What does Robyn criticize about Vic's factory?
Robyn compares the factory to a prison or a hell; she feels like Dante in the Inferno. Her only comment is "appalling": the work is noisy, dirty, mindless, repetitive, brutalizing. The factory arouses terror inside her, as well as a kind of awe. Even machines are frightful: she got upset at watching the "obscene, violent yet controlled movements of the CNC machine". She eventually comes to the conclusion that being unemployed is better than working there.
During her visits she proposes some humane solutions to the problem she finds merciless. For example, she suggests rotating men in jobs, or replacing them with automated machines. However, the ideas are precisely refused by Vic, who considers them too expensive or disadvantageous. As far as Vic's imagination of lightless factory, she considers it creepy and unfair, since it will retain jobs only for managing directors ("o brave new world, where only the MD have jobs").
After visiting the foundry and listening to Vic's description, she accuses him of having built a racist system, where Asians and Caribbean do the heaviest jobs, while no manager is coloured. Later, while talking to Charles, she will speak about "the grosser examples of prejudice", since Asian workers are considered "clannish and stubborn". Therefore, she blames him for not using his power to solve society's problems.
Furthermore she harshly criticizes the pin-ups scattered almost everywhere in the factory, and asks Vic to take them off. What she finds more depressing and degrading in them is the fact that nobody was looking at them any more except themselves. This is also the topic of the argument with Brian Everthorpe, as he entered Vic's office triumphantly expounding him the drafts for the new advertising calendars. She denounces their obscenity and their degradation of women.
Contrary to Vic, she tries to find an explanation to the vandalism in the factory: in her opinion, it is a form of revenge against the system, which creates enormous unconscious resentment.
Besides, Robyn furiously reacts to Vic's proposal to frame and fire Danny Ram. Defending him is "the business of anyone who cares of truth and justice", she said. However, later she will admit to Charles that Vic honestly did not realize that what he was doing was immoral.
Finally, Robyn does not understand the advantage for Vic of spying Norman Cole's and Ted Stoker's activities. According to her, it would be a lot more useful for everybody to join their forces and produce a cheaper pump together. In her mentality, competition is useless and reminds her "a lot of little dogs squabbling over bones".

What does Vic criticize about Robyn's university?
The first thing harshly criticized by Vic is Robyn's strike. According to him, strikes are counterproductive and have the greatest repercussions on the system which strikers originally intended to defend. For example, people like Robyn stopped some lorries which were dispatching wares for her university; therefore, the university itself has to pay the re-delivering of them. Similarly a strike in Vic's factory would "plunge the factory in a deep red" and make all workers redundant. As far as Robyn's proposal to cut the money for defence instead of the one for universities, Vic objects that in this way "her cuts will be ours".
Vic considers the faculty of literature completely useless. It produces nothing profitable; on the contrary, it "steals" the taxpayers' money from other more helpful things. He agrees with cuts of the university staff, because he regards open-ended contracts unconceivable. Initially he criticizes also Robyn's course of feminist critical theory; in his opinion it is "a soft thing, only for girls".
He disapproves also semiotics: according to him, "it teaches to have dirty minds", it is a matter for intellectuals, who always try to find hidden meanings inside everything.
Furthermore, he regards halls of residence unfair, too expensive and exclusive only to well-off family. Citizens pay taxes "to keep middle class young people in the style to which they are accustomed". In his opinion, polytechnics would be a better solution, because they are cheap and "without frills".
New points of disagreement emerge during Vic's shadowing at the university. He does not conceive that university lecturers start working at 10 o'clock, nor that they are allowed to have a coffee break whenever they are not teaching. He finds it hard to regard reading as a work; in his view, reading is the negation of work. Moreover, he is amazed at Robyn not finding the solution to Tennyson's attitude in his poems.
Finally, he imagines the university as a pyramidal system, and proposes industrial-like solution to the university organization (e.g. introduce one standard course for all students).