University Shambles by Christopher James Rhodes
Set during Blair's educational reforms of the 90s...
Charles Rae, a lecturer at a modest but respectable university, is ambitious, and not quite as young as he used to be. His ambition outweighs his patience, and he is seduced into taking a professorship at the new Evergreen Epstein University, a former polytechnic whose attractive name turns out to be mendaciously misleading.
It’s a bad sign when he is asked to present his O-level certificate to the personnel department, and an even worse one when the vice-chancellor tells him: ‘We don’t have students, we have customers!’
Find out more at:
www.rba.co.uk/UniversityShambles/
ISBN: 978 1 906561 39 0
Hardback with dust jacket
240mm x 175mm
216 pages
Published: 6th April 2009
3.9 out of 5
26 votes
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5 out of 5
“Chris Rhodes' novel perfectly captures the bizarre world of the UK university sector in the late 1990s. The events, behaviour and inverted standards he describes will feel surreal to the inexperienced, but in fact University Shambles is a realistic work. The fictional world it describes will feel grimly familiar to many, although no one could fail to laugh at the absurdity of it.”
Review by: Terence Kemp, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry on 2nd September 2010
5 out of 5
"A highly amusing insight into the university sector as it has recently expanded relentlessly under government edict. It presents a devastating picture of the extent to which the notion of scholarship has been betrayed by a culture of managerialism, where the mediocre is airbrushed into ‘excellence', and achievement in research is subordinated to the spurious concept of‘ ‘academic leadership' to engineer bogus professorships for the unworthy. One's heart bleeds for the unfortunate hero lured by an unscrupulous vice-chancellor to throw in his lot with an institution where academic subjects are forced into an endless cycle of mergers with business-orientated units and his research belittled by envious superiors. One wishes only that we are given here a parody of life in some institutions – no such luck. A thoroughly good read, but best taken with a large scotch at hand to dull the pain as Charles' life unravels."
Review by: Anonymous on 2nd September 2010
5 out of 5
Very funny and true to life
Review by: Anonymous on 2nd September 2010
5 out of 5
Deliciously vicious
Review by: Anonymous on 2nd September 2010
5 out of 5
Very David Lodge
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