The Reading UCU Motion was passed at Congress 2017. Please see the final version below.
HE41 Use of consultants in HE – University of Reading
Conference notes a trend in university senior management to spend significant public funding on private sector consultancy firms, as evidenced by the £36m spend at Reading. These firms recommend the implementation of ready-made business solutions, inappropriate for the HE sector, which generate redundancies, de-skill the workforce and increase workload. Institutional expertise is ignored, devaluing the sector and demotivating staff. The HE sector should use its in-house expertise in order to achieve from its staff and arrive at recruitment, teaching, financial and other processes that buy-in are fit-for-purpose.
Conference calls on HEC to:
- investigate the increasing use of consultants in HE
- collect examples of recommendations that have already failed and been reversed
- investigate the additional stress caused to employees and the lowering of morale.
Conference further calls on HEC to:
- call on the National Audit Office and government to conduct value-for-money audits on consultancy spending across the HE sector.
Motion taken in parts.
Numbers 1-3 CARRIED
Bullet a. REMITTED
CARRIED AS AMENDED
HE41A.1 Academic Related, Professional Staff Committee
In second sentence after ‘firms’, insert: ‘utilise statistically suspect benchmarking methodologies and’.
At the end of point 1. insert before the semi-colon:
-‘for example: a) research which HEIs are using consultants eg. auditors, benchmarking and IT; b) Identify how much such institutions are spending on these consultancy services.’
CARRIED
Substantive motion
Conference notes a trend in university senior management to spend significant public funding on private sector consultancy firms, as evidenced by the £36m spend at Reading. These firms recommend the implementation of ready-made business solutions, inappropriate for the HE sector, which generate redundancies, de-skill the workforce and increase workload. Institutional expertise is ignored, devaluing the sector and demotivating staff. The HE sector should use its in-house expertise in order to achieve from its staff and arrive at recruitment, teaching, financial and other processes that buy-in are fit-for-purpose.
Conference calls on HEC to:
- investigate the increasing use of consultants in HE
- collect examples of recommendations that have already failed and been reversed
- investigate the additional stress caused to employees and the lowering of morale.
More details on Congress 2017 Motions can be found here: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/8799/Higher-Education-Sector-Conference-2017#he12