{"id":3633,"date":"2026-05-10T04:32:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T03:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3633"},"modified":"2026-05-10T04:32:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T03:32:06","slug":"the-universities-and-the-post-office-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3633","title":{"rendered":"The Universities and the Post Office Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It’s a now-familiar pattern. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A junior researcher<\/a> discovers work and ideas have been incorporated into a senior colleague\u2019s publication without proper credit. The researcher raises the issue internally. The process is slow, procedural and opaque. They are reminded \u2014 sometimes subtly, sometimes directly \u2014 of the importance of collegiality, references and future prospects. Months stretch into years. The senior academic continues to prosper. The researcher, on a fixed-term contract, moves on \u2014 occasionally with a settlement that includes a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Formally, the system has worked, as the problem has disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the 2010s, universities have increasingly come to resemble large, risk-managed corporations. With that shift has come a set of moral and financial hazards that echo the dynamics seen in the Post Office scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both the Post Office and universities underwent a shift from public service institutions to market-driven organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the Post Office Scandal became widely understood, the Post Office Limited had already undergone a reorientation. It was expected to perform as a business. Targets mattered. Financial performance mattered. Reputation mattered. Within that environment, admitting an error became costly. The Horizon system was defended not because it was believed to be correct, but because conceding its flaws would have carried huge institutional consequences \u2014 financial, legal and reputational. And so the burden of doubt shifted downward, onto individuals with far less power to resist it, the sub-postmasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the introduction of higher tuition fees and the intensification of competition for funding and rankings, universities too have come to operate in a market. Students are framed as customers; research is measured in income and impact; institutional standing is tracked, compared and sold. These pressures do not simply change how universities are funded \u2014 they change how they behave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reputation becomes an asset to be managed. Internal processes become systems that must be seen to work. And when disputes arise, the cost of acknowledging failure can outweigh the incentive to resolve it transparently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of both lies\u00a0institutional self-preservation. In the Post Office case, the organisation defended the integrity of its systems long after credible doubts had emerged. In universities, reputational risk management plays a similar role. Complaints \u2014 whether about authorship, plagiarism, funding allocation, bullying or internal misconduct \u2014 are filtered through processes that prioritise containment over transparency. Just as everyone knew of the corrupt processes at the highest levels of the Post Office, so everyone knows about this at the highest levels of our Universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second parallel lies in the asymmetries of power<\/strong>. Just as sub-postmasters struggled to challenge a national institution armed with legal and technical authority, academics (especially early-career scholars) today often face opaque decision-making structures controlled by senior administrators. The cost of dissent \u2014 loss of funding, stalled careers, reputational damage, even dismissal<\/a>, can be prohibitive. Both the Post Office and universities have access to enormous legal resources which can be used to pervert the course of justice. For example, criminal acts by senior administrators can be covered up by threats and NDAs, just as the sub-postmasters could be despatched to prison on the basis of lies by the Post Office’s in-house legal team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, there is the question of\u00a0epistemic authority: who is believed? In the Post Office scandal, the system\u2019s outputs were presumed correct, and individuals were required to prove otherwise. In academia, institutional processes \u2014 internal investigations, reports by nominally external companies<\/a>, promotion committee decisions, outcome letters \u2014 acquire a similar presumption of correctness, even when those subject to them raise substantive concerns<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, both contexts demonstrate the slow grind of accountability. It took years for the truth of the Post Office scandal to be widely acknowledged. Meantime, Paula Vennells prospered with a huge salary and honours. In universities, too, systemic issues have persisted for some time not because they are invisible, but because they are hard to confront and expose. The wrongdoers are still collecting their winnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next few months start the process of confronting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The image of Paula Vennells is reproduced under the United Kingdom Open Government Licence v3.0<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a now-familiar pattern. A junior researcher discovers work and ideas have been incorporated into a senior colleague\u2019s publication without proper credit. The researcher raises the issue internally. The process is slow, procedural and opaque. They are reminded \u2014 sometimes subtly, sometimes directly \u2014 of the importance of collegiality, references […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3633"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3644,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions\/3644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}