What's in a name?
John Sutherland considers the rebranding of what used to be known as University College London
There has been consternation - intra and extramural - at University College London's decision to remodel itself as UCL plc.
The corporate makeover is a matter of economic necessity. You can raise money by PFI for glamorous buildings (see, for instance, the newly opened University College London hospital on Gower Street). Big hearted, deep-pocketed, donors will throw money at you for high-visibility items of university furniture - from endowed chairs to quadrangle benches (so long as the brass plate credits the generous soul who stumped up for them).
If you take more students, the government will give you cash to cover the cost (or a bit less). The research funding bodies will kick in for specific projects.
What you can't get outside money for are the day-to-day running costs of an establishment the size of a car factory - all those unglamorous expenses for toilet paper, electricity, security, room cleaning and maintenance. University College London (as it must no longer be called) is in a hole financially, running the kind of annual deficit that would have shareholders baying for management blood.
It can't go on. If, like UCL, you choose to do business in WC1 you have to become a business if you want to stay in business. You must, that is, become a profit-generating organisation and plough the profits back in. The alternative is to sell up and rebuild on a green field somewhere in the sticks as “University College [used to be in] London”.
UCL will publicly launch their corporate identity campaign this summer. It will probably involve a new management structure, presidential rather than committee or senate leadership, and alterations in the line of command.
The new corporate identity will also involve a change of ethos. Teaching staff, for example, will henceforward owe primary allegiance not to their department, their colleagues, or their subject but to the “firm” - UCL. They will not be members of a community, but stakeholders and company men.
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Source:
Guardian Unlimited
