| Principal designate of Glasgow
University, senior civil servant, Sir Muir Russell aims to revise the institution’s
undergraduate admission procedures. Top mandarin Russell admitted this week that he would
find it hard to scrape by on his early retirement package of £50k pa of other
people’s money and hoped that the £100K salary on offer in his new job would go
someway to keeping him in crusted port. "It's time" he told the
The JT while yawning languidly, "that Glasgow University dispensed with relying on
prior academic attainment as an admissions measure. I think it was the Roman historian
Tacitus who said that you need to ensure that you keep the scruff out."
As part of the new policy, admission to Glasgow will instead rely on the notion
of "soundness". "We have to ask of an applicant, is this chap, or indeed, |
chapette, basically
"sound"? A difficult criterion to explicate but one that has stood the Civil
Service in good stead over the years in making senior appointments" In
cases where two applicants are adjudged equally sound, Sir Muir will rely on his own
judgement in deciding between the two. "Again, a difficult principle to elucidate,
but one must ask searching questions such as ‘do we know the applicant’s
family?’ That sort of thing."
And, dispensing with the hide-bound ways of the university in issuing a formal
offer, a positive assessment will be confirmed by a fractional nod of the principal’s
head, while a negative judgement will be signalled by a slightly raised patrician eyebrow.
Sir Muir concluded the interview with The JT at 2.30pm explaining that on
CivilServiceWorld the middle of the bloody afternoon was "home time." |
