Educating Oxbridge

Oxford drawing (1731) courtesy of Marc Edwards Oxford and Cambridge Universities continue to top UK rankings for research and academic attainment, yet despite a recent streamlining, both are under strong pressure from the government to make further changes in management structures that until recently had survived almost unchanged for centuries. The universities enjoy considerable self-rule, and individual colleges have autonomy over aspects of teaching and the ability to fund some of their own research. Nevertheless, both university communities perceive a threat to their unique collegiate structures. Parliament committees and treasury officials have criticized both institutions as being too democratic. They say that too much power resides in individual colleges, and that major decisions over university governance are impeded by the need for approval by large "congregations." University officials at both places have responded with a strong defense of their records. Nevertheless, the government and "Oxbridge" have come to some meeting of the minds: The universities acknowledge that further changes are needed, while the government concedes that the delicate balance between college, faculty, and university should be preserved. "I think there are serious concerns about the management of these universities," says Barry Sheerman, chairman of the influential select committee on education comprising members of Parliament. "But they're still very fine universities and it's wrong to be too critical." IMPROVEMENT COURSE Both universities are at a watershed of their journey to 21st century governance, with the possibility of government legislation enforcing management changes during 2004, and the appointment of new vice chancellors (CEOs) at each within the space of a year. At Cambridge Alison Richard took over the helm in October, while Oxford is expected to confirm the appointment of John Hood, currently VC of Auckland University, in a year. Oxford photo courtesy of Donald Hershberger The soon-to-be published government sponsored Lambert review of higher education sets out a course of radical surgery on the universities' democratic management structures that arguably make it hard for faculty to agree on the need for changes, never mind making them.1 The persistence of such structures led prominent economist John Kay, who resigned from his position as director of Oxford's business school in July 2000, to conclude that the institution was unmanaged and unmanageable. In an editorial in The Guardian, Kay criticized the university as lacking "any means of resolving contentious issues in a consistent way, or often at all."2 Further, he says that decisions requiring approval by the congregation tended to discourage radical reformation. The university dismisses these sentiments as "sour grapes" from a former academic, and points to significant changes in governance already made, such as extending the tenure of vice chancellors (who are, in effect, CEOs but with less executive power until now) to seven years. Despite its dismissals, Oxford has since created a single overarching council elected by the congregation to streamline decision-making. The university has also appointed four operational pro-vice chancellors (VCs, equivalent to vice presidents) along with five divisions each with its own head. "I think that these changes have already made a big difference," says Denis Noble of the university's physiology laboratory and a member of the overarching council. "For example, extending the VC's tenure has enabled the Oxford VC to play a larger role in UK university matters, generally. Cambridge is also making changes, but officials admit to lagging behind their Oxford peers in this department. "They're certainly ahead of Cambridge in terms of making formal changes, but in terms of performance on most measures, Cambridge wins," contends Chris Padfield, head of Cambridge's corporate liaison office. Cambridge has extended the number of pro-vice chancellors from two to five, and appointed two external members to its governing council, but it has yet to reorganize its overall decision-making process along the divisional lines of Oxford. However, the arrival in October 2003 of a new vice chancellor, Alison Richard, formerly provost at Yale University, is expected to increase momentum for change in governance. Richard will bring much needed expertise in fundraising to boost research income, according to David Secher, director of the university's research services division. PATENTLY PROBLEMATIC The thorny question of intellectual property (IP) ownership could be Richard's most pressing problem, although, according to Padfield, it is already on the way to being resolved. The big issue Cambridge faces is that it is unique among UK universities in placing ownership of IP with the academics, according to Susan Searle, managing director of Imperial College Innovations, a separate company dedicated to spinouts from London's Imperial College. "At Imperial, we own the IP so it's very easy for us to exploit the technology," Searle adds. "At Cambridge they've had a very difficult discussion with their academics, who feel that they are losing something [if they hand over any IP rights]." Photo of King's College Cambridge courtesy of www.sobi.org At Cambridge, Tony Minson, professor and pro-vice chancellor in charge of planning and resources and chair of the research policy committee, prefers to describe the discussions as measured, with a desire to achieve a clear understanding of who owns IP. "Our policy ... will say the academic continues to own the property by default, unless the contract says otherwise," he explains. "Should [the professor] choose to commercialize, then the patent will be the property of the university." By avoiding hasty decisions, Cambridge will end up with a more flexible formula for settling IP ownership than the one at Oxford, and it will survive longer without need for untidy fudges, asserts Ian Leslie, professor and director of the Cambridge computer laboratory and member of the research policy committee. But Oxford's head of chemistry, Graham Richards, disagrees, arguing that a clear line specifying that the university owns IP is a necessary prerequisite for deriving adequate research funding from patents and inventions. "The big problem for all universities is lack of cash, and one way round this is to exploit the IP developed at the university," he asserts. "At Oxford we have become very successful at doing this, and my own department has put over £40 million of actual cash into the central university." This cash injection was achieved partly through an innovative deal struck with a London bank, leading to establishment of an investment group called IP2IPO, and dedicated to investment in university spinouts. Richards says he needed £60 million for a new research lab and £20 million of that came from IP2IPO. In turn, IP2IPO gets half of the university's equity in any spinouts, and the same deal for any licensing. "So once the spinouts are created, the interests of the university and the bank are identical," he says. Photo of King's College Cambridge courtesy of www.sobi.org In addition to the IP2IPO, an independent company called ISIS Innovation is charged with commercializing the early-stage fruits of research at Oxford. Tim Cook, the company's managing director, says the university's professional IP approach, combined with a support network of "business angels" to nurture startups, is already bearing fruit, even in the current inimical investment climate. Since 1999, ISIS has created 35 companies, and only one has failed, according to Cook. This compares well with the national average, which indicates that 50% of all startup companies fail. The most recent ISIS success, Mirada Solutions, provided positron emission tomography equipment and probes sold to CTI Molecular Imaging for $22 million in August 2003. RENEGADE RICHES For Cambridge, there is no denying that the laissez faire approach to IP ownership has worked well until now in creating spinouts and amassing a substantial community of businesses in and around local science parks. "It's been a longer tradition for us than anyone else," Secher says. "It's over 30 years since the science parks opened." The Cambridge cluster has been highly successful in attracting outside companies. But to turn this into research funding, there would have to be a new rule for calculating grants, and in practice, Leslie admits that Cambridge has sometimes failed spectacularly to harvest its IP in the past. But the world of international university finance has changed drastically during the last 20 years in the face of the fast-growing endowments of leading US institutions, such as Stanford and Harvard Universities. Cambridge has accepted that it needs now to amend what on the face is a winning formula. The most recent and dramatic example of this came with the iris-recognition technology developed by John Daugman at Cambridge during the early 1990s. As Leslie points out, Iris recognition has proved to be the only reliable biometric identification mechanism, and Daugman's algorithms have been proven to work best. Most of the world's operational iris-recognition systems are based on Daugman's algorithms. The technology has been licensed to numerous IT and security vendors such as IBM and OKI Electric Industries, as well as to organizations, such as London's Heathrow Airport, that need robust authentication systems to guard secure areas. Photo of King's College Cambridge courtesy of www.sobi.org And yet, as Leslie notes ruefully, the university has made very little out of the technology, whereas if the IP cards had been played differently, Cambridge research would have obtained a significant and perhaps sustainable stream of cash from it. The Iris recognition system was almost a one-man effort, but many of the most successful spinouts from both Oxford and Cambridge have involved significant cross-disciplinary efforts, according to Cambridge's Secher. He attributes this partly to the collegiate system that encourages social intercourse between people from all disciplines in bars, canteens, and quadrangles. The genome sequencing company Solexa near Cambridge is a recent example. "This was set up by someone in the [Cambridge] chemistry department using lasers at the cutting edge of physics to do analysis and apply knowledge of the human genome to do diagnosis," Secher says. SOCKER SCHOOLS Bashing Oxford and Cambridge has become almost a ritual sport, motivated largely out of envy. Yet both universities have attracted considerable support from neutral observers in their rearguard action against government interference. Imperial's Searle says the media has misinterpreted the Lambert review and that Oxbridge should not be bullied into hasty reforms. Peter Cotgreave, chief executive of the lobbying group, Save British Science, goes further by suggesting that Lambert was wide of the mark in criticizing Oxford and Cambridge for outmoded management practices. "It remains true that Oxford and Cambridge are world-class universities," Cotgreave says. "I don't think Lambert, at least as reported, was right to focus on their management as a major issue." Cotgreave insists that funding is a major issue, and warns against basing funding decisions on short-term economic considerations rather than on the long-term requirements of the nation as a whole. And if there is reason for panic, it lies not in the current performance of the universities, but the fact that their endowments are falling rapidly behind their major US counterparts. Harvard's endowment grew 174% to $17 billion in the eight years from 1994 to 2002 (with similar rates of increase at Yale, Stanford, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology), according to the UK "Future of Higher Education" white paper.3 The Oxford and Cambridge endowments both grew by only 104% and 83% to $580 million and $1.06 billion over the same period. Courtesy of Mark Mniszko, University of Cambridge Including the considerable fortunes of the individual colleges, Oxford and Cambridge have total endowments of $3.3 billion each. According to Noble at Oxford and Minson at Cambridge, both universities urgently need to stimulate a culture of charitable alumni-giving to prevent the endowments from falling further behind those at major US universities. Oxford and Cambridge have been successful, however, in building links with US universities. Oxford has tied up with Princeton, while Cambridge has forged an alliance with MIT. Already CMI has funded the Praxis Technology Transfer Training program, which is delivering courses in creating spinouts and commercially exploiting IP throughout the United Kingdom. Both the Princeton and MIT exchange programs involve technology transfer and mutual benchmarking as well as an exchange of students and ideas about teaching practice. MIT officials have already stated that they are highly impressed by the standard of Cambridge students participating in the one-year exchange program (according to Secher), so perhaps far from being abolished, the collegiate system will be exported to the United States. Philip Hunter (phunter@philiphunter.com) is a freelance writer in London. References 1. "Lambert review of business-university collaboration--Summary of consultation responses and emerging issues," July 14, 2003, available online at www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/media/06729/lambertemergingissues_173.pdf 2. J. Kay, "Dream world," The Guardian, Nov. 28, 2000. 3. "The future of higher education," Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Jan. 22, 2003, available online at www.dfes.gov.uk/highereducation/hestrategy function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Educating Oxbridge

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