At about this time of year, with issues of promotion and relegation beginning to be settled, professional football teams start to make their plans for the next season. As part of this process the manager decides which players with expiring contracts he wants to offer new contracts to, which he will release and which players with ongoing contracts he wants to push out of the door and make available for transfer or loan to other clubs. The result is a rush of ‘retained lists’ and ‘released lists’ signalling to other clubs that Player X is wanted, Player Y can leave, Player Z is available to other teams for a price. At the same time, work begins to recruit fresh talent to plug gaps in the squad, bring in fresh young talent or an experienced old head.
The thought struck me earlier that it would be interesting if a University department operated in the same manner. At the end of the year the Head of Department, or Subject Group Head, would look at the performance of the academics in the subject area, review student feedback, look at research output, look at teaching requirements for the next year etc. and make decisions on who would stay and who had to go. They might decide that the subject area needed to bring in an experienced, already productive research professor, or perhaps several energetic and eager new faces. They might take the chance to cut away the dead wood or offer reduced or improved terms to existing group members.
In such an environment, it would be incredibly different to work in a university. Gone would be any notion of stability. Faces would have to fit, measured productivity would be paramount. Academics would become itinerant mercenaries, loyalty would fly out of the window and priorities might shift at the whim of the management team (actually that bit happens). In my opinion, in such a regime, Higher Education would be completely unattractive place to work for most people. But it would be very, very interesting to see who would end up on the retained list and who would be released and whether, in the end, quality could be improved by a much more ruthless approach to hiring and firing personnel.
Tim O'Hare 