Examination of Witness (Questions 580-599)
MONDAY 17 MARCH 2003
RICHARD LAMBERT
580. You are not a manager, you are a career
journalist. There are those of us who would say that we know and
admire your work over the years. You left Balliol, went straight
to the FT and have always been there. So people could say, "Well,
a manager; what does he know about management?"
(Mr Lambert) Well you try managing 500 journalists
for 10 years, which is what I have spent the last 10 years doing;
it is like herding cats. But, seriously, I think that I have spent
a lot of time talking to businesses about business issues and
trying to understand them, and trying to distill them in a sensible
form and make comments about them. That is what my work has been,
and that is what I see this as being, actually, starting off,
frankly, with a low knowledge base, trying to talk to all the
right people, soaking up as much stuff as I can, and then distilling
that into a few sensible ideas.
581. So, who is "we", when you say
"we have written," who is "we"?
(Mr Lambert) There is a tiny little team of people,
there is me, there are three people at the Treasury, we are getting
a half-time person with the DTI and a half-time person with the
DfES. That is how it stands at the moment.
582. So three from the Treasury, a half from
Education and a half from DTI. It is bit thin. The cynics would
say, "A journalist and four civil servants, what do they
know about management?"
(Mr Lambert) Well they might say that, but that would
not bother me, to be honest.
583. Let us take you back to the trigger. What
is the Chancellor up to; why does he want to get his sticky hands
on educational issues like this?
(Mr Lambert) Two things. One, this is a government-mandated
thing, and I report to the DTI and DfES as well as the Treasury.
From the Treasury's point of view, it is in the context of productivity
and the Treasury's interest in the productivity of British industry.
That is how it was explained to me, and that is what I think it
is I am doing.
584. Will you be looking at some of the people
that have tried to manage UK universities and perhaps come away
disillusioned by the process, people like Professor John Kay,
will you be talking to him?
(Mr Lambert) I will be talking to John Kay. I hope
I will be talking to him.
585. But you have not spoken to him yet?
(Mr Lambert) I have not, no; but I know him well and
I would like to hear his views.
586. But you do know of his experience of trying
to make a contribution here?
(Mr Lambert) Yes. I do not know the detail of it.
587. He wrote some quite well-known articles
about his experience of trying to manage universities.
(Mr Lambert) Which I have read, yes; but I have not
spoken to him yet. I will be. I have talked already to a number
of vice-chancellors and presidents, and I hope to be talking to
as many people as possible.
588. When this Committee went to the United
States, what struck some of us was the depth of management that
some of the major institutions had. We met a president of an American
university, and standing behind them would be a substantial body
of men and women who would be immediately employable in the private
sector, they would have MBAs, and they would be a kind of management
cadre, or group, that really, substantially, helped the quality
of the management of the institution. One gets the impression
that one can look pretty far here for that kind of management
depth in UK institutions; would you agree with that?
(Mr Lambert) I do not have a view on that. I have
not spoken to enough, or been to enough, to comment on that.
589. So will you be looking at American experience?
(Mr Lambert) Yes. Actually, for other reasons, I was
in Harvard, I spent the last term at Harvard, and I was asked
to do this just at the end of that period, so I did spend some
time at MIT, in fact, and learned a little about how they operate.
Actually, the thing that struck me particularly there was the
depth and breadth and sophistication of their technology transfer
operation, that they had a degree of professionalism in that department,
and scale, which was pretty incredible, I thought.
590. Was that part of the relationship that
the Treasury funds to achieve the £10 million between MIT
and, it is Cambridge, is it not?
(Mr Lambert) Yes, it is, MIT and Cambridge, England,
yes.
591. Yes; and, for some reason, the Chancellor
put £10 million into that pot to foster relationships between
Cambridge and MIT?
(Mr Lambert) I do not have the numbers, I am not sure.
592. I understand that is the figure. Why do
you think the Chancellor did that?
(Mr Lambert) CMI is definitely on our list of things
we want to find out about, but I have not yet been to them. I
spoke to the Cambridge end, as I say, on the cost of it.
593. In your introduction, you mentioned particularly
what we could learn from the United States and others. Now we
know the Chancellor, whenever he talks about higher education,
his admiration of the United States is almost unbounded. You threw
in "and other institutions, in other parts of Europe,"
are you really being honest about that; what other parts of European
higher education are managed better than ours?
(Mr Lambert) I have no idea, but I am talking to industrialists
about where we should look elsewhere in Europe, and people have
made one or two suggestions; we have not yet nailed that down.
594. They do not often come running up to us
in this Committee and say, "The way you should be going is
looking at mainland European, we want to be more like mainland
European," very often the argument comes to us from vice-chancellors
and gurus in the higher education sector, "Let's be more
like the United States, but for goodness sake don't let's become
more like mainland Europe." Have you heard that view?
(Mr Lambert) I have not heard that view. I have heard
a lot of enthusiasm about the US, but I have not heard anybody
say "Don't be like the rest of Europe," except, oddly
enough, France does not seem to be a model that people are particularly
enthusiastic about in this space. But people talk about Scandinavian
university-industrial relationships with enthusiasm, people say
that Finland, for instance, has got a sophisticated environment,
but I do not know. I intend to find out.
595. This Committee will be very interested
to know what you find out about the difference between a myth
and reality that surrounds this sort of topic?
(Mr Lambert) That is our job, that is what I am aiming
to do.
Chairman: Excellent. Thank you for that.
Ms Munn
596. One of the things that I am very aware
of, in the constituency that I represent, Sheffield, is that one
university particularly has a good record of getting business
spin-offs from some of the work they do and the development of
small business, and the like. Is that an issue that you will be
looking at as well?
(Mr Lambert) Yes, it is, certainly; and one of the
things we are beginning to try to get our minds round is how you
measure the success of spin-outs, and what the numbers tell you,
and whether numbers are a good thing for their own sake or whether
you need to find some other measures of sustainability. So certainly
we are interested in that.
597. The other area that you are looking at,
which the Chair has already covered, is Government's leadership
and management of universities. Obviously, you are looking at
some comparisons, but are you setting out with an idea about models,
given your own experience of managing your journalists?
(Mr Lambert) No. How we are doing it is, it will be
at two levels. One, I and my colleagues will be talking to businesses
and saying, "What do you see as barriers, what works well,
and what doesn't work well?" so we will get a business viewpoint,
and we will have to aim off for the fact that business, inevitably,
will be sort of moaning about measurement and build in a kind
of filter for that, and then the other thing will be our own perceptions.
We have started talking to different universities and institutions
and are trying to form a view ourselves from that.
598. So you are not setting out with a particular
model which says that, for example, good management is good management
wherever it is, and it is no different in universities from anywhere
else?
(Mr Lambert) My prejudice, for what it is worth, is
that universities are not businesses, they have a different function
in life, but they need to be business-like in their dealings with
the commercial sector, and I intend to explore what that adds
up to.
599. The recent White Paper, and the other stuff
the Government is doing at the moment, is already promoting and
proposing numbers of collaboration between business and higher
education; do you see that as cutting across what you are doing,
is that making your investigation more difficult?
(Mr Lambert) No, I think it is great, to be honest.
I think that particularly the third chapter in there, which spells
out the Business Links, they present it as a form of building-blocks,
which seemed to me to be relevant, and I need to get my mind round
what the implications are for all that; but, to go to the Chair's
original point, I think it shows that what we are on about is
relevant and interesting.
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