GPs vs UK Vice-Chancellors:- Is It All About Money?

Today, the UK news reports about GP failings. We need to think about Publicly Funded Services a little more deeply. In the October 2013 issue of Chemistry in Britain,(RSC Publication p. 13), there is an article about slashing Croatian University Chancellors' pay by 30% because Mico Tatalovic says "...chancellors are, in reality, people bored with their primary scientific & educational work, whose main motive for staying at their function- sometimes longer than is allowed by law- is a big salary".


Did you know Vice Chancellors in British Universities earn much larger salaries than GPs? At the non-Russell group University where I used to work, our Vice Chancellor earns £205,000/-ish per annum. In her safe and risk-free job, there is no possibility of litigation, because she does not deal with life and death. Her role is administrative and ceremonial, complete with robes, processions and trumpet fanfares at Congregations. Under her management, the University has dropped, internationally, 17 places in one year (2012-2013), amongst the subset of newer Universities (see Telegraph article by Edward Malnick; "Modern Universities are Losing Out to their Rivals in the Far East"). The drop would be even larger if all Universities were taken into account. Despite this disgraceful performance, there is no requirement for public accountability and the trumpet fanfares, honorary accolades, robed processions, expensive wining and dining continue unabated, courtesy of the public purse.


In the UK, GPs, face life and death decisions several times a day for long hours and can face litigation for iatrogenic events and inadvertent malpractice. Even though we have a free Health Service, people in the UK feel they are entitled to an US-type accountability from the NHS. The question is whether this expectation is reasonable. Do we have the money to deliver defensive medicine? A little intelligence applied to this issue will tell us that the NHS in 2013 is required to deliver a several-fold increase in public service compared to the NHS that was created 60 years ago. In 1950, it was tax-payer funded penicillin and bandages. Now it is tax-payer funded cancer drugs, well-person clinics, screenings of all sorts, extremely expensive cutting-edge technology applied from cradle to the considerably-delayed grave.


Basic Economics 101 teaches us that we have "unlimited wants and limited means". It is foolish to expect perfection from all GP surgeries. Mathematics & statistical treatment of data teaches us that there is a normal Gaussian bell-shaped distribution curve for most things. Some GP surgeries will statistically fall under the left lower part of the curve; they are the less good ones. There will be excellent ones that fall under the right side of the curve. The Media needs to learn what balanced reporting is. It is NOT describing the groups of GP Practices that lie on the left or right of the Bell-curve, but instead the ones that fall under the middle i.e. the majority. If the majority (and here we need some percentages derived from raw data) do fall within the dome of the curve, then there is no story and the temptation to create one should be resisted at all costs, because it lays bare what we already know, courtesy of the OECD findings; i.e. that we in the UK, are not so great academically, at Mathematics.


Given any nation's limited means and the people's unlimited wants, a day will come, when we may all have to pay privately for medical treatment & University education; when that happens, Vice Chancellors in non-Russell group Universities will earn a whole lot less and GPs will earn a whole lot more.

Forgiveness, Mandela & Future Conduct

I wonder whether there is a global competition underway amongst world leaders, to wear the most uncomfortable hair shirt, in repentance for Nelson Mandela's lost years? Yes, he is iconic, a giant of the 20th century, a legend, but can anything we say or do now make the slightest difference to him?


He is on Another Shore. I am certain he is far too busy having the most fabulous "knees-up" in a Grand Reunion with friends and family who have gone before him, to care about the solemn speeches and the fulsome tributes raining down upon him. In this life, he was allowed 23 years of freedom following the 27 years in prison. Those 23 years of freedom came to him after he turned 70-something. Imprisoned in his prime, for what was, in effect, a charge of being "racist against white men" and having the cheek to ask for the right to vote, I believe, that it is so very convenient for all of us that he forgave those who injured him. The consequence of his forgiveness now allows room for a repeat of what happened; after all, if Mandela could forgive, we can all learn from him, and forgive, should we similarly suffer. It is also useful for us to be able to inflict suffering on others and then say to them, "Look at Mandela; he could forgive. You should forgive too."


We ought to remind ourselves that people today are still being wronged, deprived of their freedom, treated brutally, subject to a "disciplining" by so-called "authorities". The universal knowledge of the Holocaust did not stop Nelson Mandela from facing 27 years in prison. I very much doubt that after today, we will become better people; indeed, raising monuments, verbal and concrete, in Mandela's honour, may actually liberate us to once more commit the same evil offences.


I recall the irony of a particular UK academic institution where I worked, in proud possession of a student union building named after Nelson Mandela, displaying the identical conduct towards ethnic minority staff that Nelson Mandela suffered; i.e. administrating cruel punishment for the cheek of suggesting some sort of representation for overseas (n.b full fee-paying) students. Couched in language and monuments that attempt to hide the ugliness of intransigent human nature, sometimes it would appear that the tributes "doth protest too much".

The OECD Verdict on UK Education

As the old saying goes, " the proof of the pudding is in the eating...". Globally, our academic pudding is clearly not that great. I am at this very moment listening to the Shadow Secretary say something about unqualified teachers teaching in classrooms and that somehow the decade preceding 2012 is irrelevant to the OECD's very disappointing findings on Education in the UK. As an academic all through that period, the one thing I do know is that throwing money at this problem will not solve it. Indeed, success in imparting knowledge to our young now appears in inverse proportion to the level to which Educational institutions and their staff have been indulged.


I believe that each teacher must possess a passion for teaching coupled with a desire to see young people succeed in life. If either of these guiding principles is absent in our educators, failure is inevitable. My experience at Teaching College was that it was, first and foremost, political in its outlook. Later as an University Academic, I found amongst my policy-making, meeting-attending, course-gerrymandering colleagues, a complete absence of any ethos apart from, a loyalty to the narrow type of people who now preside over virtually all academic institutions in this country. Educators and Academics now function as a pack rather than as intelligent individuals.


It is a matter of fact that there has been a systematic "cleansing", in Academia & Education, of the type of old-fashioned, highly qualified individual who possesses a love of knowledge and a zeal to share that love of knowledge with others. These old-fashioned (now contraband) teachers of the past, vocationally drawn to the teaching profession, accepted a lesser financial reward for the privilege of Public Service. I remember being inspired and motivated by such individuals amidst battered desks, old laboratories (free from the sometimes tyrannical foolishness of Health & Safety), dark libraries filled with dog-eared books, scintillating ideas, sparkling conversation and enthusiasm. Such individuals are now deemed seditious and dangerous, because their commitment is to Education rather than to the very highly paid "big-wigs" in our sterile & newly-refurbished Educational Institutions.


I have pontificated, at length, in previous blog-posts about the many, many things that are so very wrong in Education and Academia. With the large amount of wealth provided to now make them solvent, the money is being used to aggrandize the self-importance of those institutions. Our educational establishments will remain mired in their self-promoting & self-righteous armour as long as their failure does not hit academics and educationalists in the pocket. In the meantime, their attitude is that, globally, our young people will "just have to lump it....".