A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legally binding contract that establishes a confidential relationship between two or more parties. The purpose of an NDA is to prevent the disclosure of information to third parties.
Universities are gluttons for NDAs.
The Guardian reported in 2019 that UK universities paid out £90m on staff ‘gagging orders’ in the previous two years. This is based on data from the BBC, acquired through Freedom of Information requests from 96 universities. It suggests each year, a typical university is spending half a million pounds preventing staff or students from speaking out about misdemeanours. And this is at a time when Higher Education budgets are stretched and many universities are making staff redundant.
In 2022, a number of university Vice Chancellors signed up to a pledge promising not to use NDAs in dealing with complaints of sexual misconduct (though often other forms of bullying and harassment were excluded). Cambridge University’s pledge is here. It has a loophole as large as the Great Gate of Trinity College: “There are, however, rare occasions when non-disclosure agreements, made as part of the settlement of a dispute, can benefit all parties to it.” Ho, hum.
On 1st September 2024, a complete ban on UK Universities using NDAs in sexual harassment cases came into force. This is of course very welcome, but it does not go far enough. NDAs should be discontinued completely. Amongst their many disadvantages, they prevent Universities from dealing with underlying and persistent structural problems, which then recur again later. Sometimes others are exposed to further bullying or harassment or misconduct by the same perpetrator.
The 21 Group has constructed a ranking table of universities according to their use of NDAs.
How is the table constructed? The 21 Group has scraped the publicly available Employment Tribunal data and identified cases where the claimants agreed to withdraw the case having settled with the University. These will almost invariably be NDAs.
Does this catch all the NDAs? Almost certainly not. This is an underestimate. First, it is possible for a University to settle before an Employment Tribunal case is even started, in which case there will be no evidence in the public records. The 21 Group knows of such cases. Second, only employees (staff and graduate students) can appeal to Employment Tribunals in any case, so this omits the important category of undergraduate students entirely.
Even so, the Table is useful. Information on NDAs is hard to come by. Universities are reluctant to answer questions about their use. Even the BBC was unable to get some of our oldest Universities to answer the Freedom of Information requests, with 30 per cent of all Universities refusing to supply any data. The Table also illustrates which Universities have particular problems with bullying and harassment. Many of the names in the Table are the ‘usual suspects‘ with known problems regarding pervasive bullying and toxic Human Resources departments.
(Of course, if any university contests their ranking, they are welcome to provide the actual data to the 21 Group)
2 Comments
Andrey · 27 October 2024 at 20:11
Key factor here though is that Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester etc are all big universities, with a lot more staff and students.
If you adjust this on a per staff member basis isn’t it Cambridge way out in the lead, followed by Southhampton and Oxford – then all the others way behind?
21percent.org · 27 October 2024 at 23:16
It’s a fair point regarding size.
We think the smallest of these Universities is Nottingham.
At least using data from wiki, Nottingham’s staff is ~ 6.7K
Manchester & Cambridge are almost double at ~ 12.k
This is only staff, not students. But probably more staff, more students
So the effect is probably to enhance Nottingham’s position at the top.