Professor Beardyman
Just to show I am down with the youth, I am going to compare
academia to hip hop.
As you all know, there are 4 fundamental elements of Hip-Hop. You knew that
didn’t you? You didn't? Oh allow me to educate you – they are:
 |
| Beardyman: Though the beard may be a bit oversold |
1. Bboying
2. MCing
3. Graffiti
4. DJing. Obviously.
Why am I showing off my Vanilla Ice like knowledge of the
patois of modern culture? Well there are 4 elements to academia, publishing,
grant writing, teaching and admin. In my quest to inform the great unwashed
(yes that’s you, the one not really paying attention in the back) about what
academics do, this week’s tortured musing is going to give an overview of why
we think these elements matter. Though you will be pleased to know I am not
going to stretch my torturous analogy to linking say Grant writing to B-boying
– mainly because I don’t know what Bboying is!
Zen and the art of university maintenance
There are 3 ways of viewing the elements
Idealistic: Universities are dreaming spired bastions of
learning and higher education where we educate young minds, push back the
boundaries of knowledge and enrich the greater good by applying Kantean
dialectics to the routes of the romantic poem. In this worldview teaching is
central, admin is giving back to the university, paper writing a joy and grants
a dirty word as there should be an inherent understanding of the intrinsic good
our esteemed institutions do.
Fatalistic: The economy is fucked, George Osborne is busily
grinding the last traces of state funded endeavour into a dry dust of free
market neo-con fury. In this less than enlightened time, we have to pay our way
and our work has to have IMPACT (if there was an option to make the word flash
and somehow sear itself into your skin, that would be the font I should use, but a whole other blog is needed to talk about IMPACT). Our work is publicly funded from hard working
honest tax payers' money and we should never be allowed to forget it. The
university is a business and every action should be to support the mission
statement and bring money into the university.
A third way: Like the force, there needs to be balance in the univers(ity).
The money that pays for our salaries does come from somewhere and most of
it comes from the taxpayer. In return I need to do something more productive
than watch Beardyman videos on YouTube (though the kitchen diaries is awesome). Academics do need
to contribute to the running of the place and the education of the students.
But at the same time we should be in a position to carry on researching the relative
importance of early-latin swear stones (if we wish).
The academic transfer market (my one paragraph of soapbox ranting)
These different approaches have an impact on university
life. As with all educational institutions in the UK, universities are ranked
and what does ranking bring…Prizes (or substantial funding from the government
in the form of QR and QT grants from the Department for Business, Innovation
& Skills, but prizes is more catchy). They are ranked on a number of
different criteria, but the two big ones are the REF (a quinquennial exercise
evaluating research output and IMPACT) and the QA (which evaluates teaching). These
evaluations are based on individuals, which generates a transfer market in academics,
with the superstar professors moving between the big universities demanding
more space, more salary, more acolytes and flunkies to peel them raw grapes. This
can have a number of negative repercussions: focussing resources on a small handful
of individuals, damaging departmental cohesion, depleting the pension pot (which
was final salary based) and putting academic career development at a lower
priority – why train people when you can just buy someone in. The other concern
is just because they are big hitters doesn’t mean they are team players and the
perceived benefit of what they bring may be offset by the friction and resentment
they cause. To crunch metaphors, we should aspire to have more Stephen Gerrards (who played for one club his whole career, possibly to the
detriment of the amount of medals he won), people who grew up in one
institution are to my mind, more likely to be loyal to that institution, understand
the culture of the institution and are more inclined to contribute in the small
ways necessary to keep it running. Then again, we can all get a bit inward looking and fresh perspective always helps.
Nick Clegg and the new student generation.
Crikey, got slightly off topic there. Must. Focus. 12 months
ago I would have said that successful
grant writers will inherit the ivory towers. They were perceived to bring in cold hard
cash that pays for the buildings, the electricity, the salaries of the people
who work in the mystery blue box (and as a sideline get a small bit of
money to do research). However, times have changed, and the quants who run the
institutions have realised that students = money: £9,000 x as many people you
can squeeze into a lecture theatre per year. This has the beginnings of a major
revolution in universities. Firstly (and don’t tell them) this gives the
students real power as consumers, if the teaching is not up to scratch they can
head to the twitterbookapp thingy and troll the course – luckily most of them
are too busy being students to realise this empowerment. Secondly, those who
teach and particularly those who teach well, suddenly have become more
valuable. With the increased focus on teaching, it is possible that the
superstar teachers will now also be commoditised and traded between the
colleges. I suspect we are a way off Panini doing a sticker album of high
flying academics, buy maybe academic top trumps is not too inconceivable!
Imagine the fun - oh no I can’t believe you beat my Nobel Prize winner with
your senior administrator.
Not so Deep Conclusion
Academics need to deliver a range of diverse
functions within the space of the working day (like most jobs). I would argue that the breadth
of skills required is unique, ranging from preparing sales pitches to writing technical
literature to teaching to management. Then again I have no experience of any
other job, except stacking shelves in a refrigerated warehouse, so have little
to compare it against. There are some people who excel in a single area and are
prized by the institutions, but the rest of us have to muddle by with a mix of
all aspects.
