Crime Data in the USA

University fined for misreporting crime data.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece about the University of Texas at Arlington being fined for improperly classifying and reporting a number of crimes which took place on its campus:

For misclassifying crimes and underreporting disciplinary actions, the U.S. Department of Education has fined the University of Texas at Arlington $82,500, a penalty the institution is appealing.

The department imposed the fine last month under the federal campus-crime reporting law known as the Clery Act, each violation of which can cost an institution $27,500. According to a review by the department in 2011, the Arlington campus had improperly classified a forcible sex offense as an assault and an aggravated assault as an assault of a family member. Both crimes occurred in 2008.

Also that year, the department found, the university excluded 27 liquor, drug, and weapons violations—classified as “disciplinary actions”—from crime statistics that by law must be submitted to federal officials and distributed publicly each year. On that count, the department imposed a third $27,500 fine.

Similar fines have just been levied against Yale:

Yale failed to report a total of four forcible sex offenses in its campus crime statistics for 2001 and 2002, according to an April 19 letter from Mary E. Gust, director of administrative actions and appeals service group at the DOE. As a result, the department is fining the university $27,500 for each offense, the letter said. The Connecticut Ivy League university also received a $27,500 fine for failing to include seven required policy statements in its annual crime reports, and another $27,500 for not including crime statistics from Yale-New Haven Hospital in its annual campus crime data.

It always surprises me that there is such a strict federal requirement on crime reporting at US universities. Given the potentially negative consequences though it is perhaps hardly surprising that there are occasional errors in classification. And the crimes on US campuses do tend to be significantly worse than those here, especially given the availability of guns at some institutions (as noted in this previous post).

How long before HESA start collecting this data in the UK?

2014 Complete University Guide League Table

It’s spring and it’s time for the first league table of the season.

The Complete University Guide and league table for 2014 is now out. The details can be found on the Guide website together with lots of other analysis (including by subject, region and mission group)  and information on careers, fees etc.

The main table uses nine indicators: Student Satisfaction, Research Assessment, Entry Standards, Student:Staff Ratio; Spending on Academic Services; Spending on Student Facilities; Good Honours degrees achieved; Graduate Prospects and Completion. The Subject tables are based on four: Student Satisfaction, Research Assessment; Entry Standards and Graduate Prospects. The results tend to be fairly consistent year on year and there is not huge volatility in this table.

Rank 2014	Rank 2013
1	(1)	Cambridge
2	(3)	Oxford
3	(2)	LSE
4	(4)	Imperial
5	(5)	Durham
6	(6)	St Andrews
7	(8)	UCL
8	(6)	Warwick
9	(10)	Bath
10	(13)	Exeter
11	(9)	Lancaster
12	(12)	York
13	(22)	Surrey
14	(14)	Loughborough
15	(11)	Bristol
16	(20)	Leicester
17	(23)	Birmingham
18	(16)	Edinburgh
19	(18)	King’s
20	(27)	UEA
20	(15)	Southampton

So, little movement in the top 10 apart from the slight rejig to ensure Oxbridge dominance in the first two places. Glasgow and Nottingham slip out of the top 20 to be replaced by UEA, Birmingham and this year’s start performer at 13, the University of Surrey.

Defining ‘education hubs’

A helpful approach to definition in this rather vague area.

An earlier post noted that there were rather a lot of ‘education hubs’ around the world. This Inside Higher Ed report on the recent Going Global event highlights comments from Jane Knight of the University of Toronto who has sought to define education hubs a little more precisely. Knight studied six hubs closely to assess their characteristics and proposed a simple schema for classifying hubs:

While all may aim to attract foreign students and foreign branch campuses, they strive to be three main things, she said:

Student hubs, which seek to attract local and foreign students.

Talent hubs, which seek to develop the skilled people who will stay in the country.

Knowledge hubs, which seek to build research infrastructure.

Knight classifies her six hubs as follows:

Knight said that the goals for the hub influence who the players are — and that educators may not be the key players when a country is focused, for example, on becoming a knowledge hub. Rather, businesses or government officials who deal with immigration policy may become key players. She also said that thinking about goals also shifts away from simply counting the number of branch campuses — a figure that may be less important in some hubs.

While education hubs will continue to evolve, they represent an important “third stage” in transnational education, she said. The first was student mobility, with students leaving their homes for a postsecondary education. The second was institutional mobility, when colleges set up dual degrees or branch campuses in other countries. Hubs involve the first two stages, but take them to a new level, she said.

It’s a helpful approach, especially when you consider how many places do claim to be an education hub.

Students ‘swayed by league tables’

Some rather unsurprising research findings here.

The Guardian has a report on the impact of university league tables on prospective students. And in what might be the least surprising research finding of the year to date reports that league tables are influential:

Prospective students are increasingly influenced by university league tables when deciding where to study, according to research that found rises and falls within league standings provoking sharp changes in numbers of applications.

The research by economists at Royal Holloway, University of London, found that individual departments moving up a subject-level league table experienced a rise in applications of almost 5%, with the increase most pronounced among overseas applicants.

They also found that the influence of league table standings has increased since the introduction of tuition fees, suggesting that students are now more aware of the reputation and relative standings of university departments.

There is more though. Not only do league table rankings influence students and help with applications they are worth paying attention to if you want to protect your position and are going to be even more significant in future:

The authors – Xiaoxuan Jia, a researcher, and Arnaud Chevalier, senior lecturer in economics at Royal Holloway – conclude that universities should take care to guard their rankings, arguing: “Universities cannot afford to neglect their performance on league tables so long as they wish to establish and maintain a consistent reputation to attract the best of students.”

The emphasis on league table rankings is likely to increase as a result of new regulations relaxing the cap on student numbers for universities accepting students achieving AAB or higher in A-levels.

But in what is perhaps the most surprising of all the comments here, there is the proposal is made that resource allocation should be determined using ranking criteria:

The authors even suggest that university administrators “review their resource allocation based on the criteria used to construct those league tables on a regular basis, to improve and sustain their respective ranking performance”.

Just a bit of fun. I hope.

Latest campus craze? Humans v Zombies

And some have tried to stop this innocent fun…

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education , the craze that is the Humans versus Zombies game does continue on campuses, despite the efforts of “killjoys” to prevent it:

Napa Valley College officials are the latest to interfere with a popular campus-based game of tag called Humans vs. Zombies. More than 600 campuses in the United States play some version of the game, which originated at Goucher College.

To win, zombie players try to “infect” or tag the humans, thereby turning them into zombies, and the humans must protect one another from being tagged. Sometimes the teams also have missions to complete. In some iterations, the tags are tracked with person-specific ID cards, and then uploaded to a Web site. In others, as soon as you get hit with a Nerf dart, you’re dead. Well, undead. A game can last days or weeks, or merely until there are no “humans” left.

Must say it all sounds very exciting indeed. It also offers an entertaining analogy for the state of higher education more generally.

University league tables: buying success?

Australian universities are paying big salaries for rankers
 

Inside Higher Ed has a report on at least a couple of Australian institutions appointing league table specialists:
 

Some Australian universities are paying about $100,000 a year each to employ full-time managers dedicated to working with ranking agencies and developing strategies aimed at climbing league tables.

The University of New South Wales recently advertised for a manager of strategic reputation, while La Trobe University was seeking a manager of institutional rankings. For $100,000, responsibilities included maintaining relationships with ranking agencies to “maximize” or “optimize” their positions in rankings.

Observers say such positions highlight the growing importance of rankings in influencing research and teaching plans. But there are concerns that the professionalized management of rankings risks warping university strategies and may prove more a marketing effort than an effort to boost the substance of an institution’s performance.

 

 

 

The deputy vice chancellor at New South Wales, Les Field, said the position wasn’t new and was part of a team that ensured the information sent to annual data collections and the ranking agencies was accurate.
“It’s essential to have a team dedicated to getting our numbers right as well as providing the analysis on which we can direct the research effort into the future,” Field said. (Several American universities have been ensnared in controversies over their flawed — and in some cases seemingly gamed — reporting of data to rankings organizations. So far Australian universities have not been similarly besmirched.)

Whilst the work to be undertaken by these people in terms of data collection and analysis will undoubtedly be beneficial it is hard to get away from the idea that these appointments sound like an attempt to achieve a quick fix in terms of institutional league table performance. Will it pay off? Given the time lags involved with the data used it will be quite a few years before we find out.

Broadcasting university performance

Very public reports on institutional performance.

Accessible university performance data.

 

Rather impressed by this Performance Tracker which is concerned with reporting in a very accessible way on the progress of Michigan’s public universities:

The achievement of Michigan’s public universities is a critical factor as we look to participate in the knowledge economy of tomorrow. A well-educated, skilled talent base will help our state develop and attract new business opportunities. Universities also drive research and development, bring thousands of new faces into our state, and build lasting partnerships that advance our communities.

These goals matter to all of us, and so does the performance of Michigan’s higher education system. This website offers an overview of Michigan’s higher education achievement nationally, and shows how our universities are acting as incubators of future economic growth and change.

There is a great deal of very interesting data in here from graduation rates to tuition fees and SSRs to salary costs. Sensibly, the bench marking is against peer institutions. Will we see others adopting a similar approach? And might it catch on in the UK?

A movie about Admissions in HE? Yes please!

But when will it be released in the UK?

There really just aren’t enough HE related movies about. And even fewer which cover professional services rather than academic or student matters (which are, let’s face it, much more likely to be entertaining). So in the university movie desert which we have been through since ‘Starter for Ten’ imagine the excitement on learning about this new film. About admissions! Starring Tina Fey! What’s not to like?

Admissions is just like this. All the time

Inside Higher Ed delivers the background:

It would be easy for people who really know admissions to focus on elements of “Admission,” the film that opened Friday, that aren’t quite right. In the movie — starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd — Princeton University’s admissions office seems woefully behind the times when it comes to technology, with applicant records kept in folders (orange of course). Admission or rejection is accompanied by a dramatic checking of a box (or in one case where an admissions officer is angry at an applicant’s false claim, stamping the rejection twice on the folder). Princeton’s admissions dean (played by Wallace Shawn) is traumatized by a drop from No. 1 to No. 2 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings (when the only rankings indignity real-life Princeton suffers is being tied for the top spot with Harvard University).

Admissions experts have been buzzing about the movie for months, wondering how their profession would be portrayed by Hollywood — and whether the film would add to the hysteria of many high schoolers and their families about the admissions process.

They also get a couple of Admissions experts to assess the truths and fictions of the film and the overall view is surprisingly positive. It’s just unfortunate that there isn’t a UK release date yet. Don’t understand why -there must be literally dozens of people as keen as me to see it.

The Imperfect University: Free Information?

Freedom of Information costs. But does anyone really benefit?

“You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.”

These are the words Tony Blair addresses to himself in his memoirs while reflecting on his government’s introduction of the Freedom of Information Act as noted in this BBC report.

Last year Times Higher Education ran a story suggesting that the average cost of FoI compliance equals £121 per request:

A study into the costs of answering Freedom of Information enquiries suggests that less than £10 million was spent across the sector last year.

When the House of Commons Justice Committee called for evidence on the effectiveness of the FoI Act, 23 universities submitted evidence, of which 18 complained about the cost burden, among other concerns.

But Jisc, the UK’s expert body on information and digital technology in higher education, tracked 36 requests in seven institutions and found that the average cost, including staff time, of answering an FoI request was £121.

According to Universities UK, higher education institutions received on average 10.1 requests a month in 2011. This equates to an average annual cost of £14,665, which across the sector’s 155 institutions adds up to £2.3 million a year.

I have to say this looks to be something of an underestimate. I asked my colleague in the University’s Governance team which deals with FoI for data for the past couple of years. The data and some examples of requests is set out below. Before we get there though you might wish to refresh your memory with a glance at the ICO guidance – it is 10 page (yes, 10 pages) definition document of what is expected to be published by universities and colleges and covers everything from staff expenses to tender procedures to CCTV locations.

During the period from 1st January 2011 to December 2012, the University of Nottingham responded to 370 Freedom of Information requests. In 24% of cases, requests resulted in non-disclosure either because the University applied an exemption successfully, defended a position of ‘over the appropriate time limit’ or the information was not held. 27% of requests received a partial disclosure of information. 49% of requests resulted in the requester being entitled to all of the information requested. Whilst we remain ‘purpose blind’ it is self-evident that the majority of requesters continue to be looking for material for journalistic purposes.

Of the 182 (49%) of requests with full responses requests were themed as follows:

Statistics  88
Supplier and contract details  35
Financial figures  25
Policies 21
Communication 2; a total of 7 emails and 1
letter were disclosed
University structure 6
Role profiles 2
Recruitment timeline 1
Research grants 1
Vice-Chancellor’s external roles 1

Supplier and contract details
We receive a large number of requests asking for details of contract agreements in place. In the main these are from competitors. Whilst these requests are an inconvenience there is no applicable exemption to this information as the ICO have made it clear that they do not consider such information commercially sensitive. The data is readily to
hand therefore significant management time is not accrued.
Financial figures
The majority of requests under this category concern library fines, IT costs, legal fees and expenses. We have received individual requests on a small number of issues including costs of artwork, car parking fees, accommodation fees and funding. This information was not considered commercially sensitive and was therefore released to the requestors.
Applied Exemptions
The most common exemption applied, particularly under partially disclosed requests, is personal data. In the main these requests concerned statistics which were so detailed and/or sensitive that disclosing the information would risk unreasonable identification of individuals.

The following exemptions have been applied, either to whole requests or partially:

Commercial interests 10
Personal Data 62
Information already published 18
Information not held 13
Legal professional privilege 1
National security 4
Intended for future publication 2
Vexatious 4

Some of those specific requests over this two year period:

• Statistics for disciplinary actions taken against students 2010 – present
• Statistics for Welsh domicile students
• Student parking fines
• University investments
• Server Hardware Maintenance and Software Licensing Contracts
• the number of UG Taught and PG programmes 12/13 and 11/12 that did not enrol any students
• Number of students employed in University catering and library departments
• Amount paid out in hardship funds over last 3 years
• University Employee Statistics



• Statistics for research staff recruitment
• Information and statistics on student bursaries
• Information on Microscopes Tender
• Internet traffic
• Statistics on parking fines issued
• Statistics for Physics applicants
• Information and figures relating to Common Purpose
• Payments from the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Statistics on changing employment patterns in the public sector
• Information on admissions cycle for A100 Medicine Course
• Information on English classes, student figures and fee income
• Information on research sabbaticals
• Information on PhD qualifications of staff
• Information relating to the University’s parking contract
• Statistics for students failing first year exams
• Statistics on student housing
• Information and statistics on student bursaries
• Information relating to clinical trials
• Information on Mobile Phone Contracts

Is it worth it? I am dubious. Essentially we spend a great deal of time and effort and public money responding to this stuff and I struggle to see the benefit for anyone, including the requestors. This list also doesn’t include my personal favourite of all dumb FOI requests received (it was before 2011): a request for data on reported hauntings in university buildings. Not quite as bad as the Leicester City Council zombie attack readiness request but still pretty daft. And no matter how silly or pointless such requests may be we have to treat them all equally seriously.

Back to Blair. He claims that FoI is not used, for the most part, by “the people”, but by journalists. His view is that “For political leaders, it’s like saying to someone who is hitting you over the head with a stick, ‘Hey, try this instead’, and handing them a mallet.” It sometimes feels a bit like that in universities too.

(With thanks to Sam Potter for providing the University of Nottingham material included here.)

Investing in careers support

More careers support for Nottingham students.

The University of Nottingham has invested in a major expansion of its Careers and Employability Service intended significantly to enhance provision for students.

The new investment will support the vision for tailored career development, learning and employability support to Faculties. So far, the following steps have been taken:

• 22 new members of staff have been recruited and have started work in the last week.
• Five Faculty teams have been created – they are managed by a Faculty Employability Consultant and consist of Senior Careers Advisers, an Employability Education Projects Officer and an Employability Officer. These teams are constituted in order to provide a broad range of skills and experience from individual career guidance, career development learning, advice and CV support, workshop delivery and the creation of learning and development materials/programmes, employer engagement, event organisation, and student engagement.
• The Faculty teams will also draw upon the expertise of our central team for e-information/web content, statistics, employer engagement, Unitemps, Nottingham Advantage Award, employability education, e-mentoring and administration.
• A Global Labour Market team has been created and currently comprises three members of staff covering China, Malaysia and UK. This team will be proactively seeking opportunities for students and graduates globally and will be primarily focused on business engagement and labour market intelligence.
• A School Employability Fund has been launched to give support to school/faculty-based employability projects.

These are really important developments. The 22 new members of staff are now involved in a two week induction programme (as part of which I was very pleased to meet with all of them), which is introducing them to the work of Careers and to key aspects of the University’s activities.

The objective here is to enhance the employability of Nottingham students and graduates and to deliver, in partnership with Schools, an effective, professional and tailored service.

I think this is a striking confirmation of the commitment of the University to the Careers and Employability Service and the development of our students. It represents a significant investment for the future.

Chancellor successfully installed

One of those big University events.

Yesterday the University of Nottingham installed (a technical term) its seventh Chancellor, Sir Andrew Witty.

Full details of the appointment and the background to Sir Andrew can be found on this page about the installation and the video of the event can be found here.

Note that the video starts with 45 minutes of milling about so you might want to skip some of that. I have one sentence to deliver which I manage at around the 47 minute mark. It gets better after that and in addition to the installation two Honorary Degrees are conferred.

The job of Chancellor is an unusual one. For reference, the job spec is as follows:

The Chancellor has a number of key roles including ceremonial duties – playing a formal part in graduation ceremonies – and acting as an ambassador and advocate of the University in the UK and around the world. He also acts as a key adviser on matters of major strategic importance to the development of the University. It is an unremunerated role.

Alternative perspectives on this can be found in this UUK publication ‘Beyond Ceremony’ which contains “anecdotes and advice from UK chancellors”. Actually, I’m not sure our new Chancellor is really going to need much in the way of advice (or Chancellorial anecdotes). Sir Andrew is an outstanding and hugely impressive individual and will I am sure be a huge asset to the University of Nottingham.

Anyway, the installation was a terrific event and one of those special days in the life of the University where tradition, ceremony and forward thinking combine and lots of staff, stakeholders, alumni and friends of the institution come together in a shared celebration of past achievements and future ambitions. And a lot of wonderful work from many of my colleagues to make it all happen.

Footnote: an interview with the new Chancellor is also available:

Everything’s gone green

Some positive work on sustainable futures at the University of Nottingham.

In 2012 the University of Nottingham won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Development. In the citation for the award the judges noted Nottingham was a “trailblazer” for environmental best practice.

David Walliams applies to join the Estates Office team

Now I must admit that I used to be rather skeptical of the idea of ‘greening’ different aspects of university activity. Partly this was down to concern about the additional cost, substantial in many cases, but also doubt that it would have any meaningful impact on sustainability or that prospective students would really be interested in a university’s green credentials.

I got it wrong. This is all for real and it does matter. At the University of Nottingham our sustainability policy has the following aims:

• Improve the environmental performance of our buildings and the University’s physical infrastructure
• Ensure all operations and procurements are sustainable
• Harness the University’s research and teaching strength to improve its environmental performance and advance the environmental agenda
• Contribute broadly to efforts to protect the environment and ensure those efforts get the recognition they deserve.

Lincoln Hall solar panels

OK, grand ambitions, but how do these translate into practice? The University has done rather a lot. In terms of travel there has been significant pedestrianisation and cycle lane installation, Ucycle Nottingham and ride-to-work schemes and more public transport and inter-site buses. Moreover, one of the new city tram lines under construction will pass through University park and a parking charging scheme (not universally popular, it has to be said) has been introduced, resulting in a drop in car use.

The grounds management  plan has sustainability and increasing biodiversity of campuses as key requirements. The University has won 10 consecutive Green Flag awards and a Green Gown award for sustainability and, in partnership with the Woodland Trust, planted a ‘Diamond Wood’ in Sutton Bonington in 2012. On waste and re-cycling there have been significant improvements in recycling rates, from 4% in 04/05 to 29% in 08/09, and 87% in 10/11.

In terms of carbon management, the University’s Carbon Management Plan (CMP) was approved in 2010 and includes targets for reductions in emissions of CO2 from energy usage. It identifies the principal areas of energy use and investment programmes required to improve energy efficiency, reduce usage and generate energy from renewable energy sources. In its second year the CMP developed 55 projects requiring a total investment of £1.48 million. The overall benefits identified equate to 2,028 tonnes of CO2 and £350k per annum. In 2010/11 there was a 1.7 % decrease in CO2 and this trend continued in 2011/12 with a 2.3% reduction from 67,454 to 65,901 tonnes CO2 a saving of 1,553 tonnes.

Less positively, planning applications for a three turbine wind farm alongside the Grove Farm sports ground appear to have been stymied for the present by some disappointing decisions by Broxtowe Borough and Nottingham City Councils whose green rhetoric has, unfortunately, not been matched by their actions.

The University currently has 14 BREEAM schemes within the system, the highest within the HE sector: seven ‘BREEAM Excellent’ completed buildings, six buildings where BREEAM Excellent is being targeted during the development process and one ‘BREEAM Outstanding’ for the first carbon neutral laboratory to be built in the UK. The building will achieve BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ and LEED ‘Platinum’ and carbon neutral status after 25 years.

On teaching, there is an expectation that sustainability will be built into all curricula and some good progress has been made here, including through the Nottingham Advantage Award.

Sutton Bonington

The University has a strong research portfolio looking at the fields of environment and sustainability, both in the UK and at our campuses in Asia including for example, the Creative Energy Dwellings, Energy Technologies Research Institute, Green Chemistry, Food Security and Bioenergy. Most recently the announcement of the new GSK laboratory has confirmed Nottingham’s continued commitment to cutting edge research in this area.

The establishment of an Environmental Champions Network, which aims to bring together people from a broad spectrum of Schools and Central Professional Services to share ideas and act as champions to reduce environmental impacts, has been particularly successful in communicating and raising awareness of environmental matters.

There is, of course, a league table which offers ratings of universities’ sustainability efforts. The UI GreenMetric World Universities Ranking has sought to provide a system which allows universities in both the developed and developing world to compare their efforts towards campus sustainability and environmentally friendly university management. Nottingham was ranked second in this table in 2010 and again in 2012, coming first in this world league table in 2011. Note that I am deliberately ignoring the ‘People and Planet’ ranking here because of their extremely dubious and constantly changing methodology and because Nottingham rarely scores well in their table. Sadly, the much loved University Duck Density League , which ranks institutions by the number of waterfowl on campus must be ignored too given the absence of updated data.

So, overall it is a really positive picture here. There is still a long way to go but the public praise is welcome. Going back then to that THE award citation:

in both the innovative approach to estate development and the determination to embed best sustainability practice across the university, Nottingham has again shown the way.

Big Brother for University Sport

Responding to worries about student athletes on social media.

There has been not insignificant anxiety in US higher education about the inappropriate use of social media by student athletes and universities are looking to monitor activity much more closely. On this side of the Atlantic the issues have largely been confined to professional sports people (and Joey Barton).

Whilst there may be general worries in UK universities about student use of Facebook and Twitter these have yet to have the impact that some unfortunate transgressions have had in the US where some universities have banned athletes from using Twitter following concerns about insulting, vulgar and generally questionable posts by players. And also because the coaches suspect social media might represent something of a distraction for players.

Fortunately, for those universities which struggle with monitoring social media usage there appear to be several organisations dedicated to ensuring that student athletes behave themselves. Looking for example at via Varsity Monitor, one of these monitoring outfits, we find they have an interesting prospectus:

For Athletes and Parents:

College recruiters actively review social media accounts to fully evaluate the character of potential recruits. Varsity Monitor works to ensure that social media posts do not negatively impact recruiting or existing scholarship offers.

For Institutions:

Coaches, Administrators and Sponsors need to ensure that Athletes uphold their organization’s standards and adhere to their code of conduct when using social media. Varsity Monitor provides monitoring services that help verify that policies are being followed.

Varsity Monitor provides extensive social media education for athletes and administrators designed to establish a solid foundation for the positive use of social media. Exploring methods and techniques to leverage social media to promote and enhance their brand and reputation.

Just extraordinary. Is it worth it if the teams deliver the results required? Or is is excessive intrusion into students’ non-academic activities?

Tackling Education Corruption

Higher Education challenges in Indonesia.

University World Newshas a story on higher education corruption in Indonesia. It sounds like a challenging environment but it does seem like the issues are being tackled:

A graft watchdog in Indonesia has sounded a red alert for the education sector as it recorded some 40 cases of corruption in 2012, causing losses to the state of around Rp139 billion (US$14.4 million).

Corruption was found at all levels of education, from elementary schools to universities, and from local education agencies to the House of Representatives, said the non-profit Indonesia Corruption Watch, or ICW.

According to the group’s latest report, around a third of the country’s entire education budget was misappropriated during procurement of goods and services.

This does seem like an extraordinary position – one third of the total education budget being lost to corrupt activities. The story does seem to show that progress is being made but there is clearly a long way to go.

Speaking with difficulty

New advice from the Charity Commission sows some confusion.

The Charity Commission has recently published some new guidance which is intended to help trustees protect their charities against “abuse by extremists.” This guide/toolkit though seems to offer a particular challenge to universities which are subject to legislation on external speakers dating back to 1986 which was designed for a quite different purpose.

Let’s start with the new guidance from the Commission on “Protecting your charity against abuse by extremists”:

The guide, which is available on the regulator’s website from today [Tuesday 22 January 2013], explains trustees’ duty to prevent their charity being used to promote extremist views or terrorist ideology.

The toolkit also suggests steps trustees can take to minimise risks associated with particular activities, such as organising public events and debates and circulating information.

It is aimed in particular at charities that host regular events involving external speakers, and those with educational purposes that distribute material and information. Examples include charitable think tanks and debating societies, students’ unions, schools, colleges and universities and religious charities.

OK, so far so general. But when we get to the detail of the guidance it becomes clear that the Commission things get a bit interesting. Whilst any illegal views or action is, of course, unacceptable, charities are required to consider whether allowing a particular speaker to present their views may be inconsistent with public benefit as this extract from Chapter 5, Section E of the guidance indicates:

Under charity law, charities must comply with the public benefit requirement. Views or activities which are violent or which encourage violence cannot be for the public benefit because they are illegal. In addition, there are other extreme views and activities, particularly activities which seek to radicalise or use radicalising materials which may be inappropriate for a charity to host or promote. Such views may not be in furtherance of the charity’s purposes, or may breach the rules on political activities. Other extreme views may help to create an environment conducive to terrorism. In addition, promoting views which are harmful to social cohesion, such as denigrating those of a particular faith or promoting segregation on religious or racial grounds, or which seek to radicalise by making claims to which violence is subsequently presented as the only solution may well be inconsistent with the public benefit requirement even though such views might fall well below the criminal threshold. All these pose unacceptable risks to a charity.

But if we look now at The Education (No. 2) Act 1986 there is a very direct requirement on universities to ensure and promote freedom of speech. This dates from a time when Conservative ministers were being prevented from speaking on university campuses by the actions of well-organised groups of students and the government was therefore keen to ensure they were protected and enabled to present their views. The Act provides that:

(1)Every individual and body of persons concerned in the government of any establishment to which this section applies shall take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers.
(2)The duty imposed by subsection (1) above includes (in particular) the duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the use of any premises of the establishment is not denied to any individual or body of persons on any ground connected with—
(a)the beliefs or views of that individual or of any member of that body; or
(b)the policy or objectives of that body.

So there is a positive duty to ensure that speakers are not prevented from speaking because of their views or beliefs or the policies of the organisation.

In addition, universities have to have in place a code of practice which sets all of this and there are further specific obligations:

A duty on every individual and body of persons concerned in the government of the institution to take such steps as are reasonably practicable (including, where appropriate, the initiation of disciplinary measures) to secure that the requirements of the code of practice are observed.

A duty to ensure that the use of any university premises is not denied to any individual or body of persons on the grounds of their beliefs, views, policies or objectives.

Whilst it is clear that the 1986 Act does not extend to speakers who break other laws or incite violence, nevertheless it does appear to require universities to adopt a rather different position to that set out in the Charity Commission’s guidance. Whilst this legislation and the Commission’s guidance are separated by over quarter of a century of change in HE and are intended to address very different challenges, the apparent conflict between them is, I fear, going to cause some real problems for universities before too long.