Oxford needs inspiration

5 August 2006

The new Vice-Chancellor’s team, John Hood and the Hoodies, came in with a modernising manifesto for Oxford governance. Convocation, Congregation, Council, Conference of Colleges — Oxford drowned in a sea of Cs. Its complexity makes the Schleswig-Holstein question seem like Sudoku. But the key proposal for a majority of external members on Council has provoked an anti-managerialist backlash. The fate of Hood mark 2 lies in the lap of Congregation, the democratic assembly of dons, which (archaically) contains resident 75-year-olds who are still (albeit retired) faculty members in Oxford — as a group, likely to be distinguished by two qualities, an attachment to things past and leisure time to vote. Justification for their continued participation in university governance seems barely more cogent than that in favour of the hereditary element of the House of Lords.

The relationship of colleges and Wellington Square — the Lubianka-like headquarters of the University — is very like that of the states and Washington DC in the US. There are now 39 colleges (or Private Halls) taking 39 steps not all at the University’s pace. The plan for an admissions process by which a candidate’s chance of an Oxford place would not depend arbitrarily on applying to the right college in the right subject at the right time does not yet deprive colleges of their autonomy, but the idea of a wholly centralised system is dormant, not dead.