UNIVERSITY RESTRUCTURE: WHAT DO YOU THINK?

PeterM · Street Demonstrator

If you do one thing this month, decide the future of the University

As announced in November 2006, the University is proposing to restructure the current schools system from 19 schools into 4-6 colleges, each with a large amount of autonomy. The Guild will feed into the University’s planning for this, but to do this successfully, we need to know what YOU think about the restructure. You can complete our consultation survey at www.bugs.bham.ac.uk/unirestructure/ , or with a Guild Rep on campus between now and January 29th.
Make your University the way you want it to be.

Oktober · Black Bloc

Try

http://www.bugs.bham.ac.uk/unirestructure/

Teapotboy · Black Bloc

Amusingly Peter's link gets you "Due to the new look website, there has been some re-structure. "

Pushy Penguin · Black Bloc

Is there somewhere we can get more juicy information about the restructuring?
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"If you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network."
Ebin Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law

PeterM · Street Demonstrator

Pushy Penguin · Black Bloc

Ill happily join in if i could find more information. Is there a draft proposal or outline of the plans somewhere?
_________________
"If you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network."
Ebin Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law

Oktober · Black Bloc

The University has produced a booklet about their proposals, aimed mainly at the staff. I don't think it's online tho. You should be able to scab one of the university tho.

I think that the Guild is currently making something explaining the ways it will affect students and also, the things we can do to try and influence the restructure to benefit students more.

I've just been in an exec meeting and the sabs are all preparing to go into a full on thing so expect to hear more about it in the coming week or so.

naivehottie · Black Bloc

The very draft proposal had 5 schools: Science and Engineering; Arts & Pure Social Science; Applied Social Science & Law; Life Science (Psychology/Biology/Sports Science etc. and pre-clinical Medicine/Dentistry) and one I forget the name but it had post-clinical medicine and dentistry and Health Sciences (Physio/nursing)

These are NOT the final line-ups and they will probably put medicine and dentistry back together, but take some courses from the Medical school to Life Science (I think that was the Psychology ones name and not the Medicine one anyway), e.g. Neuroscience. The number and names are not confirmed but that's the rough idea and there will be 4-6.

Each college will have it's own head and board but some parts of the setup will still be uni wide (services or whatever it's called done by the registrar and secretary, I assume this means catering, accomodation, shops and the like). The separate colleges will have a lot of autonomy in different areas like teaching and research, so it's a lot different to the current deaneries (not that I know what they are) and I think they will get a certain allocation of uni money, but nto sure exactly how it will work

Pushy Penguin · Black Bloc

Cheers for that...perhaps something like that could be put on the guild website as an idea of what it will be like (or more)? My personal opinion would be that everything clinical should be in one school/college (whatever), apart from that i find the whole thing quite bemusing! I would certainly be very interested in reading the proposal/briefing paper etc! Im more interested in how students would participate in the structure i.e. would it be like cambridge or durham or completely different (well its completely different anyway because its subject divided) !

Something you might be able to answer is what perceived benefits and disadvantages does this structure have for uni admin? Would i be right in saying it is more 'american'? Am i right in believing this will require a complete overhaul of the unis constitution ? In which case -would they be touching the part about the status of students of the university? And how is the guild ensuring that students will be represented at the same level or higher in the new structure + what is the progress on this (prob. a question for garry or peter ...)?

If someone has the proposal or knows where i can get one could you point me in the right direction please.
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"If you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network."
Ebin Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law

Sazzle · Black Bloc

Has there been any idea or implication stated as to what the colleges will MEAN to the students in practice or will it pretty much be the same as now?

naivehottie · Black Bloc

This is similar to the set-up at Edinburgh I believe but they are called faculties.

They split medicine in two as a way to get them to compromise on losing a few courses from their school. Basically they needed Dentistry and I think Health Sciences in the Medical College but with all the current courses other than Medicine included that would be about 1/3 of the uni's budget which would be too large, so the likes of Neuroscience would change school

Georgy Porgy · Street Demonstrator

i can't claim to know much about this, but to me it seems like a bad idea.
i need to read up on this, but it seems as if this is another attempt to get Brum into the news as opposed to the upper echelons of the league table. A potentially costly exercise - i still don't see why it's necessary
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I have realised two things. 1) The world is full of idiots, and 2) I'm an idiot