by GR Evans

Cambridge has arcane and complex rules and policies for jobs in the university and its colleges; despite their idiosyncracy some of them may have lessons for other institutions. GR Evans is an expert guide to the rules, the policies, national employment law and the many debates through which the Cambridge rules and policies have evolved. If you ever wondered how Cambridge works, read this.

Academic jobs with an element of security are increasingly hard to get. Fixed-term contracts have long been the norm for research-only contracts, which are usually dependent on short-term funding from a external grant. For some decades the norm for ‘academic’ posts had settled at ‘teaching and research’, with appointments to last until retirement age. However, the Equality Act of 2010, making it discriminatory to enforce retirement by age, has helped to discourage contracts promising ‘permanence’. Teaching-only posts have become more common. The Office for Students now grants degree-awarding powers to new providers of higher education but so far these have almost all been confined to powers to award ‘taught degrees’.

These trends have encouraged the use of fixed-term and casual employment of academics by many HE providers. The University and College Union has launched an Anti-Casualisation Pledge. The University of Cambridge is not one of the worst offenders in this respect, though, like other higher education providers it may make use of the device of linking the continuation of an appointment to the continuation of external, usually grant, funding. In a  case in May 2008 it was held that the University of Aberdeen had been in breach of the Fixed Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 where that had been relied on, but there seems to have been no subsequent litigation helping to establish a precedent.

Under the Higher Education and Research Act (2017) institutions may set their own ‘criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied’ (s. 2(5)(d) and s.2 (8) (b) ii.). The clause appears again later (s. 36 (1) (b)) in HERA in connection with the duty of the Office for Students to ‘protect academic freedom’ in ‘performing its access and participation functions’. 

Yet the legislation does not define ‘academic staff’ and the applicant for an academic job in Cambridge must negotiate a complex system. Titles, status, hierarchy and contracts all have their history and the University’s constitution plays a decisive part. Its governing body is made up of now more than 7,000 members of its Regent House, which must make any legislative change to its employment practice and procedure by approving a published proposal in the form of a Grace, under Statute A,III,1-2. There is some mismatch between the requirements which may be written into employment contracts and those of the Statutes and Ordinances, particularly with reference to obligations to teach. It remains the case that a new University Officer enters into Office simply by signing a book kept by the Registrary for the purpose:

Unless it is otherwise provided by Statute or Ordinance, every officer shall be admitted to their office as soon as may be after the commencement of tenure by subscribing, in a book kept at the Registry, a declaration that the officer will well and faithfully discharge all the duties of the office, and by entering in the book the date of entering upon the office. (Special Ordinance C (ii) 4)

A major reorganisation of Senior Academic Promotions and the creation of Career Pathways have left their mark. Cambridge  still offers ‘Teaching and Research’ posts but more recently it has added ‘Teaching and Scholarship’ posts with the emphasis on teaching and their own Pathway. It is seeking to create a Research Career Pathway too. The University conducts itself very transparently and both the University’s Statutes and Ordinances and its organ of historical record, the University Reporter, are online and easy to search by anyone eager to get an academic job in at Cambridge and needing to understand its advertised vacancies.

The University formerly had University Lecturers and Senior Lecturers, Readers and Professors. These titles have changed with the University’s adoption of a ‘grading’ system (Higher Education Role Analysis and Statute C, XIII). Lectureships  and Senior Lectureships have become Assistant and Associate Professorships (Grades 9 and 10), former Readerships are  Professorships (Grade 11) (by Special Ordinance, C, vii under Statute C,IX,3, Part C ) and the full Professorships are Professorships (Grade 12) (Special Ordinance, C, vii under Statute C,IX,3).  

These academic posts are ‘University Offices’ as well as employments. Such Offices may be academic-related but those successful in being appointed to a University Teaching Office (UTOs), the most desirable of its academic posts, are entitled to a sabbatical Term after each six Terms. Statute C, I, 4 requires UTOs:

 to devote themselves to the advancement of knowledge in their subject, to give instruction therein to students, to undertake from time to time such examining of students as may be required by the Board, Syndicate, or other body which is chiefly concerned with their duties, and to promote the interests of the University as a place of education, religion, learning, and research.

They must also examine for degrees and such ‘other qualifications of the University as the University may from time to time determine’. Special Ordinance C (ix) 5 requires them to give at least thirty lectures a year, or other teaching agreed as equivalent.

UTOs must belong to a Faculty or Department but they may choose to be members of more than one. This normally does not apply to those appointed to a ‘curatorial’ Office which include a teaching requirement, for example in one of the University’s museums. A recent exception allowed such an appointee in the Fitzwilliam Museum to enjoy sabbatical leave (Reporter, 31 July, 2024).

Cambridge was slow to provide its UTOs with written contracts, with many of its UTOs appointed without one and some indignation expressed about the content when they were first introduced at the beginning of this century, especially when they proved to contain intellectual property restrictions (Reporter, 31 March 2004).

University Officers are protected constitutionally by Cambridge’s Statute C which expressly guards their academic freedom and requires ‘justice and fairness’ in their treatment. A Schedule to Statute C preserves specifically for ‘academic’ staff many of the protections in the Model Statute which was framed by the Commissioners appointed as the Education Reform Act 1988 required.

The disadvantage is that academic Officers remain subject to Cambridge’s Employer-Justified Retirement Age, although as a result of the 2011 Repeal of Retirement Age Amendment to the Equality Act of 2010 other employees of the University no longer have a ‘retirement age’. Special Ordinance C (ii) 12 requires University Officers to ‘vacate their offices not later than the end of the academic year in which they attain the age of sixty-seven years’.

A Report on this requirement was published on 15 May 2024, recommending that academic-related officers should no longer be subject to the EJRA and the age of retirement should be raised to 69. The recommendations of the Report were put to a vote by ballot of the Regent House in July, with an amendment adding ‘abolition’ of the EJRA to the options. Abolition of the EJRA was rejected but the other changes were approved bringing the forced retirement age to 69 for those to whom it still applied (Reporter, 24 July, 2024). This has had the effect of shrinking still further the category of University employees subject to forced retirement.

College posts

A post in a Cambridge College may also look attractive. The University and the individual Colleges are all employers in their own right. Although in Oxford an academic is commonly employed conjointly by the University and a College, in Cambridge a University post and a College post are quite separate and some UTOs choose not to accept a College Fellowship. The choice is theirs.

Cambridge, like Oxford, has chosen not to expand its undergraduate intake because its Colleges do not have room to accommodate more, though in principle a College may choose to add to its own academic staff. The Colleges set their own rules for the employment of College Lecturers under their individual Statutes. The main task of a College Lecturer is to give supervisions to undergraduates, in the form of personal small-group teaching, though a College employee may have an ‘affiliation’ to a Department or Faculty and give occasional lectures.  There has recently been some controversy over the role of Supervisors, who may include graduate students as well as College and University lecturers, mostly concerning the rate of hourly pay available.

Colleges tend to be eager to add a University Teaching Officer to their Fellowship: a  UTO’s salary is covered by the University and the College will need to add only a small supplement. So desirable are UTOs that a UTO Scheme is published ‘to enable all Colleges to operate effectively in the educational field by ensuring a reasonable distribution of University Teaching Officers amongst them’. This explains that ‘A UTO Fellow should be regarded as a permanent educational resource for a College and not simply as a provider of undergraduate supervisions’.

Senior Academic Promotions 

The  use of the unqualified title of ‘Professor’ remains protected, and named Professorships are rarely advertised. These are ‘established’, continuing to exist when vacated, and filled by a Board of Electors appointed for the purpose. Other full Professorships are ‘personal’, granted by promotion from an existing academic University post, so to obtain one it is necessary first to gain a less senior post. Personal Professorships are created for a ‘single tenure’ and disappear when the holder resigns or retires (now superseded under Statute C,XV). The creation of such a Professorship requires the approval of  a Grace (Statute A, III,3ff).  It is possible for a ballot to be called before the approval of such a Grace, but highly unlikely.

However, during the 1990s unestablished academic posts of University Lecturer  and Senior Lecturer had begun to be created, with some unestablished posts described as ‘at the level of Professor or Reader’, though a General Board circular of 19 June 1998 limited these to five year appointments.[1] In 1996 the General Board published a Notice on ‘Titles of unestablished appointments at the level of Reader’ (Reporter, 5655, 1995-6 p512), with a further Notice in 1999 on the ‘Procedure for appointments to unestablished posts at the level of Professor or Reader’ (Reporter, 5773, 1998-9 p587).

By now controversy was afoot on the operation of the Senior Academic Promotions Procedure.  Statute D, XIV [now Special Ordinance C(vii)] stated that:

 ‘No Professorship shall be established in the University except by Grace of the Regent House after publication of a Report of the General Board’.

For those successful in gaining a personal Professorship by Promotion a Grace is published and duly approved in the normal way.

From the late 1990s there was controversy in Cambridge about ‘Senior Academic Promotions’ (Reporter, 17 November, 1999). UTOs often expressed disappointment and indignation when they failed to gain Professorships by promotion. In 1995 a General Board Notice was published establishing a procedure for making appointments to  unestablished posts ‘at Professorial level’ (Reporter, 5609, 1994-5 p381). This was felt to be needed to cover certain special cases arising where the candidate had a claim to recognition as a Research Professor through a potentially qualifying relationship with such a body as the Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust or the Medical Research Council. In each such instance the candidate was to be assessed  for a Cambridge Professorship by a committee appointed for the purpose.  

A representation was made to the Vice-Chancellor under Statute K, 5 [now Statute A,IX,1], that the General Board’s practice of making appointments to unestablished Research Professorships was in contravention of the University’s Statutes. A legal opinion was sought, which confirmed that the practice was ultra vires (Reporter, 21 March, 2001). The General Board then published the Reports with Graces necessary to create the established posts for these appointees, but on a fixed-term basis. It remains the case that a:

 competent authority may authorize the establishment of an office for a fixed term provided that there is objective justification for such authorization and shall decide what constitutes objective justification. (Statutes and Ordinances. p.673)

There were reforms, but also continuing concerns about ‘career-structures’, as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor reported in a Discussion in November 2018, suggesting that the proposed Academic Career Pathway scheme might ‘make a decisive difference in tackling some of the main areas of concern’ and ‘also serve as a platform from which to review academic titles more generally’ (Reporter, 5 June 2018). A Report proposing the introduction of Career Pathways was published in May 2019 (Reporter 15 May 2019), duly Discussed and approved, setting out the changes of title. This was Discussed on 9  June. There was acknowledgement of:

growing dissatisfaction with the existing titles and concerns about comparability with the titles adopted by the University’s peer group nationally and globally which could hinder recruitment and/or retention of academic staff and handicap our academics in competing for research funding. (Reporter, 17 June 2019)

Oxford underwent a similar review of the requirements for its own promotions to Professorships.

Career Pathways

Cambridge is now adding other ‘Pathways’ to its longstanding ‘teaching and research’ requirement for the holder of a University Teaching Office.  A Research Career Pathway is still at a planning stage but there is already a Teaching and Scholarship Pathway. On the Teaching and Research Pathway an Officer may aspire to progress from an Assistant Professorship (Grade 9), to an Associate Professorship (Grade  9 or 10), a Professorship (Grade 11) and a (personal) Professorship (Grade 12). Clinical Academic posts have their own criteria and rewards including  Clinical Professorships.

Cambridge has held back from introducing ‘Teaching-only’ offices, preferring the introduction of a Teaching and Scholarship Pathway, with the intention to ‘establish a dedicated career path for the development of staff in teaching‑focused roles’ (Reporter, 24 March, 2021). Nevertheless its introduction prompted concerns about the meaning of ‘scholarship’ in distinction from ‘Research’.  Was it to mean having read the latest books and articles rather than having written them (Reporter, 28 April 2021)? The resulting route on this Pathway involves promotions to Offices with ‘Teaching’ in their titles: Assistant and Associate Teaching Professor (Grades 9 and 10), Teaching Professor (Grade 11 and 12) and Senior Teaching Associate (Grade 8).  

Getting a job at Cambridge has its complexities, then, which may usefully be kept in mind by the would-be applicant.

SRHE member GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.

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[1] I am grateful to William Astle for this reference.