From the Archives: A New Approach To Warwick (~1964)

A rather wonderful find in my archival research on the Plate Glass Universities. Currently being converted (and corrected) from rather badly reproduced typewritten pages to the digital. Strangely far-sighted in its vision for higher education, this parody was written by a professor involved in the original design for the University of Warwick in 1964. Enjoy! 

A NEW APPROACH TO WARWICK (~1964)

The deep disappointment of the Executive Committee at the 'dull', 'unexciting' and 'uninspiring' suggestions of the Academic Planning Board necessitates a re-thinking of the whole basic problem. It is no doubt natural, as one of the Committee has expressed it, that a bright new City of Coventry with Its bright new Cathedral needs its bright new University to be concerned with bright new subjects which are cognate with the bright new needs of a bright new society. In an attempt to ensure that the new foundation is 'with it' in these respects the following new basic plan is put forward under a series of headings encompassing some of the main problems mentioned at the joint meeting.

1. The Vice-Chancellor.

It is a truism that the desirable characteristics of a human being which conduce to a successful Vice-Chancellor are so many that the field of choice is obviously limited. It has certainly been an outstanding lapse on the part of the Academic Planning Board that it has failed to bulldoze, browbeat or blackmail a candidate of the required calibre into accepting the post. Luckily, however, a little more thought makes it amply clear that the whole problem can be resolved in a new and most exciting manner. The solution is to establish a mechanical Vice-Chancellor. This simple statement immediately opens up vistas of opportunity, The compatibility with the technological ethos of Coventry is too obvious to need stressing. The cost to the new University need be minimal if the component parts of the Vice-Chancellor are donated by local engineering firms who would respond enthusiastically to an appeal couched in such terms as 'Donate a piece of the new Vice-Chancellor'. It would ensure that such firms would have a personal stake of the most concrete type in the launching of the new institution. It would be a most happy arrangement if the actual construction of the Vice-Chancellor were to be handled by the Lanchester College of Technology, thus ensuring from the outset the strongest of links between the two establishments. Such a robot Vice-Chancellor would have immense advantages over the human incumbents at present in general use. He would not need to be paid and, in addition, the cost of a Vice-Chancellor's lodge would be saved. The problems of retirement and replacement would never arise. Again the maddening inconsistency of the human prototypes would be eliminated, a Vice-Chancellor suitably programmed would give the same answer to a similar problem at any time in a manner independent of the department involved. The new university and its new Vice-Chancellor would grow in stature in a completely co-ordinated manner. Expansion of the former would automatically be accompanied by the addition of a suitable printed circuit to the latter.     Administration with maximised efficiency could give Warwick an enormous pull over all other Universities. This advantage could be rubbed in and well publicised by the establishment for university staff elsewhere of conducted tours round the Warwick Vice-Chancellor at servicing periods; the response would be overwhelming in view of the frequent, forcibly expressed ignorance as to what goes on inside a Vice-Chancellor.

The greatest advantage of the scheme is undoubtedly its pioneering novelty; Warwick would have the first fully-transistorised Vice-Chancellor in history. 

2. Finance.

The present Treasury-induced stringency makes it imperative to seek considerable funds elsewhere. The appeal to local (mainly engineering) industry is of course on the stocks but it would be only realistic to recognise Its limitations at present. Not only are profit margins shrinking but the impending impact of the Common Market provides an unanswerable basis for a regretful proffering of good wishes unaccompanied by a more substantial token. Once again, however, an apparently intractable problem vanishes directly a new view is taken. One industry is booming today and will continue to boom in a manner virtually independent of the normal economic fluctuations. It is an industry intimately intertwined with modern society, especially with regard to the younger generation. It is an industry in direct touch with all the bright new features of modern living. Most important of all, it is an industry with immense financial resources which constitute a virgin source hitherto untapped by any educational establishment. This treasure trove is, of course, the advertising industry. Its immense wealth is coupled with a yearning for status as a learned profession and its resources would be poured out unstintingly to a new University willing to open its heart to this laudable ambition. The manner in which this collaboration could be achieved is dealt with in more detail below.

Enough has been said to set the stage for the second highly novel feature of the Warwick project. It would be run on company lines and would make a profit right from the start. The reputation of its shares as growth stocks in the Bourses of the world would establish Warwick as the first academically-directed financial combine in its own right, the full flowering of those seeds sown so long ago by Keynes.

3. Student Intake.

The uninspiring idea that we should admit students much as other Universities do is surely a counsel of despair. This attitude would inevitably mean starting with a small number of students not all of whom would be of the highest quality. Warwick could by-pass this question of limited numbers and at the same time make a dramatic contribution to the solving of one of the key problems of modern society by another simple yet profound idea. Admission to Warwick should be restricted to juvenile delinquents. This entrance requirement should be interpreted very stringently; thus, although admittance in the first your could be granted to these on probation it would have to be understood that a conviction would have to be achieved before the end of this year. It should not be difficult to arrange with the Coventry Judiciary that such sentences be phased with the long vacation.

This type of student would have the effect of keeping Warwick permanently in the news and from the public relations point of view would be invaluable in many ways. At present it costs the country £800 per annum for each incarcerated juvenile delinquent. Warwick could thus charge a full economic fee for each student (say £500 per annum) and still provide a considerable financial rebate for the grateful taxpayer. Truly Warwick would be permanently lapped in the warmth of public approval which would be kept eternally on the boil by the never-ending vigilance of our industrial sponsors.

4. Buildings.

The above arrangements lead directly to many advantages in respect of the permanent erections needed for the new University. One has already been mentioned, namely the obviation of the necessity for a Vice-Chancellor's Lodge. Our industrial sponsors close links with commercial television point directly to an even more far reaching simplification. The only permanent buildings needed on the site will be student residences, exhaustively wired for sound and colour television.

Students will no longer have to leave their rooms to attend lectures which can be delivered straight from the staff's own houses or, better still, by means of pre-recorded video-tape. Lecture courses could be run on completely standard ITV lines with the natural breaks filled in by advertisements in the usual way (a further lucrative source of revenue for Warwick). The need for laboratories is removed by a judicious choice of subjects, the nature of which is discussed in the following section.

5. Schemes of Courses.

One of the most severe strictures of the Executive Committee concerned the triteness of the subjects suggested by the Academic Planning Board, which were much the same as those of any other University. It is difficult to avoid naming these subjects once again in the following discussion but, to avoid giving offense, they will be put inside quotation marks where they occur. One again, with a little thought, these unexciting topics can be readily replaced by a related theme which possesses the merit of rabid public interest combined with the maximum advertising potential. The coining of new names is a pre-requisite to ensure the necessary impact. Thus the place of 'Physics' may most suitably be taken by Spatial Ballistics. The new 250-acre site has ample roon for a small rocket launching pad and the primary task of the new professor will be to prepare for the launching of the first student into space. To parry any aesthetic objections Sir Basil Spence would be commissioned for the design of the gentry. 'Mathematics' would be suitably covered by the establishment of the Littlewood Chair of Applied Probability. The application of its research school to problems connected with pools, bingo, chemin-de-fer and the Stock Exchange would lay the foundations for a further augmentation of revenue. The holder of the Kinsey Chair of Human Biodegeneracy will have charge of a far reaching programme of selective human breeding, a project long envisaged by eugenists, but one which no university so far has had the drive to instigate. The results of this investigation will be published, not in the usual unintelligible learned Journals, but in certain selected Sunday organs of the press (at a suitable high fee). Closely allied to this project will be the department replacing 'Chemistry', which will be concerned with the two linked subjects aptly described by the appellation Cosmetico-contraceptics. With such handpicked students the 'Social Sciences' have enormous field-work potential right on the spot and, in view of the worldwide nature of the juvenile delinquent problem, these studies could be telescoped with 'Modern Languages' to produce such impelling subjects as Blousonnetteri, Halbetärkewisenschaftlichkeit and Stilyaginudnik. In view of the impending dedication of the new Cathedral to the Greater Glory of Coventry, the early filling of the Mervyn Stockwood Chair of Theopublicity is imperative. In these second Elizabethan times this subject might well come to be known as 'the virgin queen of the sciences'. It would obviously be jejune to attach this study to any of the more familiar sects and it is therefore proposed to restrict it to Mormonism. The combination of this study with the previously mentioned topic of Biodegeneracy would certainly produce that characteristic of cross-fertilisation so ardently desired from modern university education.

It is surely unnecessary to point out the immense support that our sponsors could offer in encouraging these subjects and ensuring wide cognisance of the pioneering spirit of Warwick. It would be a fitting tribute to them indeed if the very word 'University', a stale tern uned over-long in this context, could be jettisoned at last. As the new venture is dedicated to producing an anima for the advertising profession, let the new conception of the ANIMADVERSITY OF WARWICK be blazoned forth in the full sweep of its breathtaking originality.