BASES PARA LA COMBINACIÓN DE ACCIONES

At Rose University, the opening speech was the main speech given by the presiding

officer at degree ceremonies. The senior officer who wrote the speeches used by all

the presiding officers at Rose University during the period of this study described the

content of an opening speech in the following way:

…obviously you start off with the kind of introductory speech that’s meant to set the scene for the parents and the students ‘look what you've achieved’ etc.

and it’s also meant to put it into a global context in a sense of you know Rose

University’s place. It’s also meant to showcase the university a little,

particularly to the parents but also to reflect the student’s broader perspective

on the university. There are (it depends who you ask), some people who

would rather it be less of a 'sell' on the university at that point. I think that’s

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would you not want to hear what you've done in the university and the rating

of the university because you're making them feel good about it, so there's a

little bit of people who feel different about that but you'd have no hesitation in

an American university them telling you that.

Senior Officer 3, Rose University, 19.6.14.

This description highlighted how the content of opening speeches at Rose University

included elements related to the reputation and credibility of the university in a global

context. According to Room (2000) the reputation and credibility of an institution is

linked to the credentials [education, qualifications, resources and facilities] that an

institution awards and provides. He suggests that processes linked to the development

of mass participation in higher education are influencing international standard setting

and, in effect, increasing marketing activity in higher education. I believe this is

reflected in the statement given by the senior officer and speech writer at Rose

University above, which suggests that speeches at degree ceremonies provide useful

opportunities for such activity and to reach diverse stakeholders.

However, not all members of staff were comfortable with the emergence of this

activity:

In terms of speeches without speaking about any particular speaker they can

become a bit corporate and I think that’s a mistake and I think judging how

much you celebrate the university discreetly without saying 'we are top ten'

'we are x this amount of money you know' I think is a fine art and I'm not

always sure everyone gets it right. The (second) Chancellor always gave very

homely speeches that went down perfectly well with the students.

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The view held by this senior officer is that the balance and content of speeches should

be focused on the students and that any messages related to the reputation and

credentials of the university be included and delivered more discreetly. However, the

findings in this study suggest that conditions of growth discussed earlier in Chapter

Three are contributing to increasing marketing activity in higher education. I suggest

that as more higher education institutions open, giving stakeholders more choices,

institutions are increasingly having to find ways to transmit claims about their

reputation, quality, and standards. The analysis demonstrates that degree ceremony

speeches provide an opportunity for institutions to do this.

The question left largely unanswered is what constitutes a ‘quality’ higher education institution? And how do less prestigious institutions transmit their reputation and

credentials through degree ceremonies? There was evidence in this study that showed

how some higher education institutions had sought to enhance their reputation

through their degree ceremonies:

…of course the point about if you're up and coming as a university and you've been poorly ranked historically you want to create the trappings of a quality

institution and a degree ceremony's absolutely at the heart of that but then you

also have these trade-offs of how traditional do you want it to be? And how

much? because you can go too far and it can become parody or slightly

pompous so you can't have them with this a new up and coming institution

doing all these interesting, exciting, innovative things on the one hand and

then having a degree ceremony necessarily that feels like it’s trying to ape

Oxford or something like that, so there's a kind of interesting balance about it

but if it feels too modern or too lightweight then you know it doesn't give off

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Senior Officer 4, Rose University, 24.6.14.

This respondent suggested that the quality of a degree ceremony contributed to the

perceived quality of an institution. Evidence presented earlier in Chapters Five and

Six suggests that ‘quality’ can be culturally situated, perceived and enacted in

different ways. Therefore, how is the term quality being applied in this instance? The

respondent goes on to suggest that quality is related to a degree ceremony being able

to generate gravitas. I would argue that material actants, such as ceremonial mace and

academical dress discussed previously, provide new institutions with opportunities to

make connections to the rich traditions and heritage of higher education with which

ancient universities are more directly associated. Although in the case of academical

dress, some new designs make these connections more successfully than others

(Groves, 2011).

Chapters Five, Six and section 7.2 above, also demonstrate how the inclusion of

material actants such as ceremonial mace, in combination with other actants such as

academical dress worn by presiding officers, can contribute to effects of institutional

authority at ceremonies held by much younger higher education institutions. These

effects were further reinforced when students were presented to presiding officers

during ceremonies.