http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-29262526

I can’t remember the chairs at my graduation ceremony for at least two reasons:

1) I was more concerned about graduating.

2) People were sat on them.

I assume they’re stuffed with primo Colombian marching powder to warrant that price?

John Makepeace is a world renowned furniture designer and so the price doesn’t surprise me. Very nice but I’d have done them for them for 149k…
😉

John Takepiss more like.

“private donations and charitable foundations”.

Prof Coslett said Plymouth University’s annual graduation week attracted more than 25,000 students and guests and injected about £700,000 into the city’s economy.

Functional art – what’s the problem? Should Unis aim to be cheap, dull utilitarian sheds to keep costs down from now on?

I’m sure that they would inject a similar amount of money into the local economy if the dignitaries at the graduation ceremony were sat on less expensive chairs.

Obviously they dont do a craft and design course the students could have made their own chairs then.

But what a pathetic waste of cash.

In my experience most people were wasted for a large proportion of their degrees 🙂

The news comes as the university undergoes separate investigations into the conduct of chairman William Taylor, and vice chancellor Wendy Purcell.

Conduct regarding his choice of chairs? 😯

Chairity funding 8)

The seat back cushion resembles an upside down Jock Strap, and the legs like giant condiment grinders.

Professor David Coslett, deputy vice chancellor, said the university hoped to pay for the chairs through “private donations and charitable foundations”.

‘hoped’

As in, I ‘hope’ to win the lottery…

Or was it in the past tense, and now with the news out – there’s no hope 🙂

Professor David Coslett, deputy vice chancellor, said the university hoped to pay for the chairs through “private donations and charitable foundations”.

I agree with Boxelder. Of course you could have had £9 Ikea chairs but our surroundings are important. Look at the terrible upset and heartache caused by the recent fire at the Glasgow School of Arts. All that irreplaceable Mackintosh interior under huge threat.

We don’t really get craft like that these days because of sentiments displayed here but I think it’s important. John Makepeace is very well known across the world and attracts huge prices for his work, just like a painter or sculptor might. His work may one day be regarded in a similar vein to the likes of Mackintosh perhaps, and these chairs will certainly maintain, if not not increase in value (provided some student doesn’t carve a tag into them…). We should celebrate fine craft, not bland-erdise everything around us.

I’m biased of course as I studied and work in in Furniture/cabinetmaking but always thought Art, craft and design were important anyway.

As for paying for it from student course fees, it appears this is not the case.

Obviously they dont do a craft and design course the students could have made their own chairs then.

I teach furniture making in a College, a College which has just spent thousands on new furniture, fixtures and fittings as part of a massive re-vamp to the building. Some of the workmanship is shocking.. Did they ask us? Did they eck!..

If you have ever been to where Plymouth Uni do their graduation ceremony you will understand that the swanky chairs will actually be the highlight of the day!

Erm, not sure how long ago you’re talking about but for a good few years graduation has been held on the Hoe…it’s probably one of the best graduation locations in the country!

That said, the chairs are a bit over the top. The university is just pissing money away at the moment, what with all the mysterious troubles at the top.

The design and cost of the chairs are yet to be confirmed, but sources have told the BBC the project is due to cost more than £150,000.

‘My cousins brothers builders daughters plumers wife saw a figure on a speadsheet in the office…..’

Not that I’m bitter or anything (I was otherwise busy on graduation day with my then new GF), Sheffield Hallam graduate in the City Hall, a big grand limestone building in the town center. University of Sheffield graduate in the Octagon center, a nasty 60’s edifice that looks like a comp school gym and smells of last nights student disco!

Hmm my, Beaminster down the road from me. Might have to pop in and see if he has any unfinished projects going cheap 😉

That’s where my daughters money goes at Plymouth Uni then. She is just starting year three. And when I mean ‘year’, I mean start end of September and finish in the beginning of May…………

We don’t really get craft like that these days because of sentiments displayed here but I think it’s important. John Makepeace is very well known across the world and attracts huge prices for his work, just like a painter or sculptor might. His work may one day be regarded in a similar vein to the likes of Mackintosh perhaps, and these chairs will certainly maintain, if not not increase in value (provided some student doesn’t carve a tag into them…). We should celebrate fine craft, not bland-erdise everything around us.

I’m biased of course as I studied and work in in Furniture/cabinetmaking but always thought Art, craft and design were important anyway.

Except you could get some nice handcrafted chairs for a 10th of that price if they weren’t made my some cockwomble artist with a big name.

If you have ever been to where Plymouth Uni do their graduation ceremony you will understand that the swanky chairs will actually be the highlight of the day!

Precisely, I could almost, just almost understand if it was Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, Princeton etc.

Erm, not sure how long ago you’re talking about but for a good few years graduation has been held on the Hoe…it’s probably one of the best graduation locations in the country!

That said, the chairs are a bit over the top. The university is just pissing money away at the moment, what with all the mysterious troubles at the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlftd_6878

This is unfortunately what you get when HR type ****/Tesco managers start running the show. Instead of academics.

This at a University that seems to be having a serious meltdown in its senior leadership team: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-28975197

I can’t remember the chairs at my graduation ceremony for at least two reasons:

3 – was completely hammered at the time, missed the practice session, sat next to a woman I fancied not my class, on stage at the wrong time, started an argument on stage about whether or not I should have been there, then left with someone elses degree and forgot to hand the hired batcape back

As soon as I saw the title of this thread, I had a feeling it would be about Plymouth.
This makes me sick. My wife currently works at Plymouth Uni for a pretty meagre salary (less than the cost of one of those chairs!) and will be unemployed as of November. Due to cutbacks, her contract is not being renewed (as she was told it would be) and they’ve just made a load of people redundant.

It’s been controversy after controversy there recently. My favourite is the one about Wendy Purcell, the former chancellor of the uni who, despite being paid the princely sum of £280k PA, still saw fit to embezzle tens of thousands of pounds from the Uni. She did all of this while pissing away uni funds on ridiculous things, such as this: http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/pound-24k-cost-uni-conference-trip-Miami-revealed/story-22901402-detail/story.html

I appreciate that it’s important for unis to be well connected, and to have a certain aspirational aesthetic (a lot of students judge a uni by the way it looks and feels, and if it looks shit, it will not attract more students) but the vast sums of money wasted at the expense of staff is absolutely ludicrous.

Seems similar to how my last university was run, profit above academic success. Very corporate, run by HR types and vapid Tory voting tosspots who are good at selling themselves.

Only going to stick to working in Russel group Universities from now on and preferably only universities within the top 10, in a hope to extricate myself from the depressing HR managerial speak horseshit.

I like old school work environments with bumbling semi-autistic academics who’s rooms are piled high with coffee stained paperwork. I’ve visited where I’m about to start doing some work experience and have become a bit smitten with the department, had coffee with a slightly mad academic surrounded by mess in an old 1960’s office….offered me all sorts of biscuits….friendly…no in house HR bod for the department who line manages scientists without having any understanding of science herself…..it was bliss.

My former uni spent £1.4m on art including works by Picasso and Andy Warhol while charging students £9,000 a year and paying hundreds of staff less than £7.45 an hour.

There appears to be something going really wrong when people think this is a good way to spend money. No matter where or how they got it.

Call me a philistine but as long as a place of education is functional and full of motivated and qualified teachers/lecturers that’s all that matters.

Worth noting that now students (“customers”) are paying big bucks for their degree they are expecting a more slick experience for their cash and this includes things like how good the graduation ceremony is.

As somebody has already pointed out though, 150k on some chairs still seems ludicrous.

Just to pile on, where i work staff have to pay for membership of academic societies themselves. It looks good for the university to say they have x number of member of y society and they encourage us to join. In that case, we argued, we should able to claim it from the staff development budget. We were told no chance. It later emerged the vice chancellor was using £3000 of university monies to pay for membership of a private club in London because he needed somewhere to hold meetings.

Call me a philistine but as long as a place of education is functional and full of motivated and qualified teachers/lecturers that’s all that matters.

You Phillistine 😀

You Philistine

Thank you

😀

Only going to stick to working in Russel group Universities from now on and preferably only universities within the top 10, in a hope to extricate myself from the depressing HR managerial speak horseshit.

GLWT.

I like old school work environments with bumbling semi-autistic academics who’s rooms are piled high with coffee stained paperwork.

As much as researchers hate to admit this, the panacea of piles of research money flowing in and allowing them to inspect their proverbial navels has long gone. Universities are going to have to return – quite rapidly – to prioritising teaching as this is where the money is.

This is going to be a painful change for many academics who want to be bumbling, but don’t want the responsibility of teaching.

EDIT: anyway, back on topic. The chairs are a vanity exercise. People at the top of organisations often tend to favour this sort of thing, and the people at the bottom tend to wonder why that cash can’t just be shared as income. It doesn’t need to be a university for this to be true.

Did students get revenge by superglueing the old duffer’s hand to a chair?

This is going to be a painful change for many academics who want to be bumbling, but don’t want the responsibility of teaching

All my best lecturers were bumbling eccentrics. They’re the ones who usually understand how important it is to pass on what you have learned.