I told the Times higher folks straight up (when being asked about union stuff) that "you really do not want to see what happens when a university goes under". That was like Sept 2023. There's been good pieces since as reporters have cottoned on.
Still, it's true. You guys do not want to see it.
I've never fully recovered from learning that DataHE belongs to Times Higher Education. It does explain the failure of my attempts at clarifying that all this transactionality with consultancies who have no stakes in the long-term health of the institution but just do facade work...
Vultures, the lot of them. I was trying to point out that if the supply of fresh carcass disappears....
Also DataHE do genuinely poor work. We had a "deep dive" pack of info here, it was comically badly put together from HESA returns.... a marmot could do it.
Yup. If we wanted HESA data, we'd open our own data that we'd submitted... Such charlatans. DataHE have also been giving the very same (& ill-informed) info & advice to multiple places. Any institution that hands over money to them makes themselves the subject of DataHE's pitch to the next client.
I have many misgivings about my senior management's decisions (you noticed? I was so subtle....), but I was very relieved they threw money at Nous instead of DataHE.
Even if £220,000 for consultancy on digital learning which is now quietly folded feels like failure to use funds properly...
Partly because when you ask the director of finances where SET costs fall, their response is 'goh, I don't know actually'. No idea for the £2,5 million salary cost of these 10, no idea for the salary of their bloating offices, no idea for the random consultancy money. They have no books to balance.
I suspect that we won't see a single university go under. We will see several within hours or days. The potential for contagion throughout the sector should be obvious, but our leaders have their heads in the sand & don't wish to acknowledge it. What did we do to deserve such inadequate people?
