De Montfort University spent nearly £22,000 on flash mob event which raised £5,000

“He certainly likes the limelight. He reminds me of a younger version of Elton John in that video only loads more camp.”

“"De Montfort Students' Union (DSU) would, once again, like to reiterate its support of the DMU Heroes event in November 2012, despite an article published by the Leicester Mercury detailing the expenditure"

Oxford English Dictionary on Despite:

without being affected by; in spite of:
noun
[mass noun] archaic
1contemptuous treatment or behaviour; outrage:the despite done by him to the holy relics
2contempt; disdain:the theatre only earns my despite”

“What about the costs of the staff for the day? How much can be attributed that their time?

I wonder if the Leicester Mercury have put an FOI for this information?”

“They could have hired one of my P.A. systems for £1,000. If only I had realised that there was a potential customer with that level of gullibility, I would have been beating a path to their door.”

“More evaporating comments.

It could be that this was seen as cost effective publicity, a chance to have a bit of fun, and a way of giving something back to the community by a donation all at the same time. It's not as though the bulk of a donation was absorbed by the PA hire, this university footed the bill of that. All in all, some might see it as a successful event that raised awareness and gave a local university some publicity at a cost way cheaper than a TV advert.

Yet someone seems to have a real problem with anyone saying bad things about it. Perhaps the moderator could come below the line and explain the rationale for deleting so many comments?”

“"What's going on here?

I agree!

I too noticed this post has been deleted. Leicester Mercury, show some backbone and leave these comments up.

Its on the Leicester Council Website.”

“What's going on here?

A comment by someone that the vice chancellor is spending money on a suite of accomodation with links to publically available planning documents. Deleted.

A comment that the head of the students union is also working for the university by sitting on various committees, all public information, deleted.

None of this is off-topic, since the issue is spending money and transparency - that's in title of the article the above the line. It could be that high quality accomodation is needed to attract talented academics to build the profile of DMU. It could be that representation of the university in the students union, or vice versa is a good thing, showing that the student body are taken seriously. These could be feedlines for a gushing endorsement.

Instead they've been deleted. In a matter of hours.

Does this say anything to anyone?

Moderators, please leave this up and give a chance for the people concerned to put their side across in the debate, because while some people might not realise it, that would look better for them than crushing the debate.”

“Yes to the previous comment, you could buy a PA system that'd fill a big venue for about £15k. A cynic might say that as far as spending money on unnecessary things go, this is pretty good value, since DMU has borrowed about 100 million for new buildings, despite the fact that it's had two rounds of voluntary redundancies during the last couple of years.

http://tinyurl.com/bmp4ucv

This sort of thing is sector wide but that doesn't mean that every university has to join in with it. Sussex has just embarked on a big building programme whilst subbing out many services. UEL is putting up some monstrosity that must have cost the other side of £80 million.

Meantime universities are spending almost three times as much on bureacracy as they were since 2000. This isn't on course administrators or admissions staff (all useful), this is on professional over-complicators, and myriad intermediate posts in ever steepening management pyramids, and enormous wasteful support departments not attached to any faculty. For example a ratio of 40 managers to 60 technicians in IT is not unheard of. Lecturers must make at least an extra pound for every pound made from research and student debt, just to subsidise this creaky bloated machinery. Often more.

Meanwhile, sector wide, lecturers are being laid off and many universities have an academic recruitment freeze. Meanwhile, every university is recruiting bureaucrats with big salaries and increasingly cryptic job titles, responsible for driving academics mad with stacks of timewasting forms to fill in, and speaking nonsensical waffle about mission statements and customer service, engaging with stakeholders, and rarely givign a straight answer to anything.

So what is the answer? Thousands of managers now working in universities can't believe their luck, thy organise things like flasmobs and construction projects whilst bullying academics into squeezing more money out of students while giving them less. In Australia six sigma management techniques, as used routinely in manufacturing have massively streamlined bureacracy, reducing the need for so many managers, and ensuring that student money is better spent. 'Student engagement departments' have been shut down. Now the student speaks to a lecturer, who has more time to speak to the student because he or she hasn't been sent a stack of forms to fill in from some student engagement officer.

Bureacracy and construction are not the best things to be spending money on while students are going into debt.”

“Given that this is purely a publicity stunt, makes the other videos that much more amazing.

http://tinyurl.com/a7rqa4j

http://tinyurl.com/ax44wps”

“As a DMU student I hope people realise that the Student's Union does not represent everyone. For example, I voted for the president on the basis that she had just graduated from History and was keen to better represent students such as myself who wasn't involved in the sports societies and the art department. She then supported the VC in this ridiculous 'charity' attempt. I'm lucky to be paying only £3500 a year, but those on £9000 a year must feel really taken advantage of. Instead of providing courses such as my own with more funding for books, journal subscriptions and trips they put £22,000 on this farce of an event. I disagreed with the event from the first email I received about it, and so did several members of staff that I spoke to. We were also told in our lecture (unfortunately the lecturer felt obligated to tell us) that if we wanted to miss our seminar (with him) then we could go to the event. He wasn't impressed that he had been told to say this. Needless to say, only 2 people missed the seminar. Shows how supportive those on my course are of the VC and his plans.”