Geoffrey Alderman: public sector critic unrepentant on retirement

Over more than six decades, Geoffrey Alderman has become a constant fixture in UK higher education, if somewhat outside the scholarly mainstream: a respected historian of British Jewry doubling up as a prolific journalist and commentator, an outspoken critic of sector regulators, and a sometimes-lonely defender of Israel in a sector that is often seen as sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

On his retirement as principal of the small, independent Nelson College London at the end of July, he is thought to be the oldest head of a UK higher education institution, aged 80. And it is in the private sector that he has spent the second half of his career – since rising to become professor of politics and contemporary history at what is now Royal Holloway, University of London and then holding senior administrative posts at the University of London and Middlesex University, he served as vice-president of what is now Touro University in New York, and senior vice-president of American InterContinental University London, before a 12-year spell as Michael Gross professor of politics and contemporary history at the University of Buckingham.

“It took me two full years of lobbying to get the senate to agree that the professorship title could be conferred to excellence in teaching as well as in research, and I thought that was outrageous,” Professor Alderman recalled of his time as London’s pro vice-chancellor for academic standards.

“I discovered that it’s easier to affect change in a private institution than a public institution.”

It was at Touro, in the US, where he gained a taste for facing “less mindless bureaucracy”.

“Much more responsibility is on the shoulders of teachers in a private university [in the US] because there’s no external examining system, there’s no second marking, they are the lords and masters of their course and I that I think makes for a better student experience,” he said.

Preferring the “light touch” of the US system, he spent several decades as a critic of the Quality Assurance Agency and the reviews it conducted – and, in some parts of the UK, still conducts – of British universities.

Describing his work as “fighting overregulation by people with less experience of academia than I had”, Professor Alderman was unwilling to offer a truce in retirement.

“It’s been an issue [the QAA]. I wish it a speedy and painless death, because we could all do without it, we don’t need it,” he said.

The English regulator, the Office for Students, which has often found itself at loggerheads with the QAA, has likewise “descended into micromanagement”, Professor Alderman warned.

More broadly, Professor Alderman warned that higher education “has a few issues that it must urgently address…not least of which is finance”.

Amid the declining real-terms value of tuition fees in England, he said many universities have turned to the “quick fix” of international students – only to find they are a “poisoned chalice”.

Professor Alderman said he had not recruited many international students at Nelson College because it was a volatile market that could “dry up at a moment’s notice”, and it caused a lot of headaches with the Home Office.

“We’ve had financial worries before, but I cannot recall a situation like now,” he added.

“There are several institutions that are virtually technically bankrupt, and that’s not a good position to be in.”

The answer was not to rely on the quick fix” of overseas recruitment, or to lower entry standards, but instead to lift the present cap on fees, and make more government assistance available to help students pay them, he said.

Born in a working-class family in east London, Professor Alderman praised the “damn good school” he attended for helping him secure a spot to read history at Lincoln College, Oxford without any private tuition.

"When I went up to Oxford in 1962, I came from a very cash-limited working-class household in Hackney,” he recalled.

“My father was a packer in a Whitechapel warehouse, my mother was a shorthand typist, and I went to the local grammar school.”

And since then, he said one of the greatest achievements of the sector has been the widening participation movement, and the increased access afforded to more disadvantaged young people.

“That journey that I made in October 1962 from Walsingham Road, Clapton, was a life-changing experience for me and I’ve been very happy at Nelson College because we are dedicated to widening participation. It is a game changer.”

However, he warned that the prospects for early career scholars now are much different to what they were in his day.

“I wouldn’t want to be a young academic now, particularly in the public sector,” he said.

“I wouldn’t want to be in a public-funded higher education institution today – not only because of the financial situation, but also the relentless pressure to publish or perish, and the meeting of deadlines.”

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com