Today I am pleased to have a feature in the Times Higher Education which is a look at my funny old profession; higher education policy. There was only so much space that I had, and there’s a lot more I have to say about many of the themes touched on in the piece. I shall be returning to them through some professional projects, my own research as well as this blog, so watch this space. It was not, as some have suggested, a bet to see how many times I could get THE to print the word ‘wonk’… (though I should have made one).
Power hierarchies in higher education are being challenged. A new breed of professionals is shaping policy inside universities and across the sector. But while universities are their natural habitat, these policy experts – known informally as “wonks” – are not “of” the academy. They can be looked down on, sneered at and misunderstood, and they occupy roles that are frequently a source of conflict amid the daily grind of institutional politics. The rise of the wonk represents a new way of doing business in national higher education policymaking, and for the vice-chancellors who make use of them. As wonks’ numbers swell, their presence in the academy can no longer be ignored.
You can read it online here.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
My line of work was planning rather than policy (although there is a lot of overlap – I was previously in policy at HEFCE), but there are similar issues. HE is very hierarchical and has little tradition of staff roles. I think there are two issues: access and discipline.
As a Head of Planning I was typically not reporting direct to the VC (and also a little older than most of your case studies) so rather less frightening. The direct access to the VC is what makes these posts so threatening to the line managers because HE institutions are monarchies. We can think of the way that ambitious tudor aristocrats competed to be groom of the stool at the court of Henry VIII.
Discipline is the second area. Because we don’t have a clear cultural understanding of how staff roles work, line managers can feel that their responsibilities have been infringed when the VC over-rules them after a quick chat with an advisor (and in practice they sometimes are). VCs aren’t often very disciplined about their delegation practices, and it is asking a lot of the wonk to say to the boss ‘this is outside my remit’ when remits and professional standards are so ill-defined.
On the subject of personal discomfort, I shall never forget my first trip to the gents in the old HEFCE Centrepoint office on the 28th floor sandwiched between Ivor Crewe and – IIRC – Martin Harris and about two paces in front of a plate glass window. That was truly awful.
@Andrew – your Centrepoint comment made me laugh. I’ve been in similar situations in exactly the same spot…
The overlap between planning and policy is an angle I wanted to explore, but there wasn’t space in this piece. I work with lots of colleagues that either work directly in planning, or straddle the two depending on what’s needed at the time.
I was asked quite early on by a supportive member of the executive: so what’s your next step? The issue of progression I think is one that is bound to concern more HE policy people as the roles become established and experience and expertise build. Some really are ‘wonks’ and will happily take the credentials of having worked at the top of an institution into senior positions in think tanks and stakeholder bodies. Others will want to develop an independent profile; they could look to run a mission group or head up a public affairs outfit. But options inside an HEI are more difficult to see, perhaps with the exception of those with a comms or an administration brief.
The role of the policy adviser or exec officer was created outside the university hierarchy, so any direct progression route would also have to be engineered. That is not to say that new posts should be generated where no need exists or to protect the interests of an individual close to the seat of power; legitimacy and efficacy would suffer. But it is something university leaders and their ‘wonks’ will need to consider. Higher Education is a people business, about personal transformation and the realisation of potential – often the reason we want to work in it – and advisers are as much part of the human capital of an institution as their colleagues and students. For those who want to stay in the sector, it would be good to know there’s somewhere to go.