Clearing is here
now, and Jessica
Guiver’s blog
about targets – and what happens if you miss them – has got me thinking about
this issue. A recruitment target is a number: it seems clear, precise and very
measurable; but in fact a recruitment target is also a cultural artifact that
can only be understood correctly in a particular context. Let me explain what I
mean.
Broadly
there are two approaches to targets. Some Vice Chancellors I have worked with
in the past have seen targets as an essentially rhetorical device. Their role
is to encourage the troops to try even harder and therefore it isn’t important
that they can necessarily be achieved. It may even be detrimental to the
intended incentive effect. Dull number crunchers like me tend to see targets as
part of a rational planning apparatus in which we work out a budget and
resource model robustly based on a realistic target number. Now whilst these
approaches to targets can be contrasted in principle, in practice they are
continually held in tension. Even the coldest technocrat does not actively wish
to discourage recruitment. Perhaps there are some VCs out there so ardent for
growth that they genuinely don’t care if the students all wind up in one
department whilst the budget to teach them is in another, but they assuredly
employ many people – both academic staff and accountants – who do.
