The Seven Principles of Pulbic Life - Higher Education

From: Summary of Nolan Committee's Second Report (1996)

Summary of the Nolan Committee's First Report on Standards in Public Life

Selflessness
Holders of public office should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends.

Integrity
Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might influence them in the performance of their official duties.

Objectivity
In carrying out public business, including making public appointments, awarding contracts, or recommending individuals for rewards and benefits, holders of public office should make choices on merit.

Accountability
Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.

Openness
Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands.

Honesty
Holders of public office have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest.

Leadership
Holders of public office should promote and support these principles by leadership and example.

These principles apply to all aspects of public life. The Committee has set them out here for the benefit of all who serve the public in any way.

Higher and Further Education

The systems of governance in the higher and further education sectors reflect both the origins of the institutions and of recent legislation. The 'old' universities are governed by charter or specific Act of Parliament. Former polytechnics became 'new' universities as a result of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, which also set down the system of governance for further education institutions. In addition to providing resources, funding councils for the sectors have a role in regulation and dissemination of best practice.

Many of the institutions have evolved systems of governance over many years and it would require evidence of substantial misconduct to justify sweeping changes. We received no such evidence. However, we urge institutions to review their practices and procedures in the light of best practice identified in this report. We believe it is particularly important for institutions to follow best practice in limiting the use made of commercial confidentiality and in explaining themselves to their communities.

While the principle of academic freedom is applicable to the right of individuals to pursue research and express opinions without political pressure, it does not justify a lower level of accountability for higher education institutions. Our recommendations on confidentiality clauses, appeals, disputes and whistleblowing tackle those aspects of academic freedom which are relevant to our terms of reference.

R3. Appointments to the governing bodies of universities and colleges should be made on the basis of merit, subject to the need to achieve a balance of relevant skills and backgrounds on the board.

R4. The automatic representation of the TECs and LECs on college governing bodies should be ended.

R5. Individual universities and colleges should be encouraged to set out key information to a common standard in their annual reports or equivalent documents where they do not already do so. Material on governance should be included in the annual reports or equivalents of further and higher education institutions. Representative bodies should take the lead in promoting this with the support of the funding councils.

R6. Representative bodies, with the help of the funding councils, should produce a common standard of good practice on the limits of commercial confidentiality, and should encourage all institutions to be as open as possible subject to those limits. All institutions should have publicly available registers of interests.

R7. Institutions of higher and further education should make it clear that the institution permits staff to speak freely and without being subject to disciplinary sanctions or victimisation about academic standards and related matters, providing that they do so lawfully, without malice, and in the public interest.

R8. Where it is absolutely necessary to include confidentiality clauses in service and severance contracts, they should expressly remind staff that legitimate concerns about malpractice may be raised with the appropriate authority (the funding council, National Audit Office, Visitor, or independent review body as applicable) if this is done in the public interest.

R9. Students in higher education institutions should be able to appeal to an independent body, and this right should be reflected in the Higher Education Charters.

R10. The higher education funding councils, institutions, and representative bodies should consult on a system of independent review of disputes. A similar process of consultation should be undertaken by the equivalent further education bodies.

R11. The Secretary of State for Education and Employment should re-examine the practice of appointing vice-chancellors and principals of English institutions to the board of HEFCE to determine whether an alternative exists, which avoids perceived conflicts of interest, and to ensure that existing rules protect against any potential conflict of interest as the council is presently constituted.
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From: The Association of University Administrators (promoting excellence in HE management), revised July 7, 2005

...University administrators must strike a balance between the needs of a number of stakeholders. They are responsible in many ways for the welfare of our institutions, for the interests of staff and students...

The seven principles will not have an impact unless everyone from board level down understands the framework of behaviours that is expected of them...

Individual values can be put to the test as a result of a tension with the corporate values of the institution as a result, for example, of:

pressure to cross the threshold between exploiting the rules of funding regimes and unacceptable misrepresentation of data

the intensification of competition internationally not only for students but also for research achievement

the development of extreme forms of managerialism

the increased emphasis on PR, marketing and presentation, and the extent to which this can lead to pressures for inaccurate 'spin' and 'hype'...

The work of the Nolan (now Neill) Committee on Standards in Public Life, emphasises the need for all those working in higher education to observe the highest standards of professionalism. The... code of professional standards is a welcome development in achieving and sustaining this goal...

The canary down the mine: what whistleblowers' health tells us about their environment

The typical whistleblower's health is very poor. In a survey I did in 1993, reported in the British Medical Journal (1), 29 of the 35 subjects had an average of 3.6 symptoms at the time of the survey. Though high, this was less than the average of 5.3 at the time they blew the whistle. The most common were difficulty sleeping, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and feelings of guilt and unworthiness. They also suffered from nervous diarrhoea, trouble breathing, stomach problems, loss of appetite, loss of weight, high blood pressure, palpitations, hair loss, grinding teeth, nightmares, headaches, tiredness, weeping, tremor, urinary frequency, 'stress', and 'loss of trust'. Fifteen subjects (i.e. over half of those with symptoms) were now on medication they had not been on before blowing the whistle - for depression, stomach ulcers, and high blood pressure.

The reason for this poor state of health is clear. They had suffered intense victimization at work, being made redundant, demoted, dismissed, or pressured to resign; their position was abolished, or they were transferred. While still in the workplace they were isolated, physically and personally; were given impossible tasks to perform, menial work, or no work at all; were subjected to constant scrutiny and verbal abuse, forced to see psychiatrists, threatened with defamation actions and disciplinary actions; were constantly criticised, fined, subjected to internal inquiries, adverse reports; and received death and other threats. The most common outcome was to resign because of ill health caused by the victimization. The treatment they receive appears to be standard, and is described in more detail, for example, by Bill de Maria in his large survey of Queensland whistleblowers. (2)

As a result of what happened they also suffered severe financial loss. Only eight of the 35 subjects had not suffered any loss of income; in twelve cases their income was reduced by over 75%. They faced large medical, other, and particularly legal costs, and in over half the cases their estimated total financial loss was in hundreds of thousands of dollars...

It has become clear that we can, even without doing further formal studies of the organization, learn a great deal about it from an examination of the whistleblower's health and the organization's reactions to it. This brings us to the canary, used for detecting toxic or explosive gases in coal-mines, before there was a better way to do it. More sensitive to such gases than humans, they would collapse long before the miners were affected, and a collapsed canary was therefore a signal to the miners to get out immediately, and to management to look at the problem and clean up the mine. If we think of the victimized whistleblower as a poisoned canary - and clearly there are strong parallels here - the typical reaction of management is interesting and instructive. They don't say 'we've got a problem here, let's fix it before we have a disaster', but start bad-mouthing the canary. It has a personality disorder, they say, or is faking it to get compo; was sick before it went down the mine; or - more simply - is a no-good ratbag troublemaker.

Just as the victimization that causes the canary to collapse is standard from one organization, state, or even country to another, so is management's explanation for the canary's state of health. And remembering what the canary's state really means to the mine and those in it, the response is not at all what we would expect from a manager who cared about the miners, or even about the reputation and hence the profits of the company. But the reaction to the canary is representative of the organization's response as a whole. Typically the response is orchestrated and powerful - 'crushing' is the word most victims use to describe it. It usually involves the whistleblower's union or other potential supports, and it rewards the deviant(s) while penalizing the whistleblower. The pattern seen now in hundreds of cases shows this classical response means the activity the whistle was blown on is endemic and tacitly accepted within the organization...

Other indicators of widespread involvement of the bureaucratic system are the standard techniques used to cover up. Word-processor 'stuff-off' letters are the rule, as is a 3 to 6-month delay in replying. Threats of defamation suits are used to keep impecunious whistleblowers quiet, while rich and powerful organizations defame them with impunity - in quiet chats and secret memos, negative work and medical reports, confidential Board and Cabinet minutes, and in Parliament. The legal system's delays are used to the full, so the issues cannot be publicly discussed for years because they are 'sub judice', then can't be exposed because they are no longer news. There are phony 'inquiries', by people appointed by the employer, and dependent on them for further employment. Sometimes the 'wrong' person is appointed, and does a proper job regardless, but more often they do what they are paid to do...

From: http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/Lennane_canary.html

Warning: chronic bullying is hazardous to the academy's health

Stress and harassment cost the sector millions of pounds in lost work days and feed a culture of human misery, says Sally Hunt.

I first encountered bullying in higher education when I was a regional official. I was astounded to discover that the problem was worse than in the stereotypically tough world of banking, where I had worked before. University and College Union surveys suggest that the problem still blights our sector.

More than one third of respondents to a UCU survey last year found bullying by their managers to be at "very stressful" levels, and another 2007 survey, by Jeremy Waddington for UCU, listed bullying and/or harassment as the most common concern among the 4,000 UCU members polled. Professor Waddington said the UCU was the only union of all those he had surveyed over the years that cited bullying as the issue most likely to be brought to the attention of branch officials.

Bullying is not only stressful for the individual concerned, it is also costly to the employer and, in higher education, detrimental to staff and students. The Department of Health reported that, overall, an average of 3.6 per cent of a company or organisation's salary budget is paid to people absent from work due to stress-related illness; moreover, the Health and Safety Executive has said that bullying is a key element in stress-related workplace illness and costs employers millions of lost days every year. Worryingly, stress-related illness and absence levels in education are substantially above the national average.

The UCU has taken bold steps to get to the root of the problem. We will continue to support individuals who are subjected to bullying and harassment but, perhaps more importantly, we will be challenging the policy and funding contexts that license bullying behaviour.

The impact on the individual is often compounded in those institutions that refuse to recognise the problem. Colleagues who may be in a position to help are more likely to keep silent through fear of reprisal and are unwilling to offer statements criticising the university.

Often those colleagues are also suffering at the hands of bullies as well, but they feel unable to come forward. Unless there are people prepared to break the silence and to refuse to continue to suffer, whole departments and even institutions can continue to get away with a bullying culture and will never be forced to address the problem.

In the academy, grinding people down through a macho culture dressed up as natural selection is still prevalent. Staff who wish to enjoy some sort of work-life balance or a career break to bring up a family should not be dismissed as being weak.

The aggressive nature of the research assessment exercise served to highlight this very problem. Women who took career breaks to have children, for example, were less likely to be counted as research active. Although the 2001 RAE had warm words about staff who have taken maternity leave or other career breaks not being discriminated against, the raw data suggested otherwise.

The issues raised by the RAE affect all academics, not just women, because it was an inherently flawed way of allocating funding that created job insecurity and competition when what the sector needed was a culture of long-term stability and teamwork.

I think it is a source of great shame for UK higher education that only the hotel and catering sector employs a greater percentage of staff on temporary contracts. The widespread use of fixed-term contracts is the unacceptable underbelly of higher education.

Despite specific guidance agreed by the employers and trade unions to discourage the abuse of fixed-term contracts, universities seem to be ignoring it and persisting with short-term and short-sighted employment practices.

The best brains in Britain can find themselves trapped in positions of insecurity, with their only real alternative lying in jobs abroad or outside higher education. It is these employees who, understandably, will rarely have the courage to speak out, and it is often they who require the greatest support.

It is precisely this culture that needs to be addressed in our universities. I am not advocating, as I read recently, a "boo-hoo" culture ("Infantilised students and staff rapped", Times Higher Education, 12 June). I want to see an environment where talent is nurtured, rather than crushed, and where what you can do, rather than the extra hours you can put in, is truly valued.

The UCU considers bullies to be health-and-safety hazards, who should be risk assessed and then prevented from being dangers to their colleagues. There are some higher education institutions that treat bullying and harassment as a serious problem. However, there are still too many that do not. Whatever the reason, it is inexcusable for those institutions to carry on in that vein, and the UCU will not tolerate it.

Postscript: Sally Hunt is general secretary, University and College Union.

From: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk
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AG 11 July, 2008

And this from the general secretary who allows her own officials, both paid and voluntary, to bully those who would stand up for justice and fair play, and from a union that has just approved a change at a university that permits those suffering from work-related stress and depression to be stigmatised and differentiated upon their return to work, from others who are signed off sick for prolonged periods. Such hypocrisy is totally unacceptable, but regrettably the norm for this union.
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Please contribute your own comments on the UCU role on workplace bullying in higher education, by visiting The Times Higher Education and adding your comment at the bottom of the article.

And the winner is... Loughborough University

Loughborough University awarded Divestors of People standard.

At 1:33 PM , Anonymous said...

Couldn't agree more about Loughborough. The policies are not worth the pixels it takes to show them on the web page. (They don't give you a hard copy to save trees apparently!)

Management is a shambles, complainants are "exterminated" and serial bullies are allowed off with a counselling session at best.

Staff in some depts live in fear of being the next victim as they see another person go on long term work related stress sick leave and then never come back.

Morale is through the roof and yes most staff wonder how on earth we do so well in these awards. LU is the most shambolic place I have ever worked.

Worse still they keep bleating on about how they want to be a fabulous employer, sending round surveys about stress and bullying etc, setting up working groups running the dreaded PD sessions but missing the all important bit about feeding back the findings to staff and the DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

P.S. If LU win please let the Loughborough Echo know I would love to see that story in print.
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Anonymous said...

I wish nominate Loughborough University under the following categories from your list:

2. Loughborough has a doctrinaire and patronising 3-year probation system that ignores staff's previous work experience and particularly works against those from overseas, women who have had career breaks and people who have entered acadaemia as a second career. It is basically a big stick to hit staff with for the RAE. Probationary staff have to produce 2 RAE outputs for each year of probation. Highly experienced people find themselves having to attend staff development courses aimed at the needs of teaching assistants and new lecturers. Written from a limited disciplinary standpoint (usually engineering), they are rolled out across the whole of the university, whether or not they're relevant.

3. Every word of 3 applies. There are few women in senior positions. Many women compain of institutionalised sexism. The long hours culture discriminates against those with family and caring responsibiities.

4. The fact that Loughborough runs a course on emotional intelligence for managers says it all. It appears to have little impact.

5. Junior staff are over-managed and intimidated, particularly in regard to RAE output. Conversely many long-serving members of staff receive virtually no career development and are given no encouragement to apply for promotion. Needless to say, many of the latter are women. New workload agreements, which have cut teaching contact hours, have produced high levels of stress amongst staff due to having to deliver the same material in less time and consequent falling standards (which are of course blamed on staff) and student complaints.

6. Decisions are made in authoritarian and undemocractic ways, despite a plethora of committees. Staff constantly complain about meddling in their research and a lack of understanding of work that is outside of the dominant disciplines in the university.

7. Staff are extremely demoralised. Long-standing members of staff are routinely threatened with teaching-only contracts. No recognition is given to outstanding teachers. Furthermore, such is the pressure for research that teaching is regarded as a nuisance and increasingly given over to postgraduates, many of them MA students. Undergraduates complain bitterly about reduced contact time (see above). How, Loughborough is no 1 in the student experience chart is a mystery to staff.

8. Management has gone from bad to worse and staff are afraid to speak out.

9. There are huge levels of work-related stress. HR lets cases reach crisis point when early intervention and mediation might have resolved issues. Confidential information about complainants is often disclosed by HR to devastating effect. The return to work policy, although sound in principle, is often not properly implemented.

10. Internal grievance and disciplinary procedures are used to silence staff, often as a pre-emptive strike to discredit them before they can make their own complaint.

11. Every word applies.

Lest we forget...

http://www.skorupskislaw.com/website%20title.html

http://www.sirpeterscott.com/

http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/mobnews06.htm

http://why-diana.blogspot.com/

http://www.badapplebullies.com/index.htm

http://onebananashort.org/home.html

http://chronicle.com/jobs/blogs/onhiring/603

Games vs. Politics - How to Deal with the Difference

We often think about "playing the game" — either with relish or repugnance. Whatever your level of skill or interest, you'll do better if you see workplace politics as it is. It is not a game.

We all know that workplace politics can affect our level of success and even happiness. Whatever your skill level, you'll do better if you recognize that workplace politics isn't a game in the usual sense. Understanding how it differs from sports or parlor games can enhance your chances of success.

Games vs. Politics - How to Deal with the Difference

• A real game has rules that everyone follows. In politics, the rules change and they're open to interpretation.
  
  
• Appealing to precedent or to others' sense of fairness doesn't work. Think beyond precedent.
  
  
• A real game has referees and judges. In workplace politics, there are no officials and there is no appeals process. Participants do whatever makes sense to them.
  
  
• Seeking justice is a waste of time. Instead, try to achieve your goals by staying within your own ethics.
  
  
• A real game has periods of play and rest — four quarters, nine innings, half time, a seventh inning stretch. Workplace politics is 24/7. It can be an extreme endurance test.
  
  
• Monitor your own energy reserves. Avoid being consumed by the passions of the action. Rest when you can.
  
  
• A real game has finite duration — eventually, the game ends. Workplace politics is endless. As long as the organization exists, and you work there, you participate in its politics.
  
  
• Be aware that people might remember anything you do. Don't do anything you would want to cover up later. Even if you're never discovered, the knowledge can be a burden.
  
  
• A real game has fixed teams of uniformed players. In workplace politics, there might be alliances, but they're changeable, and you can't always tell who's on which team. Some people play for multiple teams.
  
  
• Even people you trust can be more loyal to themselves than to you. You yourself might someday have to do something like that. Understand and accept that this can happen, and that we all do the best we can.
  
  
• In a real game, the teams are similar in size, structure and mission. Each team scores in roughly the same way. In workplace politics, the factions differ markedly in size, power, and mission.
  
  
• The resources available to political alliances are unique and unpredictable. Success depends on learning to use what you have, rather than acquiring what you think you need.
  
  
• A real game has spectators who watch but who don't actually play. In workplace politics, there are no spectators — we're all affected by what happens. Some of us participate actively, some passively, but we all participate.
  
  
• Playing for the audience is futile — most people are too busy with their own stuff to watch you. Only one person is truly worth impressing — yourself. Behave in ways you can be proud of.
  
  
• Politics and games are similar in one important way — winning a game requires skills specific to that game. To be successful politically, we must learn to see things as they are. And we can begin by realizing that workplace politics is not a game.
  

From: http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/010307.shtml

A letter to Sally Hunt (Moran, Blumsohn)

Sally Hunt is currently General Secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), and the last General Secretary of the Association of University Teachers (UK) prior to its merger with NATFHE to form the UCU. The below letter from Rhetta Moran and myself is self explanatory. See also this and this for some background.




For pdf version of letter and attachments see here. For many other UK cases involving AUT/UCU/NAFTHE inaction see the extensive Bullied Academics blog

From: http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com/2008/07/letter-to-sally-hunt-moran-blumsohn.html

Rhetta Moran, David Healy - and the language of academic bullying

My friend Rhetta Moran was fired from Salford University (a "greater" Manchester University) in 2005 under very unusual circumstances.

There are fascinating linguistic aspects of sham university procedures and integrity scandals. Rhetta's research was said to be "no longer compatible with the school".

A key problem facing academia in the UK is the lack of any plausible institution that speaks up for integrity and the values of a university. As Rhetta states, "One would have though that the idea of "compatible" or "incompatible" research would be something that should interest an academic union".

This brief summary of Rhetta's story serves as a prelude to my next post about a joint letter we wrote to Sally Hunt about the dismal integrity failures of the Association of University Teachers (AUT). Hunt is currently General Secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), and the last General Secretary of the AUT the merger with NATFHE to form the UCU.

The idea of "incompatible" research formed a key part of the scandalous firing of Professor David Healy at the University of Toronto. Following a lecture during which Healy expressed concerns about the integrity of pharmaceutical research, Dr. David Goldbloom fired him, stating that : "We believe that it is not a good fit between you and the role as leader of an academic program in mood and anxiety disorders at the Centre and in relation to the University. This view was solidified by your recent appearance at the Centre in the context of an academic lecture. While you are held in high regard as a scholar of the history of modem psychiatry, we do not feel your approach is compatible with the goals for development of the academic and clinical resource that we have."

In contrast to supine academic unions in the UK, some other academic unions (most notably the Canadian Association of University Teachers) have acted vigorously to defend many academics confronted by important assaults on integrity.

I will let Rhetta introduce herself:

Dr Rhetta Moran, 1 July 2008

I was dismissed by the University of Salford under unusual circumstances in 2005 following a previously successful academic career. During the previous year, I had been the lead investigator in a publicly funded project (Salford RAPAR SRB5) which was designed to collate accurate information about housing, health, employment, economic, personal safety and education problems involving people seeking asylum. The project was funded through the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Clearly this was a contentious project.

No factually plausible reasons for my dismissal as an academic under such circumstances have ever been provided. Employers appear to exercise the right to dismiss staff on the most thinly constructed grounds, or even no grounds at all, such as unspecified research "incompatibility". The university returned all grant funds including a newly obtained one (£192,316) from the European Social Fund.

I have learned that legal structures designed to deal with employment disputes have almost no relevance to academic integrity. Neither, unfortunately, did the Association of University Teachers (AUT).

We now know that the PCT Chief Executive, Mike Burrows, wrote to my "boss" Professor Michael Harloe and told him I was being removed from leadership of the research in April 2004. This was very shortly after a newspaper article appeared in the Observer. In this article (March 28, 2004) the Observer described how young asylum-seeking women were having to go underground in Salford. Drawing on work and contacts provided by myself, it cited me as follows:

People have been dumped in Salford, but without resources,' says Dr Rhetta Moran, a senior research fellow at the Revans Institute with overall responsibility for the Salford RAPAR project. 'There was no additional support for local practitioners. There is not one immigration solicitor in the whole city. And it leads to bitterness because this is a place where locals have been making their own demands on the council for years.

Other staff employed on the project were threatened with immediate suspension for gross misconduct if they had anything to do with me. It appears that there was an attempt to induce staff to accuse me of bullying, but they declined to do so. The following month I received a letter of dismissal John Dobson, who advised that my research was no longer "compatible" with the school. Dobson as it happens is also the current President of Salford University UCU.

This lack of "compatibility" was never explained.

One would have though that the idea of "compatible" or "incompatible" research would be something that should interest an academic union. The AUT attempted to induce to me to go along with a sham process as well as a gag agreement while ignoring every principle involved. Their silence has been deafening.

The university then stated that the reason for my dismissal was because I was "redundant" - a truly marvellous tautology.

I was finally sacked in January 2005, the day before the Deputy Prime Minister announced the opening of the Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company, in which my former boss Vice Chancellor, Michael Harloe has major involvement.

It is not clear whether any "incompatibility" might be down to fear of research or academic discussion that a City Council or conflicted academic leadership would find uncomfortable. It would be good to know.

From: http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com/2008/07/rhetta-moran-david-healy-and-language.html

Academic to be disciplined for offering extra lessons

An academic is facing disciplinary action for giving his students extra tuition in his spare time. Bernard H Casey ran the refresher session to give undergraduates additional help at the end of an economics course. But now he has been warned by Birkbeck, University of London, that the extra lessons broke university rules - and may have had a "detrimental impact" on students.

Dr Casey, an economics lecturer, has been summoned to an official disciplinary hearing where he faces an official reprimand. Bernard H Casey ran the refresher session to give undergraduates additional help at the end of an economics course.

Dr Casey, an economics lecturer, has been summoned to an official disciplinary hearing where he faces an official reprimand. Fellow academics branded the action "ludicrous" and said universities were becoming bogged down in bureaucracy.

The row erupted when senior staff at Birkbeck decided to cut Dr Casey's course in quantitative economic methods from 24 to 22 weeks.

He decided to offer students an extra session at the end of the course to go over any outstanding questions - and asked officials at Birkbeck for room for up to two hours. But he was told by a senior manager that he must stick to the designated 22 sessions allocated for the module.

Dr Casey told Times Higher Education magazine: "The reply was 'no'. I talked to the students and said, look, this is a bit silly, but let's hold a session anyway. A colleague arranged a room, and we went along and did it."

But when officials at the university found out they launched an investigation. A series of emails passed between Dr Casey and senior staff reveal how he has now been ordered to attend a disciplinary hearing.

He was told: "The purpose of this meeting is to establish if your decision to hold a revision class was in violation of instruction from line management. In addition the investigation will consider the potential detrimental impact on the students taking the course."

Senior managers also demanded to know how many students took part and what costs were involved.

Dr Casey refused to name students at the "illegal" class. He insisted he had incurred travel costs "and purchased a cup of tea", but would not make an expenses claim. The decision to pursue disciplinary action is thought to have been motivated by his refusal to follow university rules.

Dr Casey, who actually works at another university and teaches part-time at Birkbeck, said: "The problem with Birkbeck is that it's stacking itself up with extraordinary amounts of admin staff and reducing teaching staff, but that's a standard story these days,"

Birkbeck refused to comment while disciplinary procedures continued. But other academics said the move underlined the extent to which lecturers were being undermined by bureaucracy.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: "Education professionals consistently top tables of the most unpaid overtime put in each year. The dedication of staff to their subject and their students, whilst often exploited, remains astonishing. We cannot build a world class education sector on the exploitation of staff, but to suggest we punish, rather than reward, those who continue to show such dedication is ludicrous."

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk