If abusive lawyers can be banned from practising, why not academics?

Universities are not doing enough to police misconduct. We need an independent register from which bullies can be struck off, says Nicholas Rowe

March 14, 2024
Person being rubbed out on a blackboard to illustrated If abusive lawyers can be banned from practising, why not academics?
Source: Lisa Klumpp/Getty Images (edited)

The higher education sector is a key cog in many national economies. The UK sector, for instance, generates about £95 billion a year and supports more than 815,000 jobs in pursuit of its mission to educate tomorrow’s workforce and play a leading role in global research.

Yet academia is not a happy place. International studies show that postgraduate students are more than 10 times as likely to experience moderate-to-severe depression and anxiety compared with the general population, and they face a similarly high risk of suicide. If these figures are transposed to the UK student population, then every 24 hours, over 100 students in the UK can be predicted to suffer harm as a direct result of their engagement in postgraduate study. In England, this situation endures despite the recent establishment of the Office for Students, whose stated regulatory objective is to ensure that “students’ interests are protected”, but which has been criticised for a lack of independence from a government that has recently stopped short of imposing on universities a legal duty of care for students.

While universities have a responsibility to conduct teaching and research to agreed, externally monitored standards, they govern their own affairs when it comes to the professional behaviour of staff. But the evidence suggests that both the principles and practice of this governance have gone badly awry.

As examples, staff in UK higher education routinely work almost double their contracted hours, with over half showing signs of depression. Reports show that 32 per cent of UK university employees have experienced bullying, which ties in with institution-specific reports. Some 39 per cent have experienced or witnessed sexual violence, and one in five female students has been the victim of sexual assault at university. Also common are instances of elitism, academic misconduct such as cheating and predatory publishing, and legal violations such as enabling financial crime, misrepresentation, false advertising, wage theft, and health and safety at work breaches.


Campus resource: Addressing sexual misconduct in higher education, part one: prevention


Yet little effective action is taken. The non-obligatory guidance and charters issued by bodies and thinktanks (such as the UK’s University Mental Health Charter) consistently fail to acknowledge the academy’s role in the harm experienced by students and staff, while university leaders seem to regard the perpetrators of misconduct as rare bad apples whose misdeeds are best swept under the carpet, rather than allowing their actions to sully the reputation of a sector that is essentially above ethical reproach. Hence, nearly a third of UK universities have used non-disclosure agreements to suppress complaints – while academics are said to be “suffering in silence” amid widespread fear of reprisals for complaining about workplace abuse.

University of Cambridge academic Wyn Evans wrote in a Times Higher Education opinion piece published last October that the reaction to a previous piece he had written, “Bullying is a feature of UK universities, not a bug”, was “an outpouring of pain and distress” from fellow academics. I agree with him that, as the headline put it, “Investigating serious abuses must be taken out of universities’ hands”, but I don’t think his solution of an ombudsman to handle allegations of serious abuse is sufficient. An ombudsman’s decision may not be legally binding and its enactment can be impeded by false arguments of autonomy. Moreover, most universities have immense resources to brush off fines, and even if an academic is fired for misconduct, there is nothing to stop them taking another job and doing the same thing again, especially if their behaviour is covered up.

I believe that the academic profession should adopt the model of other professional sectors such as healthcare, law and engineering, where the right to practise is conferred by registration with a professional body, and where individuals who fail to adhere to professional standards can be struck off. After all, academics meet all of the criteria to be classed as top-level professionals (expert knowledge, extensive training), and their potential for misconduct and harmful abuse is equally apparent and evidenced.

Genuinely supporting the interests of students and academics requires not just OfS-style system management, but also a binding accountability at an individual level, whereby those in positions of trust and responsibility conduct themselves transparently and accountably, with meaningful sanctions for misconduct. This would pose no threat to university autonomy or academic freedom, which are the OfS’ two stated “vital ingredients” to the “health of our higher education sector”.

Of course, even professional registration is not a failsafe against abuse. As Evans notes, the case of the UK neonatal nurse, Lucy Letby, whose murderous malpractice was apparently swept under the carpet for years, illustrates that the urge to protect institutional reputations will always be high on senior managers’ priority lists. But it is surely better than what we have.

Given the clear harm that is caused to students and staff, effective regulation is a key step to protect the reputation of individual universities and the sector as a whole. Academia is rightly seen as a challenging environment, but it also needs to be a safe and rewarding one, with staff that perform to certifiably high standards.

Nicholas Rowe is an educationalist, with trans-disciplinary interests in scientific communication and educational/doctoral development.

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Reader's comments (6)

While I understand the inclination to create the equivalent of a professional status for professors, as are already in place in professions in healthcare, law and engineering, this comes with implications that might not be much appreciated. These other professions are regulated, and respond to professional bodies. These bodies sometime create immense hurdles for membership in the profession, including periods of "apprenticeship" before somebody is accepted, which create problems for newly established programs where there is a lack of licensed professionals. Beyond this, they become gatekeepers of the profession, which constrains program delivery, and start to impose quality control requirements for maintaining licensure. Given all this (and much more), I would think twice about this proposed strategy.
@ jim.nicell - are all of these 'hurdles' not already present and causing problems for a workforce that has a 70% rate of precarious employment, and is solely at the mercy of a cadre who are evidenced by huge studies as committing all sorts of harmful wrongdoing? Many would argue that the external quality control you mention is long overdue.
@NicholasRowe - I can only say, based on more than 30 years of experience as an engineering professor working within an accreditation system that requires engineers to be licensed in our local jurisdiction, that you need to be very careful in granting authority to an external body to adjudicate quality control. In my experience, this leads to constraints, bureacracy, academic freedom, and interference in the autonomy of higher education institutions. I can only begin to imagine the consequences of charging an external body (even one that is run by academics) with responsiblity for quality control, gatekeeping of the profession, and the mandate to investigate and then decide on who (and under what circumstances) must be excluded (perhaps permanently) from the profession. I predict that it would rapidly evolve into a system that is risk averse and that takes no action, except in extreme circumstances, because of disagreements that would arise in matters that are rarely black and white, and the liability that such an organization would inherently assume. Finally, I should note that, even in professions like medicine, engineering, law and others, the equivalent of "disbarment" rarely happens except under the most extreme or aggregious circumstances. In short, I am not a fan of the idea of establishing a centralizing authority to solve systemic issues like the ones we are confronting.
Some editorial corrections to what I wrote above are in order: Correction 1: "...an accreditation system that requires engineers to be licensed" should read as "...an accreditation system that requires engineering professors to be licensed..." Correction 2: "... this leads to constraints, bureacracy, academic freedom, and interference in the autonomy of higher education institutions" should read as "this leads to constraints, bureacracy, perceived limitations on academic freedom, and interference in the autonomy of higher education institutions."
Lawyers are LICENSED UNDER LAWS. University faculty and staff are not. There are binding ethics, standards and laws for attorneys. There are none for university employees. The analogy is false.
The title of the final submitted version of this article was ‘Harm, abuse and self-interest: has a ‘desensitized academy’ lost its right to self-governance?’, with a byline of ‘Nicholas Rowe pushes the need for the effective external registration and governance of members of the academic profession’ – a pre-print version will be published online, and a link provided in these comments. The function of the article was firstly to outline the harm that is done to students and staff by ‘the academy’ as a non-regulated profession, and then, in light of the figures and studies referred to, argue that we do not effectively self-regulate, even to the extent where we conceal crime and wrongdoing, and use strong-arm legal and financial means to suppress dissent. So, for me, every respondent in these studies is someone that has suffered harm, and allowing over 100 students per day to suffer harm is not conscionable. Extend this to the 30/40/50% rates of evidenced staff harm (including bullying, exploitation, sexual predation, etc.), then this is clearly a case of individuals acting to the known and purposeful detriment of others, at a level that is now being increasingly recognised in court (see recent THE article). The original article went on to name specific bodies such as the OfS who fail to fulfil specific areas of their stated policy in terms of safeguarding students (as evidenced by studies of documented harm). It also went on to look at the way that autonomous self-governance in universities acts in the interest of the institution, and not in the interests of the rights and reasonable expectations of the individual (again, evidenced by large population studies and reports). So, the way I see it, things like widespread moderate-to-severe poor mental health, rape, sexual violence, suicide, coercion and wage theft transcend any claims that regulation would 'compromise academic freedom and autonomy’ - it is not true. I was professionally regulated for 20 years in UK healthcare, and although I did have to demonstrate fitness to practice and meet certain criteria for registration (which are easily addressed by those with qualifications and good standing), not once did the regulating body tell me how to practice in the clinical setting or tell the hospital how to run its business – it is not what these bodies are for, yet it is often claimed as a reason for avoiding regulation. But it does ensure that people have and maintain clean records of conduct, have knowledge and skills suited to practice, and importantly are held to account for their personal conduct. If you look at the published adjudications of bodies like the GMC, NMC and HPC, numerous people are struck off or placed under sanction every year, so although it is not a guaranteed fix, it at least introduces accountability, which is what those suffering harm deserve. Autonomy and to the main degree self-governance are important, but so are the reasonable expectations of students and staff not to suffer predictable harm. One of the founding principles of our society is that we are governed by consent, and that we demonstrate our fitness to govern. The degrees of long-documented harm and wrongdoing call this into question.

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