You're Fired, Mr. Chips

By Ezra Bowen

Not for at least a generation had any major Western nation made such a drastic change in its entire educational system. Out of patience with a structure it views as rambling and inept, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has pushed through Parliament a reform bill that will radically change the way Britain educates its young. Among other things, the new law wipes out tenure for university professors appointed or promoted after November 1987; puts control of financing higher education under a pair of powerful new government-appointed funding councils; imposes a back-to-basics curriculum for publicly funded elementary and secondary schools; and allows parents a greater say regarding which school their children will attend.

Sponsors of the great Education Reform Bill, dubbed GERBIL, believe it has come not a second too soon. Sounding much like U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett critiquing his own domain, British Education Secretary Kenneth Baker asserts that "the past 30 years' curriculum development has been too free-form, everyone doing their own thing. I sense a yearning for a more explicit framework." As for Britain's colleges and universities, says George Walden, Conservative M.P. and former Minister of Higher Education: "The higher-education interests were simply incapable of reforming themselves, and the government has had to take a hand."

GERBIL's opponents, mainly from the faculties of Britain's 47 universities and their allies in Parliament, have condemned the bill as a "recipe for disaster." The evidence, however, indicates that British education does need a powerful cure -- if not necessarily the medicine prescribed. Some of the ailments mirror those that beset American education. For example, a new report by Britain's Inspectors of Schools condemns 1,000 of England's 4,000 secondary schools as "unsatisfactory." Critics lay the blame on poor teaching and a grab-bag curriculum that has strayed from the three Rs and from Britain's cultural heritage. Moreover, British higher education badly needs additional funding, even though annual government-aid grants to students have spiraled to $1.3 billion. "Students can no longer be sure they will have enough to live on," reported the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals. "The present system of student support has broken down."

These educational quandaries are especially troubling to Britain's universities, which have stood for centuries as a world standard. Most Americans still hold a romantic image of British education as a kind of academic nirvana peopled by elegantly robed Oxbridge dons and uniformed Etonian schoolboys learning Latin verses under a benevolent Mr. Chips. But the unhappy fact is that over the past decade, the cost-conscious Thatcher government, which supplies 71% of all university funding (totaling $4.2 billion a year), has kept such a tight rein on budgets that many institutions can barely operate. Oxford is dipping into reserves to avoid a deficit on its $188 million budget and has enough money to fill only 25 of 122 vacant teaching positions. Among the posts that will be unoccupied in 1989 are a pair of prestigious Regius chairs, one in Greek and the other in modern history, set up by British kings hundreds of years ago. They may remain empty for more than a year. Less lofty positions are simply being abolished.

"Oxford is beginning to seem like a place under siege," notes Novelist A.N. Wilson. He might have said the same for all British universities. Low salaries, shrinking research facilities and the grim general outlook have driven thousands of British academics into industry or overseas teaching positions.

Government funding officials are considering the closure of one-third of all university physics and chemistry departments. Six philosophy departments and seven earth-science departments are shutting down. The University of Edinburgh's top Soviet military expert is barely hanging on, having accepted an annual pay cut from $42,750 to $10,260 -- and the assurance that he can keep his research collection there. "The university is short $6 million," he says. "Someone's got to go."

In Wales last year, the whole of the University College at Cardiff nearly went into bankruptcy and was saved by an emergency infusion of government cash that may not be there next time. To help head off any such crisis of its own, Oxford will launch a fund-raising campaign next October -- after getting some consulting help from Harvard and Princeton.

Ominously, bright young scholars are not coming into the system: in all of Britain, only six university historians are under 30. "It's a failure to recruit a whole generation or two of talent," says Patrick Collinson, professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield. "And those generations will have been lost."

Education Secretary Baker and other Conservatives insist that GERBIL's tough provisions can in fact rejuvenate the system. The act's advocates believe tenure denial and early pensioning of redundant older faculty will lop off academic deadwood, thus freeing money to reward universities that focus on the government's priority fields. Specifically, by 1990 the Thatcher government wants 35% more science graduates and 25% more engineers than in 1980. These, say government officials, are the skills that Britain requires to compete in international markets.

This monetarist view of learning is what worries scholars most. The Universities Funding Council, to be appointed by Baker, will be empowered to make grants subject to certain undefined "terms and conditions" -- a phrase that academics fear may portend industry-style contracting. And abolishing tenure, says Paul Cottrell of the Association of University Teachers, "will make academics easier to sack." The ultimate result, he adds, will be to make it "more difficult to protect their academic freedom."

Despite some mitigating language crammed at the last moment into the bill's 238 clauses, some scholars fear that they may be forced to abandon innovative research to comply with government priorities. "Universities will no longer ; be autonomous corporations of scholars but servants of the government," says Elie Kedourie, professor of politics at the University of London. He adds scornfully, "It's really quite absurd for the government to think you can treat a university like a factory."

Reactions to GERBIL at lower levels, though mixed, are considerably more favorable. Some condemn the English-math-science emphasis of the required curriculum as a reincarnation of rigid 19th century pedagogy. Others fear that granting parents the right to pick their children's school will exacerbate white flight from racially mixed districts, as has been the case in the U.S. Others, however, cheer the freedom of choice and welcome the return to more structure in the classroom. Says Peter Dawson, general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers: "We need the Baker revolution." Head Teacher Grahame Leon-Smith comments, "The final result will mean we have a much more coherent and probably much more effective educational system."

The country's 29 polytechnic schools and 346 colleges, generally analogous to U.S. community colleges, also tend to favor GERBIL, because many of the schools will now be subsidized by government grants. This will rid them, essentially, of having to battle phalanxes of conflicting local politicians for money. But among university deans and dons, GERBIL has provided much trepidation and little to cheer about. Sums up Cottrell: "Now what we need to do is fight very hard to retain what autonomy we have left. We'll use the courts if necessary." Such a battle would prove intriguing, since the highest court in Britain is the House of Lords in Parliament. And Parliament has already spoken.

With reporting by Peter Shaw/London