Not my job ...

Universities are wonderfully organised places. Every function has its own department.

Marketing manages marketing. Recruitment manages recruitment. Careers manages careers. Quality manages quality. Timetabling manages timetabling. Educational Development develops education. Digital Learning manages digital learning. Research Support supports research. Student Engagement engages students.

On paper, it makes perfect sense. The sort of organisational structure that reassures you somebody, somewhere, is responsible for everything. It was therefore something of a surprise to discover that this isn’t actually how it works.

I made the mistake of contacting the department whose name most closely resembled the thing I needed. They replied almost immediately. They were extremely helpful. They explained that this wasn’t something they did. They did, however, attach a beautifully designed guidance document explaining how I might do it myself.

At first, I assumed this was an isolated incident. Perhaps I’d simply asked the wrong question. Or the wrong person. Or misunderstood the department’s purpose. So I tried another one.

Again, they were warm, professional and unfailingly supportive. Again, they explained that the work itself sat elsewhere. Again, they offered a toolkit. Or a webinar. Or a SharePoint page. Or the name of somebody else who would almost certainly explain that it wasn’t their job either.

Gradually, a pattern began to emerge. University departments, I realised, no longer necessarily perform the function described by the sign on the door. Instead, they provide strategic oversight, guidance, resources, frameworks and support for the people who now perform that function.

Those people, more often than not are academics.

This, it turns out, is how work now travels through a university. It begins life in the department whose name suggests ownership. Then, through a process so gradual that nobody quite notices it happening, it migrates.

Eventually, it arrives on an academic’s desk. Where, quite naturally … it becomes their job.

The Migration

Work, in universities, behaves rather like a migratory species. It is rarely stationary. Instead, it moves. Not suddenly. That would be obvious. It travels slowly, almost imperceptibly, passing from one department to another in a process so gradual that nobody can quite remember where it started.

A task may begin life in Marketing. There, it is carefully considered. Its strategic importance is acknowledged. A meeting is held. Perhaps even a working group. Someone produces a flowchart. At some point, entirely reasonably, it is agreed that the people who know the course best should probably write the marketing copy.

The task moves on.

Recruitment receives it next. Another discussion follows. Students, it is decided, like speaking to academics. Would academics therefore be willing to telephone offer holders? Attend another Open Day? Record a short promotional video? Visit a college? Answer prospective applicants’ emails? The logic is difficult to fault.

The task moves on.

Eventually it reaches its natural habitat. The academic. By now, the task has undergone a remarkable transformation. It is no longer additional work. It has become an opportunity. An opportunity to enhance the student experience. To improve conversion. To strengthen employability. To increase engagement. To build external partnerships. To raise the University’s profile. The task itself has remained almost entirely unchanged. Only the language has evolved. It's amazing what stops feeling like extra work once you give it a sufficiently positive name.

Work is rarely delegated. That would sound terribly transactional. Instead, it is reframed. The academic is not being asked to take on another responsibility. They are being empowered. Supported. Enabled. Encouraged to take ownership. Ownership, I have noticed, is a particularly versatile word. It has the remarkable ability to describe work that somebody else used to do.

Eventually, after completing the task, the academic receives a polite email - “Many thanks for your support.” The migration is complete.

Until the next one begins …

The Departments

Having observed this phenomenon for some time, I have reached a tentative conclusion. University departments have not disappeared. Nor have they become less busy. Quite the opposite. They appear to be thriving. What has changed is their relationship with the work itself.

Take Marketing. Marketing no longer appears to market. Instead, it supports academics to market. It encourages authentic academic voices. After all, nobody knows the course better than the academics teaching it.

Would you mind rewriting the prospectus? Perhaps the UCAS page too. And while you’re there, could you record a short video for social media? Nothing too polished. Just something authentic. Marketing, it seems, now specialises in helping academics become marketers.

Recruitment has undergone a similar evolution. Students, we’re told, really value speaking to academics. Would you be available for another Open Day? Could you telephone applicants? Reply to offer holder enquiries? Visit a college? Attend an evening event? The Recruitment Team remains exceptionally committed to recruitment. Mainly by recruiting academics into the recruitment process.

Then there is Employability. Employability has discovered that academics often know employers. This is considered extremely promising. Would you mind developing some new employer partnerships? Finding guest speakers? Organising placements? Building industry links? Excellent. The Employability Team will be delighted to hear about your progress.

Educational Development occupies a particularly interesting ecological niche. It has developed an extraordinary ability to identify improvements to teaching carried out by people whose full-time job is... teaching. It is never suggested that your teaching is good. Only that it might become more authentic. Or more inclusive. Or more engaging. Or perhaps just a little more student-centred. Curiously, students themselves rarely appear to have requested any of this.

Digital Learning has adapted equally well. Its principal function now appears to involve producing beautifully designed guidance on creating digital learning resources. The resources themselves remain the responsibility of the academic.

Quality performs a similarly vital role. It ensures there is evidence that quality has been assured. This inevitably generates more evidence. Which must also be quality assured. The process is beautifully self-sustaining.

The remarkable thing is that every department genuinely seems incredibly busy. I have absolutely no difficulty believing this. Everyone appears to be working exceptionally hard.

The mystery is simply this. The work described on the sign outside the office has quietly migrated somewhere else.

Usually ... to the academic.

The Referral

The modern university has developed a remarkably elegant solution to responsibility. It is called the referral. No matter the problem, the opening exchange is almost always the same. “I’m not sure if you’ve spoken to...”

This is never followed by the name of the person who can solve the problem. Instead, it is the name of the next person in the journey.

You contact them. They are warm. Friendly. Helpful. They thank you for getting in touch. They completely understand. Then they ask whether you’ve spoken to somebody else.

By the third referral, you begin to appreciate the beauty of the system. Nobody ever says, “I’m afraid that’s not my job.” That would sound terribly uncollegial. Instead, they explain that another team is better placed to support you.

Support, I have noticed, is another wonderfully adaptable word. It rarely involves doing the thing. It usually involves directing you towards someone who also won’t do the thing.

Occasionally the referrals become circular. Marketing suggests Recruitment. Recruitment recommends Student Recruitment. Student Recruitment thinks Marketing may be best placed. Educational Development wonders whether Digital Learning could advise. Digital Learning believes Educational Development would have valuable insight. Somewhere in the distance, Quality would simply appreciate it if everyone could document the process.

After several days, the email chain begins to resemble an archaeological record of institutional collaboration. Twenty-three people have been copied. Everyone has contributed. Nobody has actually done anything.

Eventually, almost by accident, someone asks a dangerous question. “Could the Course Team perhaps take ownership of this?”

There it is. Ownership.

The final stage in the referral process. The moment a task ceases to belong to the institution and begins its new life with an academic. By this point, resistance feels faintly unreasonable. After all, you’ve already spent three weeks discussing whose responsibility it is. Doing it yourself would almost certainly be quicker.

This is not a failure of the system. It is the system. The task has completed its journey. It has travelled through meetings, guidance, consultation, collaboration, signposting and strategic oversight.

At last, it has arrived exactly where it was always going. Your inbox.

The Toolkit

It would be unfair to suggest that universities leave academics unsupported. On the contrary. Support is everywhere. It simply takes a rather different form than one might expect.

Every task arrives accompanied by resources. There is guidance. There is a toolkit. There is a checklist. There is a flowchart. There is an FAQ. There is a recording of a webinar explaining the toolkit. There is a SharePoint page containing the webinar. There is a Teams site explaining how to access the SharePoint page. There is mandatory training on using the Teams site. There is even a Community of Practice where colleagues can share their experiences of navigating the toolkit.

The one thing noticeably absent is somebody doing the thing.

This should not be interpreted as criticism. The documentation is often excellent. Beautifully presented. Carefully colour-coded. Professionally branded. The flowcharts are particularly impressive. They begin with reassuring simplicity.

Start Here … Within moments you are confronted with a diamond asking whether your request falls within Category B(ii), unless previously considered under Framework C, subject to local interpretation. By the final page, the original problem has acquired a governance structure. Occasionally, the guidance concludes with a sentence of breathtaking optimism. If you require further support, please contact your School.

This is rather like reaching the end of an instruction manual for building a wardrobe only to discover the final step reads: Ask yourself to finish it.

There is also an interesting institutional belief that every additional responsibility becomes less burdensome if accompanied by a sufficiently attractive template.

Need to redesign your assessment? Here’s a pro forma. Need to rewrite your module? Here’s a workbook. Need to review your course? Here’s a spreadsheet. Need to recruit students, build employer links, update the website and record promotional videos? Good news. We’ve created a checklist.

Somewhere along the way, universities appear to have confused supporting work with documenting work. Problems are no longer solved. They are scaffolded. Mapped. Embedded. Frameworked. And, if particularly fortunate, captured in a PowerPoint.

The work itself, meanwhile, waits patiently. It has learnt that, eventually, someone will stop developing resources about it and simply get on with doing it.

That someone, more often than not ... already has a full teaching load.

Everybody Is Busy

At this point, it is important to make something absolutely clear. I do not believe anybody is sitting in their office doing nothing. Quite the opposite. Everyone I meet appears to be exceptionally busy.

Calendars are full. Meetings follow meetings. Teams notifications arrive with alarming frequency. Emails are answered at remarkable speed. Entire afternoons disappear into discussions about processes that require further discussion.

This is not a story about lazy people. It is a story about work that has quietly changed its form. Once upon a time, departments largely performed the functions suggested by their names. Now they increasingly coordinate those functions. Support them. Enable them. Facilitate them. Champion them. Develop strategies around them. Create frameworks for them. Monitor them. Evaluate them. Review them. Celebrate them. And, occasionally, establish a working group to explore them.

The actual work, meanwhile, continues its slow migration. Towards the academic. It is an extraordinary achievement. An institution can gradually become filled with people whose role is to improve, oversee and support the work, while the work itself is carried out by an ever-smaller number of people.

Nobody planned this. At least, I don’t think they did. Like all successful evolutionary adaptations, it happened gradually.

One new process. One additional meeting. One revised policy. One helpful toolkit. One opportunity to take ownership. None of them seemed unreasonable on their own.

Individually, each change made perfect sense. Collectively, they produced an institution where work and responsibility slowly drifted apart. An ecosystem in which almost everyone is working incredibly hard to help somebody else do the work.

The academic occupies a unique position within this environment. They remain one of the few species expected not only to develop strategies for teaching, but to teach. Not only to enhance research, but to undertake research. Not only to improve recruitment, but to recruit. Not only to build employability, but to build it. Not only to support student engagement, but to engage students.

Somehow, amidst all this support, the original responsibilities never disappeared. They simply acquired company. The modern academic has not stopped being an academic.

They have become an academic … plus everybody else’s operational plan.

The Escape

I have, over time, adapted. There seemed little alternative. In my early years, whenever a new request arrived, I would instinctively ask the same question. “Whose job is this?”

I no longer ask. Experience has taught me that this is rarely a question of ownership. Only of timing. The task may not be mine today. It almost certainly will be eventually. It simply needs to complete its migration.

There will be a meeting. Then a discussion. Possibly a steering group. A consultation. A framework. A toolkit. Someone will suggest a more collaborative approach. Somebody else will propose that the people closest to the work are best placed to undertake it. There will be widespread agreement. Quite naturally.

After all, who better than the academic?

Eventually an email will arrive. It always does. It begins warmly. “I hope you’re well.” It thanks me in advance for my support. It explains that I am uniquely placed to contribute. It reassures me that this is a valuable opportunity. It closes by asking whether I could complete it by Friday. There is, I have noticed, always a Friday.

I complete the task. Not because I particularly wanted to. Not because it was technically my responsibility. But because students are waiting. Or colleagues are waiting. Or the course cannot progress until somebody simply gets on with it. This, I suspect, is how the system survives. Not through policies. Or governance. Or organisational charts. But through academics quietly deciding that it would take less time to do the work than to continue discussing whose work it is.

It is, in its own way, rather beautiful. An ecosystem sustained almost entirely by goodwill. I still occasionally find myself looking at departmental names. Marketing. Recruitment. Employability. Research Support. Educational Development.

I smile. Not because I doubt that the people within them are working hard. I’m quite sure they are. I simply wonder whether the signs have become historical artefacts. Small reminders of the jobs those departments once performed, before they became departments helping academics perform them instead.

Universities remain wonderfully organised places.

Every task has an owner.

You simply have to wait long enough to discover that...

it’s you.