| Description | Interview with Mr W. Nelson, former Finance Officer of Aberdeen University. This is the third interview with Mr Nelson, recorded on 13 February 1985 by Dorothy Johnson.
Transcript of Interview :
J Well, I think if we move now to the question of Government funding of large-scale operation, the capital grants for buildings programmes, for instance - to what extent were you involved in these things?
N Only at second hand, in that the programme for desirable additional buildings or major alterations to existing buildings originated on the Senatus side. We must always remember that the University Financial section and the Edilis section are in a sense technicians. They are there to do a job, but policy originates where it ought to originate, on the Senatus side, because the University exists to forward teaching and research. Therefore any policy for major building operations must start on the Senatus side. It has to be approved by the Senatus as a whole even though it may originate in a Faculty then the proposals for buildings have to be approved by the Court; and when certain proposals are approved, then the administering of their costs comes through the two technical departments - the Edilis and the Finance - but the policy is laid down and approved outside those sections.
J Would it not often be true that for the policy to approved the Court would have to have the financial facts and figures?
N Yes, but that is done in the course of the preparations of the Senatus's programme. You must remember that the Edilis section of the office is well informed and very competently directed on financial matters and that the senior members of staff know all about the costings of buildings and so far as the Finance section goes, it was really a matter on the capital side of seeing that payments were properly authorised and that they were properly charged against the capital project concerned; and not only did this apply to the Finance Office, it applied also to the University auditors, who by government requirement had to certify that all sums charged to capital projects were properly so charged.
J So the initial estimates, the invitations to tender, all this kind of thing, was handled by Edilis?
N That is correct.
J And you only came in at an accounting stage.
N That's right.
J I see. Well, I think perhaps now we could look at some of the more general implications of the Quinqennial estimating system and the general field of government funding. From what you have been describing it seems quite clear that in the mid-fifties the work of your department must have increased enormously with this increase in revenue. What effect, if any, did this have on systems and procedures within your department?
N Well, within any financial department change is constant. The fact the university was developing in the number of students in those years was in a sense immaterial because any finance department that is going to be alive has to be constantly checking itself and weeding our dead wood in its procedures, deciding that such-and-such a return or monthly summary that may be made is no longer necessary and therefore should be stopped, so that the increase in student numbers was really only part of that same process. Of course it increased the complication and the volume of the process, but it in effect simply put everybody on their toes; and in the days when student numbers were increasing there was no limitation set on the numbers of staff in the Finance section and if more staff were thought necessary they could be asked for and obtained.
J And did you do this as a result of the introduction of the Quinquennial system?
N Well, it's all part of the same story. The universities, as I've said already, after World War II were right at rock-bottom so far as numbers of students, numbers of staff, amount of money available, and thirty years after World War II say the build-up of the present situation.
J Yes, I see. I am being sidetracked slightly here in my own mind. You have been talking about the increase in work and the fact that you didn't immediately ask for more staff. Something which we might perhaps have covered earlier is your own personal workload during your years in the Finance Office. Can I ask you, did you find that you could cope with your workload quite easily between the hours of nine and five?
N No. Quite frankly, like so many other University staff, I could cope with the workload only by working constant overtime which of course means one of two things: either I am personally incompetent or the workload isn't properly apportioned. This was particularly heavy when I was also Clerk to the Court. Having to do those things was really too much and - I can't remember the date but it was during Mr Angus's time as Secretary - a major revision was made by setting up a separate Court section with separate Clerk for Court meeting and I was then responsible simply for work that either originated in or had to be passed to the Finance Committee; but certainly I know that when I was at the University for thirty years I very heavily overworked. I know that.
J Would you say that was true of most of your colleagues in the administration?
N It varied enormously. There were some extremely idle people who did no work at all and got away with it. This, of course, is one of the joys working in a university - you can get away with it.
J And looking back, would you have done it any differently?
N No, I don't think so, because I suppose one comes to like work even though one hates it.
J Did you find that the work was more of a challenge once the University had this increased funding from the Government and the capacity to expand? Did you feel that you were involved in something that was perhaps exciting and developing..?
N On, very. While the workload was certainly heavy, it was also huge fun and one of the best parts really of the 'fun' was finding that in the end of the day you had achieved the impossible, you had made the wretched thing work, you had done it.
J Well, this returns us to the question of how it was done? Again, in the context of Government funding, did you find yourself under any sort of pressure, then the Quinquennial estimates system began, to adopt procedures that were different for you but which would follow some sort of standard system that was more acceptable to the Government?
N There was constant pressure for standardisation of all kinds of things, originating from the government who, when they started putting up money to fund University expansions, obviously had to take a good look at the universities as a whole. And they found it all crazy. Because standardisation is by and large one of the things you do not get among universities simply because they have all grown up individually in all kinds of different ways. You have Oxford and Cambridge, you have the four Scottish old universities, you have the new universities, set up in the time of expansion in the fifties and sixties, and it was, from the point of view of Government look-at, it was just a muddled hotchpotch; and the Government was constantly endeavouring to obtain a greater degree of standardisation in, for example, what was taught where. Aberdeen had a long fight with the University Grants Committee over the Department of Agriculture. The Government, via the UGC, wanted the Aberdeen Agriculture Department closed down because there was a large school of agriculture at Edinburgh, and the Government argument, which in theory was unanswerable, was that any students who wanted to take up agriculture should become students at Edinburgh, not at Aberdeen. This was strenuously resisted by Aberdeen University not our of "What I have, I hold", not that, but on the grounds that the Northeast of Scotland was a very active and successful agricultural area that the Northeast had a very large body of research institutes in various agricultural aspect; and that to shut down the Aberdeen University agriculture department was crazy, on those grounds, and the Aberdeen policy won the day; and the agriculture department, instead of being shut down gradually expanded and formed even closer links with the College of Agriculture. That is just one example of the sort of apparently crazy set-up which, when you came to look at it, wasn't. This doesn't mean to say that some greater degree of standardisation among universities isn't desirable and isn't possible.
J Can you think of any specific things within your own office that you had to introduced as a result of pressure to standardise?
N No, because I was in favour of it -standardisation.
J You would be doing it anyway?
N Well, if I wasn't, I would be start doing so. I always tried to learn from my colleagues - I won't say pick their brains - but if they were doing something better than I was then I would adopt their system.
J In preparing your Quinquennial estimates, did you yourself have any direct contact with either members of the UGC or government 'agents', for want of a better name, or did you handle everything through the Secretary and Aberdeen officials?
N Basically, the latter, though all universities had quite a close working contact with the man, whoever he might be at any time, who was in overall charge of financial matters within the UGC office. During most of my time there was a Mr Thomas who was the financial head in the UGC, and there were constant working arrangements with him, mainly by telephone: I would ring Thomas up and say, 'Well now, what about this? How do you think it would be better if I handled this?' And it was all very amicable; there was nothing jack-boot about it - nothing like that at all - but a lot depended on personalities; if one was a very difficult type one probably didn't get on all that well with the UGC; but if one was more reasonable, one did.
J Would you ever have heard information unofficially through such channels in advance of the official announcement about grants?
N Well, yes and no. Formally, no - but, I mentioned Mr Thomas, if there was something cooking in the UGC, he might ring me up and say 'Oh, by the way…'
J I see. We've touched, rather obliquely, on the question of other Finance Offices in different British universities. I wonder if you cold tell me how formal your contacts were with other Finance Officers.
N Well, 'Scots wha hae'. The relation between all the Scottish Finance Officers couldn't have been closer and in addition to the annual Finance Officers' Conference for Britain as a whole, the Scottish Finance Officers used to meet quite frequently to discuss certain things that had cropped up, whatever it might be, where it was thought that some common policy among the Scottish universities was desirable or that the Principals of the Scottish universities should be advised that such-and-such a situation was building up and that the Finance officers all thought that etc, etc. So that among the Scottish Finance Officers it couldn't have been closer and matier.
J Would you ever have discussed thing as the detail of departmental expansion? For instance, had Aberdeen been thinking of expanding its Russian department, would this have been something which would have been discussed with the Finance Officers?
N When you mentioned Russian, it's a little complicated, because when I was there the teaching of Russian was very marginal. The number of students who wanted to learn Russian was very small and there was a constant problem of 'What do we do about this small language department? Ought we really to run the department of Russian (I pick out Russian merely as an example) when they have only three students, shall we say?' I am not trying to malign the department of Russian, but a small language department was a constant trouble and headache. Did you maintain it and think it was desirable to maintain it even though there were so few students, or not? Where do you draw the line? And while there was a certain amount of informal discussion with other Finance Officers, usually by phone, about this sort of question, it tended to remain internal within any particular university.
J Would you have felt that there were certain things about university policy - pending university policy - in Aberdeen, which you would discreetly keep to yourself at such a meeting, or was it fairly frank and open?
N Oh, it was very frank really. One was frank about the things one was ready to be frank about, put it that way. So that's another of these 'yes and no' answers. Another thing, too, within the Scottish Finance Officers, you got to know your colleagues.
J Yes. So quite apart from the formal meetings you would have discussed thing informally with them?
N Yes, but what I mean is that you knew those who were always frank with you and those who kept things to themselves. You came to know.
J What about contacts with the Finance Officers south of the Border?
N Very slight. I'm not touching on national politics now or that sort of thing. [break] Scotland in the financial arrangement for universities did tend to maintain a certain aspect and outlook of independence. Certainly the outlook was that the Scottish universities on the financial side were not going to get absorbed into the much larger English set-up, and partly as a result of that there weren't really very many contacts with English Finance Offices - a certain amount and if there was anything, it was usually, as far as Aberdeen went, with one or two particular English universities where one had formed a certain degree of friendship with a particular Finance Officer elsewhere, and you might just fall into the habit of ringing him up and asking him how he did such and such, but it was all pretty informal.
J What areas did you see as being against the interests of the Scottish universities to fall into the British system?
N There were ins and outs among different parts of Scotland, just as there are in England; and by and large the feeling in the Scottish universities was that, while a proper measure of independence should be retained by the Scottish universities and care should be taken to see that in the policies originated by the UGC didn't forget that there were all kinds of things in Scotland that were different from the way they were done in England. Provided one wanted that it was better to maintain the national structure of all universities coming under the guidance - not really control but guidance - of the UGC, rather then have a thing that has been asked or often, and that is a separate UG for the Scottish universities; but the general feeling in the Scottish universities is against that, because while Scotland wants to maintain its proper sense of independence from England, it doesn't want to fall under the West of Scotland. In other words, while the Glasgow area cannot control the universities in Scotland under the present set-up, if there were a separate Scottish UGC, Glasgow might; and it is thought that often misinformed but nevertheless disinterested London UGC is the safer bet.
J Was the alternative under active consideration during your period in Aberdeen?
N Oh, on and off, constant; but it's never really been pushed, just because, providing one kept one's eye open, the London UGC was the least disinterested.
J And the push for it, would it have come from Glasgow?
N I don't know that I can really answer that, I really haven't got enough knowledge on that. It was just that the whole West of Scotland is so much more densely populated, so much bigger, that just as Scotland as a whole has to watch that it doesn't get swallowed up by England, so the rest of Scotland doesn't want to get swallowed up by Glasgow.
J I'm just wondering about the form in which this idea would be presented when it did arise - was it something that came up at one of your meetings of Scottish Finance Officers on which you might have taken a vote or had discussion, or was it much more informal than that?
N Oh, much more informal. There was never, so far as I knew, so far as it came my way, any formal proposal that there be a separate Scottish UGC but it was always in the air; it was one of those things that was always brewing without ever being pushed. You mentioned taking votes at Scottish Finance Officers' meetings - there were no votes taken, it was a bit like meetings of the Court, the consensus of opinion.
J What sort of material would you have had on the agenda at your meetings?
N It depended on the interests and activities of the various Finance Officers. I always sought to have two or three items on the agendas, because I felt one should: the more one could discuss at such meetings, the better. Other Finance Officers just came along for a smoke and a drink, so to speak.
J But the items on the agenda would have been items where you would have wanted the advice from professional colleagues on how to handle a particular problem?
N Or their view on the most desirable policy that should be followed among several alternative, which mightn't be the same policy as I might want to follow, because the alternative arrangements within all the Scottish universities were different. And there was also a marked difference in the capabilities of the various Finance Officers. One or two of them stood out as much more competent than their colleagues.
J Could you give me an example of the kind of problem that you might have brought from Aberdeen to such a meeting?
N You ask me this off the cuff - but just to think of the real
annual: centralised purchasing. Ought departments to do, as Aberdeen does, each department buy its own equipment out of its departmental grants; or ought there to be a large centralised purchasing office set up for the university as a whole, that did all the ordering on the basis of requests by departments, all the receipt of the items of equipment into store and the issue to departments - or not? Which way did you want to do it? This is an old hardy annual, it comes up constantly. By and large, the view is that it should all be done directly by departments, which is of course the Aberdeen policy.
J And that's general in Scottish universities?
N Yes. I'm speaking always, as I have said one or twice, of about ten years ago.
J You mentioned that on occasion you might have discussed with your colleagues matters which perhaps the Scottish Principals should stand on. Could you perhaps give an instance of one of these?
N I can't think of one at the moment. Let's just mention the one I have already touched on - the continued existence of an Agriculture Department in Aberdeen University. Now that is certainly something which the Finance Officers would have discussed. Even though it affected Aberdeen directly, and it particularly affected Edinburgh University, where the counter policy was that the agriculture students should go to Edinburgh. Did Edinburgh want them? Could Edinburgh cope? Etc, etc.
J Were issues like developments at Stirling of interest to the Finance Officers?
N Now, perhaps I'm touching on something that I shouldn't say. Poor old Stirling! It's quite incorrect to call Stirling the lame duck of the eight, but a bit like the Seven Dwarfs, one of them always came along in the rear. It tended to be Stirling.
J Was there any suggestion in the early days that what Stirling was getting was taking something from the cake which the rest of you might have had?
N Not really, because Scottish development was desired in student numbers and the only kind of argument really was should the eighth Scottish university be at - as it were - in Stirling, should it be at Inverness, should it be away in the West at Fort William, should it be out on Skye, etc, etc. But Stirling was decided on as being the more central place.
J I think you have mentioned before that you attended meetings of Finance Officers - general meetings - these would have been South of the Border, would they?
N They were held in turn at any university which at the annual finance Officers' Conference said that they would be happy to host the next Finance Officers' Conference, or the one after that. Usually where the Conferences were to be held, that was settle perhaps two years in advance, perhaps three. There was a kind of shortlist and this was on the basis of offers by individual Finance Officers.
J Would these annual conference have been very much working events, or was the emphasis more social?
N Both. An endeavour was made to express both aspect, and I think the last Finance Officers' Conference held in Aberdeen during my time was in 1968; and there the general policy was working sessions in the morning and afternoon on some days, and on other days - these conferences usually lasted about three days in total - at least one day one would have an outing. I remember we went off (in 1968) up to Braemar and we were very lucky in having a very nice day. But it was a kind of mixture of working sessions and social occasions, and one of the points that was always raised was 'Should the Finance Officers bring their wives with them?' It didn't happen very often. There were usually perhaps - shall we say - forty Finance Officers and there might have been half a dozen wives who came along, who didn't of course attend any of the sessions but were in on the social events.
J And the working sessions at these conferences, would these have included questions of general policy, the development of British universities, or would they have concentrated on more procedural thing within Finance Offices?
N The greater weight would have been the latter, but there were also always questions raised on policy affecting universities as a whole, and one of the complications in that was this very lack of standardisation among universities that there wasn't any general pattern: some already did the things that the UGC was asking, and dome didn't want to, very often. Very often that kind of question really came down to an exchange of information as to what was done or what the views were.
J In this field, would Aberdeen have counted as one of those who did the things which the UGC wanted?
N Again, an awful lot depends on how people got on. I used to get on very well with this Mr Thomas I have mentioned, and as far as possible I always tried to perform what he put forward as what wither the UGC or the Government would like done; but of course there were some times when you had to stand out and say 'No'. and if one said 'No' one wasn't pressed.
J When you met in Aberdeen in '68 and at these other conferences, would there have been UGC representation?
N Yes, one or perhaps two UGC representatives would be invited. They obviously took no part in the proceedings; they were simply there to listen. It was a matter of courtesy and a way of exchanging information. This was the first occasion, and in fact the only occasion, that the UGC staff had of meeting all the Finance Officers, knowing what they were thinking, and generally forming an overall opinion on the financial aspect of universities, so I am sure that in fact it was very valuable to them to be there, however informally.
J Did this ever lead to heated exchanges?
N With the UGC?
J Yes.
N Well, not heated exchanges, some fairly direct and pointed remarks, sometimes, which were always taken in the best of spirits.
J Did you ever feel that people were censoring their remarks because of the UGC presence?
N No. That didn't apply. The Finance Officers were not afraid of the UGC; they all stood up to them; partly because they felt that they had to or it would be a case of the lion and the lamb lying down together, with the lamb beside the lion.
J In such meetings what was the representation from the Oxbridge side of British universities?
N As with all other universities, one person.
J Were you to any extent swung by this influence?
N No. Not at all. The only people who felt awkward were London. Nobody liked London one little bit. They were the only people who were cliquey; they were the only people who sat and talked only to other London people; and there were always about half a dozen of them at a conference, representing the various colleges that made up London University as a whole; and of everybody they were the only who really weren't very popular.
J So, for London you would have had one person per college but for Oxford…
N Just one person for the university.
J Why was that?
N Well, this is the sort of thing that London did - they came as a group, they talked among each other as a group, and they tended to voice the same opinions. As I say, they were the only people who really jarred slightly. But Oxford and Cambridge were much more amenable, they were quite content to have one voice speaking for Oxford and Cambridge.
J Was that to any extent related to the fact that they were less dependent on Government financing?
N It might well have been, because Oxford and Cambridge in many ways are the odd men out. They do not depend on Government financing in anything like the way the other universities in Britain do, simply because, even more so than in the four old Scottish universities, they were very substantially endowed in medieval times and they can live more or less on that basis still.
J Could I finally ask you for your opinion, on the basis of all this contact with the other British universities, how did you feel that Aberdeen was doing [in] the funding stakes? Did you feel that we were generously funded?
N I certainly thought that we were fully and adequately funded, and in fact I made myself more than usually unpopular by saying so at Finance Officers' Conferences, at which point the only person smiling was the UGC representative.
J And they thought that this was a bad more?
N Yes. Let's say that the only person who stood me a drink that night was the UGC representative.
J And it didn't affect Aberdeen's estimate for the next year, did it?
N How do you mean? I don't quite understand…
J If you were admitting to the UGC that we were adequately funded, and Aberdeen was then asking for increased funding, it never came back upon you that you had made this admission?
N No. It was partly in good spirit, but it was meant.
J So you genuinely felt that we had enough, although there were developments that obviously were regularly not possible?
N Well, let's say - I'm merely taking figures out of the air and I might be making wrong comparisons - the recurrent grant for general expenditure (and we must remember that the UGC grants are in a lump sum to each university without any indication of appropriation to any purposes: it is entirely within the discretion of each university to spend its lump sum as it chooses) let us say that that lump sum was £13million: I might have felt that we could have done all we did quite all right on a million less. But it's no part of a university's financial job to save money. Its function is to spend its money on academic purposes but of course to spend it wisely, not to overspend it. There was one Scottish university that regularly was in an annual deficit on its general income and expenditure account, and laughed about it and said, 'It doesn't matter because the UGC and the government can't let us go bankrupt - they have to fund us out in the end of the day'. Now, I took the view that that was a dishonest policy, that if one was receiving sums and accepting sums from the Government and the Grants Committee, one should live within them. And while, of course, it is natural for me to be biased, I believe that Aberdeen University was as soundly financed, after I had been there for thirty years, as any other university in the country.
J When you say that you perhaps got £14 million and you could do the same projects on £13 million are you saying that this extra million was spent on padding?
N What was it Dickens said? Income - £1; expenditure 19/11½d; happiness. Income £1; expenditure £1 ½d misery. You can always spend right up to your income. You have got to watch that you don't overspend and within a university there is always the possibility of waste - of course there is - and it has got to be watched with the greatest care. And for this reason - just to digress slightly - there was an internal auditor in the University Office whose job it was to go round departments and check that in various ways - and usually he went to look at certain specific things - to check that there wasn't waste in departments; but you can always cut down on what you spend and still achieve your object, and live within your income, but of course it is a constant fight. And part of the Finance Section's constant fight was keeping everything within the financial limits, both in departments and in the University Office itself.
J [aside] I'd just like to continue this, if we could. This extra money that was around which you said could have been cut and the same aims achieved -
N That was my opinion - it wasn't necessarily the opinion of the Finance Committee or of anybody else.
J The fact that we had this extra money, do you think that this gave rise to a feeling in Aberdeen that things could be asked for with confidence?
N Well, I am all for co-operation, I'm all for people getting together. I don't believe in putting up barriers and all that kind of thing. Certainly during my time I tried to be as accessible to people in departments as possible. I had a standing rule, which I think [was] quite unusual, that my personal telephone was switched right through to the university switchboard, so that any academic who wanted to talk to me found me at the end of a phone whenever he asked for me, not my secretary.
J [A question] which we haven't really touched on yet is the question of grants that came either from the Government or from other agencies to departments or were allocated to specific research projects. To what extent was the Finance Office involved in these grant applications and in the expenditure?
N In the grant application which (in the sort of cases you refer to) must have been originated by and from the department itself - in the original discussions on the obtaining of a grant from an outside body of that kind, the University Office really had no knowledge of it at all and took no part in it at all, unless it was something quite routine like, 'What is the level of salary that is paid to a lecturer at the third point on the scale?' or some detail of that kind where the reason for the enquiry might be explained; but the University Office as entirely happy to leave the department to conduct these opening discussions with the grant giving body itself; and not until the grant was approved was it expected, and indeed required, that all the financial arraignments should come through the Financial Section of the Office. The quite widespread holding of what are called 'private funds' by departments - they are supposed to declare them if they have been given money by some source outside the university system, and in so far as I know they played fair and gave information on holding these funds, and there was no objection whatsoever to their holding funds within the department, provided that the University Office knew about it and that payments in and out were routed through the Office. The holding of private funds without telling the Office was clearly undesirable because what could be treated as a kind of secret kitty be departments simply shouldn't exist. It meant that if they had undisclosed money under their own control they could drive a carriage and four though the system of university departmental grants; they could overspend on a certain activity and pay for it quietly and unknown out of their private funds; and in theory, and I think in practice, if any department is given any money it does disclose it to the Office.
J Can you recall any instances where grants were given in the proper way to a department but where the activity that was undertaken subsequently became a burden on the University?
N It's rather hard to answer, because in a sense any active department is a burden on the university - and should be. The really go-ahead, knowledgeable and, in some cases, thrusting professors are really the very chaps you want and they are bound to bring in their slipstream financial problems for the University, but that's fine, provided it's all open and above board and everyone knows what's happening; so that I really can't answer your question because nobody ever objected to being put to that kind of trouble.
J You didn't acquire any white elephants - research projects that had been started and it seemed a shame to shut down but whose funding had petered out and were taken on by the university?
N No, nothing like that, but there was that sort of thing went on within departments. I can remember one case where one department was found to have down in its basement a number of large, unopened packing cases - they only discovered this by chance - the professor was asked what these were and how long had they been there, etc, etc and it turned out this was equipment which had been bought for a certain lecturer who had now left, and he had left at abut the time that the cases arrived and they had stood unopened ever since he left. So that kind of waste can take place within a department. One would hope that in a well-organised department - and very often the organisation depended not on the professor or the lecturers, but on the senior technicians. It was a bit like the Army: In the Army the man who matters most isn't really the CO, it's the Sergeant Major. And if you had a good senior technician he would very often run the department extremely efficiently, and with the knowledge that he was doing the running, of the academic staff. They were only too thankful not to have to do it themselves.
J Presumably many grants would have come with strings attached, which would have discouraged this kind of waste.
N Should have discouraged [it]. But just because a university is intentionally fragmented in the way that it is, it is impossible to avoid all waste. This kind of unopened packing-case business is always liable to happen in a university.
J But you didn't find that it was incumbent upon you and your staff to monitor the way in which grants were administered?
N Again, this is another of these 'yes and no' answers. All grants, even then given from outside the UGC, had to be processed through the University Office and therefore all the financial records on them were kept in the Office and there was, in fact, a separate sub-section within the Finance Section that dealt with outside grants - it wasn't a big one, I think there were two girls in charge of it; but it was a recognised financial activity and one which was always encouraged. The more outside grants that any department got, the more active that department to become a kind of deadhead.
J I understand that it can happen, certainly at present, that if an individual member of staff can get outside funding, that he is thereby more likely to be granted internal funding as well. There is a fund available which will top up money that he has already acquired from outside. Did anything like that happen in your day?
N Oh, yes. An academic who is successful in getting outside funding is clearly putting his back into his job. It may be that his interest is very specialised, but after all specialisation is one of the activities of a university, and anyone who is obtaining substantial outside funding therefore puts himself so far as the university organisation goes, in a favourable light and is therefore much more likely to get university funds allotted to him in addition to an outside grant than other people.
J Is this an area where the academics would have asked you for advice?
N Oh, yes, quite substantially; and, as I say, I tried to maintain constant contact with them, not only by telephone, but I always encouraged them to come in and talk to me.
J In general, did you find that this administration of grants made by outside bodies was fairly trouble-free?
N It needed careful handling, it could go wrong, not intentionally but the academic himself might have very limited knowledge of a financial procedure and he could get his legs all round his neck - quite unintentionally.
J Moving from that question of grants for individual projects to the question of completely separate institutions with which the university has a close relationship - an academic liaison or something a little more formal than that - I wonder, can you tell me how this might have involved you with institutions like the Rowett, or Torry, the various research bodies that we know of around Aberdeen?
N The only one with whom there was a close financial contact was the North of Scotland College of Agriculture, where there was what one might term, I think, 'a marriage', in order to share activities and also to share costs. The new Agriculture Building, the costs of that -again I am speaking from memory and I may be wrong - but I believe it was shared on a basis of two-thirds College of Agriculture, one-third University, both I believe on the capital aspect and on the running expenses. With the others it was what you might call an academic liaison, not a financial one.
J As far as the question of agriculture was concerned, did this work fairly well?
N Close association with the land is meant to make people reasonable: it doesn't seem to work that way. Agriculture was always troublesome, and so many of the people who were concerned with agriculture were difficult men.
J Do you think it would have been less troublesome had you had a hundred percent charge of the financial side of the venture?
N No, I don't think so, because so much of the difficulties over the liaison with the college were simply personal. The men concerned were just like that.
J The other area which I can think of is perhaps the Regional Health Board. Is this an area that touched on your…
N There was a special arrangement with the Regional Hospital Board for what are termed the 'laboratory departments' - that is to say, departments at the Medical School at Foresterhill who did work examining specimens sent over by the hospitals for analysis. If, for example, in the department of pathology, which was one of these 'laboratory departments' - pathology deals very heavily with cancer, and specimens taken from patients in the words would be sent to the laboratories of the department of pathology for analysis - 'Is this specimen benign or malign?' - and the technicians and the lecturers who were engaged in that work would analyse the specimen and return the answer to the wards. And this of course was something for which the hospitals paid the University.
J What about the question of members of staff? Were you involved in decisions about whether X should properly be paid by the Health Board, or was this something where you were simply presented with lists of figures for salary payments?
N There was a committee - a joint committee of the Regional Board and the University - that met with necessary, to discuss any questions concerning the laboratory services departments, and the kind of thing to be discussed and agreed within that committee.
J Was there any sense that the university was to some extent subsidising the Health Service in this area?
N Well, the professors of the laboratory services departments were always proclaiming that that was precisely what was happening, but the Regional Board always pleaded poverty - they couldn't afford more etc, etc. There was always unresistible pressure on the university staff who dealt with these laboratory specimens, because at the other end of it was a patient and therefore even if the number of specimens was, they felt, quite excessive, they couldn't turn them down.
J Is it something about which you yourself developed any particular opinion, in the course of your period at Aberdeen?
N Well, one tended to classify all academics on a kind of scale of merit or demerit, or a mixture of both. Certainly the medical academics were the best businessmen by far. They were extremely good at getting in outside grants of very substantial sums. Next in financial ability came the scientist, and a way after that came the art people, and at the very end of all, the divines who couldn't add two and two.
J And as far as the medical faculty was concerned, did you feel that they were getting more than their share of did you simply admire their competence?
N Both. I admired their competence and I watched them with a very sharp eye.
J Is this possibly an areas where you saw distinctions between Aberdeen and other universities, particularly those south of the Border?
N So far as I have ever heard, there was no link with the Regional Hospital Board and the university anywhere else in Britain, but saying that I may be quite wrong.
J Was it something that ever came up in the context of financial planning?
N The laboratory services departments in particular, and the medical faculty in general, were always regarded with a certain amount of - not dislike, but a feeling that the medics were 'getting away with it again'; that whatever funds there were, were being routed into medical activities; and this, I think though I may wrong, was felt particularly be science departments, because there was competition for limited funds, and again the unanswerable argument that the medics could always put forward - there is a patient at the end of this.
J And this argument was actually used?
N Oh, regularly. And of course it was true. You can say that universities shouldn't have put themselves into a position where that kind of argument could be used against [it] them.
J Were there ever any efforts made to rationalise certain areas of this operation - to say 'Right, this is now properly a Health Board responsibility'?
N Yes, this was constantly examined, and I was for years in the closest contact with the Finance Officer f the Regional Board. We always knew each other very well and we were constantly speaking to each other.
J Can you think of any areas where this sort of liaison with the university and another local body existed?
N A financial one? No, I think you have touched on the two.
J Could we perhaps move to another rather tricky area, possibly, of the university's finances - and that is the university's ability to make money. Was this something which came your way? Were schemes presented to the Finance Department for approval? Did you have oversight of the various ways in which departments tried to make money?
N Not really. Again, it depended on the activity of the head of the department, and also the kind of activity of that department. Let us take the Department of Engineering. I carried out a whole lot of projects for, for example, Aberdeen Harbour Board. It carried out projects on the effects of tides, of silting of the harbour mouth - practical projects where outside bodies needed an answer. And some departments, like engineering, had this kind of body of activity that was very often not open to a department which didn't have such close public application as what happened down at the harbour. But the actual launching of appeals for money didn't come my way and now it has been to some extent centralised by the Development Fund which was set up a few years ago under Dr Alistair Smith in the Geography Department, and that, I believe, is doing quite well in obtaining outside money.
J We may perhaps return to some of these points later. One of areas of development which took place in your period in office was the establishment of the Television Centre, and I wondered if, when it was thought of, there was any idea that it might be either self-financing or that it might generate revenue.
N When it was set up it was recognised that it was potentially a bath with the plug pulled out. It could cost millions unless we all watched ourselves, and so from the start it had to have a programme for money raising and self-financing. In fact, financially it never really worked. It ended by being a financial drain and I believe, though I am out of date on this, that it has now been very substantially cut back.
J It has basically ceased to exist, in fact.
N This is what I thought, but I didn't wish to say so because I didn't really know. That is really because it turned out to be so costly. One of the troubles, of course, with any television set-up is that you have an energetic, driving man at the head of it, and that inevitably means expenditure.
J So there wasn't any optimism from the start that this might finance itself?
N Hope, with mental reservation and a constant watching on what it was costing. An another section of activity with the same open-ended cost risk is computing.
J Did this affect your reception of these developments?
N It wasn't for me to have opinion on these developments which were recommendations by the Senate and approvals by the court I had merely to administer them, but of course I knew where the financial danger-points were and tried to keep a close eye and finger on them.
J And to broadcast them? To inform the Secretary and anyone who asked you about these danger points? You would make your opinions about them clear at some level?
N Oh, yes. My normal contact with the next higher up in the Office would be to the University Secretary; and if there were any financial developments that appeared to be getting out of hand, I would draw his attention to them.
J So far we haven't at all, I think touched on the question of the University Library. I wonder if we could look at it. As an institution it developed in a number of ways during the period when you were in Aberdeen, but there were certain things that it did not do, such as acquire a new building for itself - this has been a much more recent development. Could you tell me anything about the background to this?
N Basically, there has been always been a certain amount of difficulty over the library and this stems from its origins. The four older Scottish universities were set in order by the Government Act of 1889 and that Act set up the Library Committee as a separate, self-governing body independent of the University court in the running of the necessary acquiring of books and manuscripts, and a Library Committee was set up to run the Library. There has therefore fundamentally always been a case for library independence. This was intended by the 1889 Act and Library Committees and librarians have always been conscious of this initial independence given by Parliament to university libraries in Scotland; and while this independence is a very good thing, it has brought in its train, inevitably, a certain amount of friction with the University Office an on all too many occasions friction between the University Librarian and the University Secretary: two very senior officials whose very close co-operation was always most essential but at certain periods in the past was missing. Now, you mentioned the new library building - this is something that I cannot express any opinion on because it happened after I left. This is not to say that there wasn't talk for years and years and years about the library having a different place than King's. The old library at King's obviously had limitations on space for storage. But what no doubt developed into some degree of battle between the Library Committee and the University Court on the best from of new building for the library to have was really something that happened after my time.
J Were there any other aspects of library development which you recall as being an issue?
N I don't think so; no, but I would say so. But, as I say, there was always this element of background friction between the Library and the University Office which was highly undesirable, and stemmed partly from the intentional element of independence granted to the library by the 1889 Act.
J Do you think that the fact that the Library Committee had this apparent independence and that its case did not come initially through Senatus in any way affected the timing of the new building?
N I couldn't answer that, because I don't know. I wasn't in on any of the discussions and it wouldn't be right for me to express any opinion.
J I see, thank you. One of the other areas we haven't yet touched on is the question of students and I thought we might perhaps look at that subject first, from a purely financial point of view: the changes in student funding during the course of your period in Aberdeen. When you arrived students, I take it, either paid their own fees or were in receipt of Carnegie grants?
N That is so, and most of them paid their own fees or I don't think you mentioned bursaries. That was a very important source of financing for students, and the Bursary Comp. in those days was a major event in Aberdeen because it really affected how was going to come into the university. It has now of course dropped out, except as almost a side issue.
J The change to local authority grants came then in the 50s. Is that correct?
N Yes, it was spread over quite a long period and gradually developed. But it would be in the fifties that it started.
J Did this affect work in your office very much?
N Not much because the system was that everything to do with students was routed in the University Registry, and the acceptance of students and their payment of fees was done in Registry. The money of course was paid into the university bank account but its actual receipt was handled by the Registry, for very many years under Mr John Greig.
J That being the case, at what point would you have had contact with students.
N Really very little. Students didn't really come the way of the Finance Section. This may sound a bit odd, but the system was that students arrived through being accepted by the Senatus for a certain Faculty and then went through all the acceptance procedure with the Registry, not with the Finance Office.
J If they encountered financial difficulties while they were at university would they have come to you or gone again to Registry?
N Come to me. While it was not encouraged at all, there was a certain amount of giving of loans to students; but they had certainly to make a case that was acceptable to me personally. The kind of thing that I can think of is that loans were often given to overseas students, say students from Nigeria, to pick a country at random, whose money to pay their fees hadn't arrived yet, but from all the documents that I saw it was obviously simply delayed and within a matter of months the money would arrive. Then if the case was made to my satisfaction, the Finance Section would advance to the Registry to amount of the fees that were shortly to come in. So there was a kind of very limited financial assistance to students.
J So to a great extent then the whole student area of the university life was at one remove from you?
N That is correct.
J Did this seem strange at all?
N No, not at all. The system worked very well and it tended to make students that much more impressed by the Finance Section, which was the last place they had to go to, as it were.
J What about the financing of student societies?
N This came through the official student bodies - the University Union, the SRC, and the Athletic Association - and there there was a laid-down procedure whereby those bodies had to submit estimates to the Finance Sections and they were then examined by the Finance Committee and grants approved to those students bodies, to whom the approved money was then given and they paid it into their own bank accounts and were their own financial masters; but the other side of that was that they were very strictly required to submit audited annual accounts to the Finance Committee.
J And these would have been audited by professionals, would they?
N The university professional auditor, Meston and company, not Deloittes which is the same firm but with a new name. I, personally, was very strict over that matter.
J In general, did that system work quite well?
N Very well. The relations between the students and the Finance Section were excellent. The students of course beefed at all sorts of thing they didn't like - they hadn't been allowed money for this, that and the next thing - but it didn't matter, it was all part of the game. During my time there I was Treasurer of the University Union which was, I think, the only case of a university official being a student official in Britain; so our relationships would have been better - we were all pals together.
J How had this happened?
N Because I made it so. I made it part of my duty to be on the best of terms with students.
J But how did you come to be Treasurer?
N They asked me.
J Who had been the preceding Treasurer?
N I forget.
J Was it a student?
N No, I can't answer that because I've forgotten and I shouldn't say 'yes' or 'no' if I can't remember. But from very early on I was the Treasurer of the University Union.
J Does this mean that you were actually administering the funds that the Office had given to the Union?
N Again, yes and no. I used to attend all the monthly meetings of the Union Management Committee. Any financial matters or questions that came up used to be dealt with on the agenda first, and as soon as they were dealt with I got up and left. I didn't stay for the rest of the meeting, so I didn't intrude in purely student matters. But his system worked excellently and they were forever coming to me and asking my advice; and it was a little difficult because, in the jargon expression, 'I was wearing two hats' - I was Treasurer both of the university and of University Union, and if they wanted to put up an application for something or other I had to advise them on the form of application which I thought would have the best chance of getting past the University Finance Committee. But it worked very well.
J How long did you hold this office?
N Oh, twenty years, I suppose.
J Did it involve you in wider social contacts with the students bodies?
N No, my contact with the student bodies, I'm afraid, was through sport rather than the financial organisation. I took a fairly active part in coaching the Boxing Club and a certain amount in coaching the Rowing Club. But it was that sort of contact rather than the financial one, and I always found them extraordinarily nice. I always thought that Aberdeen University was extraordinarily lucky in its students.
J What about the halls of residence? Did much the same pattern apply there for the financing of student activities within the halls?
N The halls and catering activities were linked together in the financial organisation as a kind of sub-section. They both dealt with food and they both dealt with students and they both dealt with money and so halls and catering came under a separate sub-committee of the Finance Committee, with as convenor a member of the court and actually administered by my deputy, Mr Hetherington, who, though he was a chartered accountant, didn't take part in any other financial aspects of the Finance Section. He was in charge of this [these] very important, very extensive and very costly and financially very risky halls and catering activities. It was a separate sub-section that needed particular watching and handling and costing, and as it happened Mr Hetherington was also a cost accountant so that he was well fitted for the costing side of halls and catering.
J What were the particular dangers in this area?
N Oh, just costs running away. The screw had to be screwed down as tightly as it could and at the same time a good service had to be given to the students.
J Is the Halls and Catering Subcommittee something that comes into existence after the halls have been established, or would it have had oversight of the newer hall, the actual building of them?
N The building of the halls was always a matter for the Edilis Committee and for Mr Kelman or one of his assistants to act as supervisor of the building. The Halls and Catering Committee didn't enter into any building operation at all. The building of halls was a matter of University policy originating in Senatus requests for more accommodation to be available to students.
J Are there any other aspects to your contacts with students that you would like to expand on a little?
N Yes, I would like to repeat what I said, that Aberdeen University was always very lucky in its students. They have always been a nice crowd and those who have got on to the various Student Committees have always been that sort of chap. The Student Management Committees never attracted what you might call professional troublemakers, and I always found dealing with students particularly easy. There is the idea very often abroad that students don't know anything about anything, they can't put forward any useful ideas, etc. That's simply wrong: they can. And they are very co-operative, and you can't do better than to have a student on your committee. This is what the University Court has found with the Rector's Assessor who is a student, that he always makes a useful contributions.
J Is this something that your colleagues in general would have agreed with you about?
N That is their pigeon. I think that the relations with students is something you had to make yourself.
J Did you find that many of your colleagues in the early 70s were becoming more alarmed about student activities elsewhere and were afraid that Aberdeen was going to follow the same lines?
N I never had any doubts about it and had no reason for thinking it. Just as many country comprehensive schools do very well under the Comprehensive system, they don't have disciplinary breaches, the students don't punch the teacher or anything like that, they are in a sense - I stayed in Inverurie for thirty years and I know that Inverurie Academy was just like the Grammar School was when I was at the Grammar. It had not gone all modern in disorder. And the same kind of thing applies to Aberdeen University. Some of the more what you might call go-ahead universities down in England, like Warwick and Essex for example, and sometimes Kent, which have great troubles with their students, tend to regard Aberdeen University students as old fuddy-duddies. Well, I'm all for the fuddy-duddies!
J You did, I think, experience an occupation. Is that correct?
N Yes, but it was all rather pathetic. The most pathetic bit of all was then they went and occupied the Registry. When this happened everyone expected Mr John Greig …
Interview continued on MS3620/16
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