University principal who has led from the front and never courted popularity

Minister. Both in their different ways and different scenes have led

from the front; they have not courted short-term immediate popularity in

the hope that by taking radical action they will have been seen to have

served their different institutions in the best way.''

This is the judgment of Willis Pickard, rector of Aberdeen University

and editor of the Times Scottish Education Supplement, on Professor

George McNicol, whose announcement that he is to retire three years

early has taken everyone by surprise.

Surprise -- springing controversial ideas without discussion -- has

been McNicol's style. Dr John Sheehan, honorary secretary of Aberdeen

University Association of University Teachers, says: ''Probably the

situation would have been been similar whoever we'd had as principal,

but the present principal's managerial style has led to considerable

alienation among the staff during that period.''

From Hillhead High School, Glasgow, George McNicol went to Glasgow

University to study medicine, rising to reader before becoming professor

of medicine at Leeds.

In an interview for Education Herald last May, McNicol told me about

the case history of Aberdeen when he took over as principal in 1981.

''There was an agreement between the university and the University

Grants Committee in the late sixties and seventies. The planning figure

peaked at 12,000 at one stage. There was a lot of pressure put on this

university by the UGC to expand provision to take 10,000 students. In

1981, leaving aside Oxford, Cambridge and London, I think it's correct

to say that Aberdeen had the highest unit of resource in the UK

system.''

Then the medical man (papers on thrombosis and bleeding disorders)

found himself presiding over major surgery -- with no anaesthetic. In

1981 there was a 23% cut in funding. Two years of slow recovery were

followed by a severe trauma, ''a further period of retrenchment which

coincided with the UGC's move to the more robust application of formula

funding.''

Willis Pickard says: ''He had to tackle the very savage cuts that

Aberdeen suffered disproportionate to other universities. To be fair to

the man, he's never flinched from giving a lead; he's always led from

the front; he's always directed his Court along the lines that he

wanted.''

A long-time Aberdeen watcher from another institution told me:

''George McNicol challenged a lot of Aberdeen's cosy self-contentment in

the seventies, that would have had to be challenged anyway.''

There was another set-back for Aberdeen and McNicol last year. The UGC

had allocated the university #5m of ''deficiency money'' (McNicol's

phrase), but in a candid interview with me for this paper Sir Peter

Swinnerton-Dyer, who was chairman of the the UGC, told me that Aberdeen

''had been moaning too much,'' and that it would take a century for it

to rank with Edinburgh and Glasgow universities. Sir Peter criticised

McNicol for his handling of a merger possibility between Aberdeen and

Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology.

The Aberdeen principal has had many critics on the inside. One was

Professor Paul Wilkinson, the distinguished terrorist expert who has now

defected to St Andrews. Last night Wilkinson would make no comment about

McNicol's premature departure.

Wilkinson was part of a group on the Aberdeen Senate which opposed

strongly McNicol's plan for a 40-week academic year. There was

additional support from students, townspeople and from educationists

from other institutions, protesting that a 40-week year and a three-year

degree scheme were incompatible with the tradition and structure of

Scottish university education. The four-year Honours degree was defended

as a well-established and valuable qualification attracting students

from far beyond Scotland.

One commentator describes the McNicol plan as ''a very dangerous thing

to do, when the market would not react favourably to it.'' But, Pickard

points out, McNicol has had a partial victory. ''He's now got one part

of that through, i.e. the modularised courses that the Senate has

agreed.''

With calls for more access for students without formal academic

qualifications, and with the American-style 10-month plan by the

principal of St Andrews University (explained in today's Education

Herald), it looks as if universities will have to adjust their hours and

methods to suit different clients in the ways that McNicol had been

urging.

Willis Pickard says: ''The date at which George McNicol retires --

September, 1991 -- is from his point of view, and the university's, a

very well chosen one in the sense that Aberdeen's financial position

will then have been stabilised. As he said in the statement he issued,

the extra money which will come in each year because of the better

research rating also means that the university's financial future up

until about 1995 will be better than could have been predicted, and also

the bids for the funding up to 1995 will have been lodged and hopefully

accepted before he goes.''

But there is still bitterness. ''We never felt that we had the public

support of the principal,'' Dr John Sheehan of Aberdeen AUT says, and

last night another academic told me emotionally on the phone: ''Morale

has been so low, and we've lost so many good colleagues. It's

complicated, but try to count it up, because I think the staff has

halved since 1981.''

However, Willis Pickard has a proposition that could give the

university an extra touch of class for the quincentennial celebrations

in 1995. ''A woman university principal is long overdue, and not just in

Scotland. Leaving aside Oxbridge colleges, there hasn't been one

virtually anywhere. If such a person could be identified and was willing

to put her name forward, it would be a real coup for Aberdeen.''