pensioning of redundant older faculty will lop off academic deadwood, thus freeing money to reward universities that focus on the government's priority fields. Specifically, by 1990 the Thatcher government wants 35% more science graduates and 25% more engineers than in 1980. These, say government officials, are the skills that Britain requires to compete in international markets.
This monetarist view of learning is what worries scholars most. The Universities Funding Council, to be appointed by Baker, will be empowered to make grants subject to certain undefined "terms and conditions" -- a phrase that academics fear may portend industry-style contracting. And abolishing tenure, says Paul Cottrell of the Association of University Teachers, "will make academics easier to sack." The ultimate result, he adds, will be to make it "more difficult to protect their academic freedom."
Despite some mitigating language crammed at the last moment into the bill's 238 clauses, some scholars fear that they may be forced to abandon innovative research to comply with government priorities. "Universities will no longer ; be autonomous corporations of scholars but servants of the government," says Elie Kedourie, professor of politics at the University of London. He adds scornfully, "It's really quite absurd for the government to think you can treat a university like a factory."