Oxford needs to look outwards for help
The gap between the best American universities and the best in Europe has been widening. Before the second world war, three-quarters of Nobel Prizes in science went to Europe; today that proportion goes to the US. Many of Europe's academic stars are found in America. Teaching quality is harder to assess, but where the best scholars go, the best tuition tends to follow.
Oxford has the most powerful brand name in education. But those who know and love it have been frustrated not just by the divergence between historic reputation and current reality but by the inability of the institution to address these concerns. The latter, at least, may be changing. It is important to the European economy to encourage these developments.
Oxford itself has a complex collegiate system. A local joke tells of the tourist who, standing among the historic buildings, asks: “But where is the university?” Much teaching takes place in autonomous institutions such as Christ Church and Balliol College. In sciences, departments provide lectures and laboratories. In humanities, teachers lecture as they choose and students attend as they choose, often choosing not to. Most students and many faculty feel primary loyalty to the college rather than the university. To outsiders, this seems the source of the governance problems.
But the real issue has been the inept management of the university's central institutions a morass of committees with ill-defined and overlapping responsibilities. If tourists asked: “Where is the university?” they would today be directed to the ugly building in Wellington Square where many of the committees meet. It is rarely clear who is responsible for a decision or even whether a decision has been made. The budgeting or resource planning that other institutions take for granted does not happen.
As a result, the ablest people have retreated to colleges and departments. Every professional service organisation suffers because its stars do not want to run the show. They prefer to criticise as they do “their own work”. In Oxford this has reached absurd dimensions. Five minutes in any college or department reveals strong hostility to “the university”, the interests of which are seen as different from those of its colleges and departments and they have been different, like a body at war with its limbs.
Last year a new vice-chancellor arrived in Oxford John Hood, a New Zealander, the first outsider to hold the post. He seeks to end this dichotomy by giving control over “the university” to an assembly of those responsible for colleges and departments. Some diehards, misunderstanding, see this plan as an attack on the autonomy of colleges. In a sense it is: in the same sense that the oarsmen in the sport for which Oxford is famous choose to give up autonomy because it is better for everyone to row in the same direction.
The plans also require the definition of lines of responsibility and accountability. If this does not seem that radical, I recall that when I asked during a previous round of “reform” which body would be responsible for decisions on a range of specific issues, the answer in almost every case was that this would emerge as committees proceeded with their work.
The new vice-chancellor's most radical proposal is that oversight of management and finance should be handed to independent trustees on lines common among leading US universities. The roll call of Oxford graduates offers a slate of non-executives any company would lust for. Non-executives could not have tolerated Oxford's poor financial discipline. External accountability is the answer to the belief that “this is how we do it in Oxford” justifies any practice. And my experience is that outsiders have a more meaningful commitment to academic excellence than insiders who pursue internal consensus by eschewing the choices and judgments that quality control requires.
Oxford's alumni in business and government should make clear not only that they favour the change the vice-chancellor envisages but that their continued support requires it. Tony Blair, prime minister and himself an Oxford graduate, has given universities greater freedom through fees.
If institutional reform follows, there may be a glimmer of hope that Harvard and Stanford will again have competition to fear.
The writer is a fellow of St John's College, Oxford
牛津大学需要“改制”
美国和欧洲两地顶尖大学之间的差距一直在不断扩大。二战前，科学领域的诺贝尔奖有四分之三归属欧洲，如今是美国的获奖者占了这一比例。很多欧洲明星学者都到了美国。教学质量较难评估，但是一般而言，最好的学者走到哪里，最好的教学也相随而去。
牛津大学有最强的教育品牌。但对那些了解并喜爱牛津的人来说，令他们沮丧的不仅是该校历史声誉和实际现状之间的背离，还因为它没有能力解决这些问题。但至少后面这一点可能正在改变。促进这一变化对于欧洲经济来说非常重要。
牛津本身有一套复杂的学院体系。当地有一则笑话说，有位亲临牛津，站在众多历史建筑物之间的游客问道：“到底大学在哪里？”其实许多教学活动都在基督教学院(Christ Church)与巴利奥尔学院(Balliol College)等独立机构中进行。理科各系提供授课和实验室。在文科领域，教师选讲课程，学生则选听课程，而且经常选择不去上课。大多数学生和很多教员都认为，最重要的是对学院忠诚，而不是对这所大学忠诚。在外人看来，这似乎是造成治理问题的根源。
但真正的问题是大学的中央机构管理不称职，这个中央机构由五花八门的委员会组成，而这些委员会界定不明，职权重叠。如果现在有游客问：“大学在哪里？”，就会有人指给他们看威灵顿广场(Wellington Square)上那幢丑陋的建筑――那里是诸多委员会开会的地方。至于谁对某个决定负责，甚至是否做出过决定等问题，都不太明了。那些对其它学府来说不容置疑的预算或资源规划，在牛津却并不存在。
结果，最能干的人都退到了各个院系。每个专业服务机构的日子都不好过，因为优秀人士都不愿扛大梁。他们宁愿一边干“自己份内的事”，一边批评别人。在牛津，这种情形已经达到荒谬的程度。在任何学院或系科呆上5分钟，你都会发现里面的人对“大学”有着强烈的敌意。大学的利益看来与其各院系的利益不一致，而这种不一致，就如同躯体与自己的四肢打架一样。
去年，一位新的副校长来到牛津。他是新西兰人约翰?霍德(John Hood)，是第一位担任该职位的外国人。他试图结束这种分裂状态，把“大学”的控制权交给一个由各院系负责人组成的团体。一些顽固派产生了误解，认为这个计划是对各学院自主权的侵犯。其实从某种意义上说确实如此：就像是在牛津大学的著名赛艇运动中，各桨手就选择了放弃自主权，因为大家朝同一方向划效果会更好。
这些计划还要求明确界定各方的职责范围。如果说这种改革看上去并不那么激进，这使我想起在先前一轮“改革”中，我曾经问道：哪个机构将负责就一系列具体问题制定决策？几乎每次得到的回答都是，随着各委员会推进自己的工作，答案就会自然显现。
新副校长最激进的提议是，应该按照美国一流大学的普遍做法，把对管理和财务的监督交给外部独立董事。在牛津毕业生的名册中，有一批人是任何公司都渴望获得的非执行董事。如果牛津大学有非执行董事，他们就不可能容忍该校糟糕的财务纪律。大家有个信念，似乎“我们在牛津就是这么干的”可成为任何做法的理由。实行外部问责制是取代这种信念的答案。而我的经验是，在致力于实现牛津大学的学术卓越性方面，外部人士会比内部人士采取更有意义的行动，因为内部人士为了追求内部共识，会回避质量控制所要求的选择和判断。
在商界和政府任职的牛津校友们应当明确表示，他们不仅支持副校长所设想的变革，而且如果要他们继续支持牛津，学校就必须进行这种变革。托尼?布莱尔(Tony Blair)首相自己也是牛津毕业生，他已通过向各所大学拨款而赋予它们更多的自由。
如果机构改革能够跟进，那么要让哈佛(Harvard)和斯坦福(Stanford)再度担心来自牛津的竞争，也许就有一线希望了。
作者是牛津大学圣约翰学院的院士
