Can academics change the world?

Via The Conversation:

Research and creative thinking can change the world. This means that academics have enormous power. But, as academics Asit Biswas and Julian Kirchherr have warned, the overwhelming majority are not shaping today’s public debates.

Instead, their work is largely sitting in academic journals that are read almost exclusively by their peers. Biswas and Kirchherr estimate that an average journal article is “read completely by no more than ten people”. They write:

Up to 1.5 million peer-reviewed articles are published annually. However, many are ignored even within scientific communities – 82% of articles published in humanities [journals] are not even cited once.

This suggests that a lot of great thinking and many potentially world altering ideas are not getting into the public domain. Why, then, are academics not doing more to share their work with the broader public?

The answer appears to be threefold: a narrow idea of what academics should or shouldn’t do; a lack of incentives from universities or governments; and a lack of training in the art of explaining complex concepts to a lay audience.

Are anthropologists more prone at failing to reach outside academia than experts in other disciplines? What can we do better?

I've worked on projects within anthropology that were born of grand popularizing intentions. More often than not, they still ended up mostly catering to academics talking to other academics, via formats that maintained the most traditional academic structure and which still act as academic currency. Since then, I've experimented with (my own) writing in ways to better engage public audiences and make some of the theoretical concepts and ethnographic data less impenetrable without watering down the anthropological quality. It's a skill you have to practice to refine. It most certainly isn't taught in any systematic way in academia, and even if it were, I'm not certain everyone who is good at one can compete in the other. I'd love to be proven wrong. Thoughts?

The second part of this proposition suggests that anthropologists talk to/at their peers too much and at the expense of the wider public. I'd say that as a discipline, we talk within too small a circle of peers interested only in our tiny niche of interests. Both of these things do a disservice to popular(izing) anthropology. Certainly anthropologists can present the big picture concepts to the outside world better if we open up to each other first.

Comment below to share your favorite public-facing or popular anthropology resources.

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The Neoliberalized, Debt-plagued, Low Wage, Corporatized University

The latest issue of Anthropologies, including my submission, is now available (see table of contents below). I recommend reading all the articles in full and have quoted selected highlights from each. Erin Taylor has also written a succinct and thoughtful report on her blog: University, Inc.: Striking fear into the heart of academics. This is an important, powerful and timely issue that speaks to pervasive problems affecting us all. To reiterate Ryan Anderson's concluding thought in his introduction, "please read, pass this around, comment, and find your own way to keep the conversation going. That's a good first step toward eradicating the "suck" from academia."

Anthropologies Issue 16, January 2013

The Neoliberalized, Debt-plagued, Low Wage, Corporatized University

 ~ Contents ~

Introduction:  Speaking of the neoliberal university

Ryan Anderson

So there's one option: we can take the university system full bore down the for-profit, privatized trail blazed so willingly by the U of Phoenix folks. We'll be in the hands of administrators like the former director of the University of Phoenix who, when asked about the purpose of education, said: "I'm happy that there are places in the world where people sit down and think. We need that. But that's very expensive. And not everybody can do that. So for the vast majority of folks who don't get that privilege, then I think it's a business". And there you have it. The choice is ours. What side will you pick?

Fear and loathing in academia

Francine Barone

Because academia relies on such a hierarchical system, people are affected in different ways, separated by static categories and self-interest. Too often we suffer alone, hiding behind office doors churning out publications, cursing the process that we mindlessly reproduce.

Busting apart the silos of knowledge production

Erin B. Taylor

Graduate students are taught that tenure track is the only option because their freedom to create knowledge will be severely curtailed in an applied world. The lecturers and professors who teach them this scramble like mice in a wheel to keep their jobs under adverse conditions because they believe there is no other viable path. They may study hegemony in their distant fieldsites, but they have no idea how to recognise it or deal with it when it affects their own lives.

Some historical notes on the decline of the university

Keith Hart

There have never been so many graduate researchers chasing so few jobs. Universities are too rigid, top heavy and expensive to act as the research engine of contemporary societies and are being replaced by smaller, more flexible and hungry organizations. Research publications have become largely meaningless except for purposes of academic promotion.

Passing with Pills:  Redefining Performance in the Pharmaceuticalized University

Tazin Karim

Evan, another non-prescription user tells me that before college, he never considered taking Adderall. He explains that: "It wasn’t until I was mature enough to understand that grades actually mattered that I saw the value of something like Adderall. I think that's why if my parents ever found out, they wouldn't be pissed, they would be proud of me for taking initiative. Everyone here has the opportunity to take Adderall to study if they really want to – so if they choose not to take it, that's on them."

Neoliberal Education: From Affordable Education to Expensive Training

Patrick Bigger & Victor E. Kappeler

Simply stated, the movement toward online learning, hailed by its proponents as a democratic revolution, is little more than a pragmatic response by universities to a deception perpetrated by political elites, capitalists in the tech sector, and increasingly powerful neoliberal NGOs like the Gates Foundation. Superficial, unengaging, and of questionable outcomes, online educational programs constitute a manifestation of the neoliberlalization of nearly everything for the public, students and educators alike. It is not lost on the anti-educationalists, including politicians seeking to dismantle what’s left of the welfare state, tech entrepreneurs, and sections of Christian fundamentalists that a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

Surviving in the meantime

Greg Downey

We are told that reform, restructuring, or removal of courses is justified because of "student preference," whether or not there is actual evidence that market forces are pushing the change. In an unrelenting bad economic climate, the disjuncture may not be so obvious; here, it can be jarring. If the budget is actually in surplus, it takes serious goalpost movement to manufacture an appropriate sense of institutional anxiety. In fact, many of the changes seem to stem, not from market considerations, but instead from impulses toward bureaucratization, desire for greater central control, old fashioned battles for prestige or turf, and even new, trendy management discourses and literature in "learning and teaching."

Review of Andrew Delbanco's "College"

Ryan Anderson

Ideally, Delbanco explains, college is supposed to be a place where students receive critical guidance as they learn how to start asking and answering questions for themselves. It's a place where people learn what they are all about, and starting figuring out who they are and want to become. But many of today's students show up to college with a range of habits, ideas, and behaviors firmly set in place. A lot of them are deeply concerned about how they stack up with their peers. College is an incredibly competitive place these days, and that competition takes a variety of forms.

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Unwanted: Don't bother earning a degree in anthropology or archaeology

Yahoo! Education (an appropriate name, I'd say) has today published an article on the top 5 most unwanted, unhelpful degrees a person could possibly waste their time earning. Some usual suspects make the list, like Philosophy and Religion, while more unexpected ones like Architecture (you should do an MBA instead, apparently, which doesn't bode well for our buildings) and Information Systems also appear. Perhaps not unsurprisingly is that Anthropology and Archaeology make the list at #3, followed by Area Ethnic or Civilization Studies, which I can't help but feel are also close enough to anthropology for this to be a double sting.

According to Vicki Lynn, senior vice president of Universum, a global talent recruiting company that works with many Fortune 500 companies, bachelors degrees in anthropology and area studies are useless for finding a job. In other words, they are worthless. As academic anthropologists, we are producing class after class of unwanted, unskilled graduates.

Unwanted Degree #3 - Anthropology or Archeology

Interesting? Yes. Important? Definitely. Marketable? Not so much... Lynn says a bachelor's degree in either anthropology or archeology is "totally limiting. Except for on a faculty or doing tours to the Parthenon, I don't know what you would actually do with this [degree]. Maybe there's some career in excavating or some other specialty, but I would assume the demand for these degrees is really small and shrinking." Again, numbers from the "Hard Times" report seem to back that, with recent grads in these areas logging a 10.5 percent unemployment rate.

Unwanted Degree #4 - Area Ethnic or Civilization Studies

Quick, what exactly does a bachelor's degree in area ethnic or civilization studies help you pursue? Not sure? Chances are neither are most employers, says Lynn, and that could be a problem for landing a job. "Some degrees have really bizarre names, and if you have one of those and you have to try to explain it to the recruiter or an employer, it's not helping you, so I would avoid them. These two fall into that category," she says. Unfortunately, the data from the "Hard Times" report backed Lynn up, noting that recent grads in this field yielded a 10.1 percent unemployment rate.

It's hard to argue with unemployment figures. Yet it is not difficult to see that a sheer ignorance of what key skills these degrees impart is rampant outside of our misunderstood discipline. This goes back to my argument in my previous post that Anthropology has a huge PR problem. It is also reminiscent of the time Gov. Rick Scott of Florida tried to eradicate anthropology from his state because of its inherent uselessness. A comprehensive record of this affair can be found at Neuroanthropology. Perhaps Vicki Lynn missed what anthropologists had to say in response to Gov. Scott's categorization of anthropology as a non-scientific, useless degree with no career prospects.

Kristina Killgrove, bioarcheaologist at the University of West Florida, responded to Gov. Scott in her blog post "Why is Anthropology Needed?", which I find has one of the best responses to the idea that graduates in anthropology have few skills to offer employees in today's marketplace (emphasis added):

First and foremost, the focus of anthropology is on understanding yourself in relation to others. This may sound pretty simple, but it involves critically thinking about why you do what you do, why others do what they do, and what factors affect these actions: e.g., religion, economy, biology, politics, family structure, gender, ethnicity, etc. While we tend to deal with individuals in our line of work, we're also interested in the community - the commonalities in experience at various scales.

That's all well and good, you might say, but what skills do students learn in an anthropology course? Don't they just learn how to throw around adjectivized names like Foucauldian and Marxist? I tell my students - and then demonstrate as best as possible throughout the semester - that anthropologists do learn several key skills:

-   We learn clear, precise record-keeping skills and have to be attentive to detail. You have to observe what people say (and what they don't say), what they do (and what they don't do), what their bones or bodies tell you.
-   Anthropologists also learn analytical reading and critical thinking skills: how to read between the lines of a text, to question an author's or speaker's biases and the cultural context in which their ideas were formed. Thinking critically means questioning one's own biases in addition to those of others.
-   We also learn how to deal with unfamiliar social situations - we learn new languages and new rules for communication with people from all over the world, and we do this through participation in addition to observation so that we can understand where someone else is coming from.

Through these approaches, anthropologists want to understand the amazing variation in humankind - past and present - as well as the social and cultural context in which that variation occurred or is occurring. I think this is a powerful way to approach the world, but students aren't always convinced. How can anthropology help in the job search?, they ask.

The majority of my undergraduate students, particularly in the large lecture courses, will go into one of three main occupational spheres after graduation: health and medicine (doctors, nurses, genetics research, allied health fields, etc.), business and economics, and teaching (from preschool to PhDs). Anthropology is useful to all of these fields:

-   Medicine - The health professions aren't just about biology or chemistry or pharmacology. For example, is your African-American patient more likely to suffer hypertension because of his genetics or because of his diet? Anthropologists have tackled questions like these, with our dual emphases on biology and culture.
-   Business - You can crunch numbers in econ classes, but it only helps you predict what will happen under certain economic conditions. It is equally important to understand how individuals and cultures deal with money, for example, or how they react to global developments that have lasting effects on the way they see the world and act within it. Future business people can learn about the global economy and people's place within it through anthropology.
-   Teaching - This field isn't just about imparting facts for students to learn. A good teacher is attuned to a classroom that has seen many changes over the last few decades. My parents' generation was in high school when integration happened - and teachers are even today dealing with a pedagogical legacy that excludes certain ethnic or racial groups or is prejudiced against them. Today's teachers think long and hard about how to convey information in the best possible way, how to use multimedia, how to engage students who take different approaches to learning, how to remedy old curricula that focus largely on DWMs - dead white males. Future teachers can also benefit from understanding the main tenets of anthropology in designing lessons, engaging in instruction, and communicating with students and their parents.

In short, anthropology is useful for anyone whose future job will require them to develop the interpersonal skills to work with the public. And that includes just about every college graduate today.

I'd also go one step beyond saying that anthropology is imperative for college grads to work in a globalized market: anthropology needs to be brought into high schools. Many high schools around the country teach courses in psychology and sociology. Both of these are excellent options, but why not anthropology as well? The analytical and critical thinking skills we teach our students are fundamental to future jobs in many different fields, but it's our bio-cultural focus, our understanding of how we as living beings interact with our natural and cultural world, that sets us apart from psych and soc. And I think that's well worth teaching our high schoolers.

Let me close with a quotation from one of my favorite authors (and one-time anthropology student), Kurt Vonnegut, whose words - from an interview in 1973 - still ring true in our poor education of youth in anthropology:

"I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it."

In my previous blog post, I concluded that anthropology's problem is at least two-fold: how we engage with each other and how we present ourselves to the rest of the world. Clearly we are failing at the latter. But as Killgrove argues,

Part of that is our fault [and] we need to figure out ways to make anthropology more relevant. We don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

It is easy to dismiss assessments like this of anthropology as "ignorant"; however, we are responsible for the level of public ignorance about anthropology and its usefulness in the world.

On another level, this article reveals serious defects in the hiring practices of the current employment market, where prospective employees are expected to be trained to the exact parameters of a job description by the completion of a bachelor's degree, rather than being hired to do a job based on their competence, critical thinking skills, capability of learning on the job and the facility of working with people in multicultural settings, all gleaned from a culturally aware education. Of course anthropologists have less to offer a job market that does not serve, at its very foundations, the needs of clients and customers as people beyond numbers on a spreadsheet.

Check out this presentation for more information about what actual anthropologists do. Hint: it's not about the Parthenon.





In case you missed it:

More open thoughts on anthropology and academia
What matters and what doesn't: open thoughts on academia


See also:

Anthropology is the worst college major for being a corporate tool, best major to change your life (Living Anthropologically)

(12/16/12) Anthropology is useless? Not to my students (Digs & Docs):

Returning to the question of "What's the value of an anthropology major?", I think hope it's self-evident. You leave a good anthro program as a better writer, a more critical thinker, someone who can appreciate not just the fact of human diversity, but why it's so persistent and important. You've learned how to study up on a topic you're not familiar with, analyze the basic assumptions and implications of the topic's party-line thinkers, and how to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. You've learned to distrust simple, one-size-fits-all explanations. And you've gained experience in defining important questions, collecting and analyzing data, and writing up conclusions that are both conscious of your bias and faithful to your observations.

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Back to Anthropology

Product Reviews?

Regular readers of this blog may have been wondering about my brief foray into eyeglass reviews, like what it had to do with anthropology or academia or ethnography or any of the other usual content I post here. In fact, I have written product reviews on this blog before (see 'Product Reviews' tab above), mostly on hardware and software. There are two main reasons why I write online consumer reviews and how-tos. Firstly, I like being able to produce something useful that will draw in a wider audience, especially if I have had trouble finding something suitable or comprehensive on a topic myself.

Back when I was a PhD student, I often lamented the lack of practical hardware and software reviews for stuff I could actually afford (which wasn't much), so I gravitated towards reviewing free and open source software or hacks and workarounds to make basic computers/browsers more productive. My own field kit was mixed bag of old technology put to new uses. Rather than buying a bunch of premium and proprietary software, I immersed myself in the belief that there is almost certainly a free/low-cost way to do most tasks using one or a combination of open source or gratis software/web-based applications. The learning curve is steep, but worth it when you can't afford more. That's more or less how I got on to tech reviews and how-tos in the first place.

In a similar vein, I still notice a lack of academic-oriented reviews for products and services, especially cross-over consumer items like tablets, digital recording devices, clothing or field gear. I had trouble finding a decent academic review of the Kindle DX graphite, for instance. Most of my reading is qualitative where extensive note-taking and highlights are imperative, but other academic styles of working are very different. Plus, anthropologists need to know what's going to work for them in the field as well as the office (or lack thereof).

I was sure that I had bored readers to death with eyewear reviews, but actually my 5-post series on glasses has become the most popular on this blog to date. I'm pretty confident that they've helped people to save a lot of time, energy and money. I intend future reviews to be of more direct interest to academics, anthropologists, students, geeks or social researchers, but not exclusively. My next planned review will also be of an optical nature, but with fieldworkers in mind.

Secondly, I am working on some new research to do with media and consumerism, so consider the product reviews that appear here as a minor form of participant observation. Details will follow in the future, but there are more pressing things on my agenda at the moment. Just to be clear: I will never post pre-written "sponsored" reviews (read: robot spam) to get ad revenues and won't ever post anything that I haven't written myself and don't honestly believe. I'll also clearly state when I've been given a complimentary product sample to review.


A brief Urban Firewalls update (finally)

I designated October as my month to return to my PhD thesis to prepare it for publication. Given my highly unstable personal circumstances at present (not to mention ending the month with Hurricane Sandy and a prolonged blackout), I am actually impressed that I managed to start getting down to work. I am currently drafting a plan for the new book version which includes re-working the chapter layout and refining the ethnographic contributions, potentially adding some comparative case studies from outside of Spain, and more original material that did not appear in the PhD version. The PhD manuscript as it stands presents a detailed story about a small Catalan town and its highly localized responses to technological and urban change. By re-organizing the contents, I hope to enable the local data to interweave with a more universal story of humans and technology and contribute to a more comprehensive anthropology of the digital age. I have a new website where I'll post updates of the progress of Urban Firewalls.


New at the OAC

There have also been quite a few items of interest over at the Open Anthropology Cooperative recently. We started shaking off the back-to-school malaise with a new e-seminar and some great blog posts. In case you missed it, catch up on the seminar for "In and Out of the State" by Patience Kabamba. In his featured blog, John McCreery asks, what about society and culture have changed to make being a dick the road to failure instead of the key to success? I am surprised that no one has yet provided any ethnographic studies of bullying in the forum, but this is a question I will be returning to shortly in an upcoming blog post. The US presidential elections inspired this post about language and politics and this follow-up blog on election lessons learned. Speaking of openness, why don't anthropologists share what they know about households with economists?

Despite this fairly steady stream of new and interesting additions to the site, the subject of "stagnation" in our forums has surfaced yet again, leading us to re-question the state of affairs over at the OAC under the header The Rise and Fall of Social Networks. If you are interested in the politics of making a site like the OAC work and some of the ongoing obstacles we are facing, please join in the discussion. My response to that thread will give you an idea of where I stand on a number of issues as well as a hint at what I'm working on for the future of the OAC:

Some good points in this article, at least for thinking about a historiography of social networking sites. But then there are significant differences between social networks and academic networks, much of which have to do with return on time investment, volunteer labor and long-term objectives, not to mention power relations and status hierarchies that carry over from the academic world. Much of activity on the social web need not concern itself with aims, intentions or long-term goals. It's easy. It can keep ticking over until boredom or newness - whichever comes first - force change. Academic networks don't work exactly the same way. The OAC mixes both together, which may contribute to an identity crisis of sorts.

I don't agree with all the points made in the article about Facebook vs. Twitter. I actually think that Twitter is, on the whole, more active and powerful than Facebook. Facebook's modus operandi is outdated, the layout and structure muddled, its features are restrictive and its policies are confusing. Sure, for most users, a lot of this is irrelevant. Even Apple can convince people its products are inherently usable, which is patently untrue. Yet both of these companies are successful by closing off their markets and thereby normalizing clumsy technology and unintuitive interfaces. Twitter not so much. But I digress ...

There are probably more dead blogs on the internet than active ones. There are at least 83 million fake, unused or inactive Facebook accounts. I have emails that lapsed into oblivion over the years, websites that expired, and domains I never renewed. Is there any technology online that is not subject to simply running its course? This post, Why Are There So Many Dead Blogs, does a pretty good job of noting all the simple human factors involved. It's not only the technology that determines what network lives or dies.

Playing around on Twitter and/or keeping in touch with family on Facebook are not analogous to activity at the OAC. The first is fleeting and impermanent. The second is personal and intimate. The latter takes more time commitment, at least some critical thought, and the expectation of some kind of pointed exchange or response over time. We've tried to add site features that lower the barrier to participation (share buttons, twitter tab, RSS), but the returns on this are also quite low. The content that is uploaded without the requirement of reciprocity or response (e.g. "sharing a video", "liking" something, "listing an event"), is really incidental to any wider successes here, or so it would seem.

The more significant products of the OAC's concerted efforts - namely the Press - require investments of time and energy. They attract participants because they fit longstanding academic value models. Academics change slowly even if we'd like to think that new modes of communication make a qualitative difference to how we live and work. Hence why email has not imploded as the means for transmitting academic information. Mailing lists are still popular because they are semi-closed/private and simple. They do one useful thing well enough to stick around. In early OAC days, Twitter was a big deal for us: a real paradigm shift that led to the OAC's development in the first place. Today, no one seems that bothered to engage on Twitter. Perhaps that is a failure on our part as far as implementation, but it is more likely that Twitter no longer fills a communicative need for the OAC since circumstances have changed. The OAC Facebook page is now a bit more active, but still pretty separate from the main network.

We have had continual debates about what the site hopes to achieve or "do" - a mission statement - that would attract participants and be meaningful. Yet no one seems willing to take on a more permanent role in shaping the site. If the OAC is imploding, what's the precise cause and remedy other than lack of dedicated interest?

I have concentrated a lot on technical development at the OAC and I still believe that a deluge of content is preventing more adequate use and navigation of the site. I do agree with John that we need to streamline access to the most interesting content and like the idea of running a "best of" series that resurrects old posts to keep them alive. Instead of pushing for some "new" spark, we are likely not making best use of what we already have. I wish Ning made it easier to index and display old posts. I have sketches/ideas for site changes, but I am scrambling to keep on top of things at the moment. We don't have as strong a development team as we once did among the admins, and it really can't be done without wider interest.

We have been talking about these issues at the OAC in some form or another since the site's speedy launch in 2009. I am now committed to taking more drastic efforts to put an end to pervasive content-navigation woes in the hopes that related participation woes will also disappear. A few weeks ago, I began experimenting with site improvements for revamping the OAC's appearance, perhaps better termed "image". The OAC homepage hosted on Ning has been both a source of the OAC's successes as an academic/social network and a frustrating infrastructural barrier to expansion. I am working on some bold ideas that would involve making more dramatic changes beyond Ning. If the experimentation starts to look like an actual possibility, I will float the new ideas on-site for feedback. As I mentioned in the post above, any lasting effort cannot really be forged without wider community interest. If you can help in any way to make the Open Anthropology Cooperative a more effective, active and useful site for anthropologists to accomplish meaningful things, please volunteer your skills.


New to anthropology: PopAnth

The launch of PopAnth in September marks an exciting move forward for anthropology online. PopAnth presents snapshots of anthropological knowledge for popular audiences in online magazine format. It was formed out of a discussion about public anthropology over at the OAC. The team, including some OAC veterans, has really embraced the idea of opening anthropology and making it more publicly engaging. The articles are fun to read and really distill worthwhile talking points about what anthropology is and what it hopes to discover about people. Greg Downey over at Neuroanthropology sums up the motivation and intentions behind PopAnth, including samples of recently submitted articles and how to get involved.




Image from hongkiat.com

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Marking and higher education (a rant)

Matt Thompson over at Savage Minds has written a thought-provoking post about grading papers and the amount of time that academics dedicate to marking. I am thankful for blog posts that reflect on the practice of teaching anthropology. They are few and far between and I believe that teaching is too important to allow it remain so neglected. Let's be honest, anthropological training does not include any attention to pedagogical skills. It is up to individual educators as to how much time they devote to teaching and student development at the supposed expense of their own research agendas. From my experience, this can often mean little to no consistency across different classes and lecturers, a lax approach to educational standards, and a general disinterest in teaching except among only the few most charismatic faculty members for whom teaching comes naturally.

Regardless of classroom manner, we can all agree that taking home hundreds of papers to grade is not appealing.

I started teaching just weeks after I got my BA and throughout my PhD programme, well before US-style graduate teaching assistantships became as trendy in the UK as they are today. In fact, it was rare for first-year PhD candidates to be offered any classes and I was certainly the youngest teacher in my department (university?) independently taking a set of seminars when I finished my BA at 20. Although the memory of gainful employment now seems laughably distant from my current state of postdoctoral poverty, I was then fortunate enough to collect plenty of invaluable experience teaching, mentoring and marking hundreds of essays.

Anthropologists largely assess their students through lengthy essays which test their ability to unite theory and ethnography with cohesive and thoughtful arguments. In practice, however, we grade poorly referenced regurgitation. Even a small stack of papers can take days to mark. Early career academics and TAs are especially meticulous over-achievers when it comes to grading, devoting far too many hours to thoughtful annotations and helpful explanations, until the novelty of red ink wears off. That happens fairly quickly.



There is no doubt that marking a mere 3-4 papers an hour just isn't feasible and nor is it the best use of our time as educators.

Matt shares his helpful practice of lessening his marking load by requiring students to opt-in for detailed comments. If they choose not to, they'll receive a grade only. The opt-in idea that Matt offers is a good solution for those of us who habitually spend too much time reading, marking, re-reading, checking, etc. It makes infinite sense to let students choose up front and free up energy otherwise spent on wasteful over-marking. Or does it?

An alternative that I have used is the "see me" note in lieu of comments. Yes, it's risky if you value your closed-door time, so try this one with extreme caution, but you can rest assured that only the most dedicated are prepared to (gasp) walk to your office or even knock on the door. Those courageous few willing to brave the trek are rewarded with face-time and the chance to see a teacher as more than just a drone (this works both ways). A short conversation can be preferable for students who don't respond well to written comments and you can better understand their academic strengths and weaknesses. Something as simple as an open door and making time for students works wonders. Who would have thought? Well, anyone who was once a student ...

Like countless other junior academics, I also began my teaching career by marking essays with careful notes for each student. It was time-consuming, but I continued doing so with the justification that it saves time later on in a number of ways. Especially in more intensive courses, you can get a lot of students contesting their grades, and after 100 or more papers, it's easy to forget what prevented a borderline B (UK 2.1) from reaching an A (UK first). Detailed notes help me recall better in these cases, even though certainly less than 30% take the words to heart. A few have even been supremely thankful for my taking the time.

Early career academics (read: young teachers) fall prey to battles over grades much more than their senior counterparts. Rampant ageism associates youth and incompetence. In my opinion, young female academics have twice the battle here. (I realize now that this is turning into a rant. Apologies.)

I take the academic writing part of assessment seriously, probably more so than most teachers I know. Hardly any of my students fresh out of UK secondary education manage to put a readable essay together, which has sadly come to be expected. Worse still is when their writing does not improve by their final year because not one of their teachers ever mentions how abysmal it is. Then we applaud their lack of literacy by awarding degrees and collectively scratch our heads when graduates either fail to become productive members of society or get accepted onto MA programs without knowing how to cite. And so the cycle continues. Yes, it's faster not to bother with things like grammar or punctuation. Indeed, I've even been instructed to ignore it. And that bothers me because it's unethical and devaluing.



I underline, circle and cross out grammatical abominations as I read. It's an autonomic reflex. I let my students know early on the rubric that I'll use in marking their assignments, which includes academic writing conventions. Since there was never an academic skills requirement for native English speakers when I was teaching, I used to hold extra writing skills sessions with undergraduates on my own time (unpaid, of course, because PhD students don't count).

As I see it, content, structure and argument are key. A paper without the appropriate conventions for writing and citation is not acceptable, regardless of how many books and articles the student has read. I am not dismissing that students need to be taught to "think" well, which happens in large part through discussion and debate outside of written assignments. But they must also be able to communicate those concepts and play an active role in the world of ideas that we're guiding them through. It's not enough to understand if you cannot also be understood.

Marking is bound to be "unfair" to those in the top and bottom percentiles. This always bothered me immensely as a student and I do my best to rectify it when possible. I recall from my own undergraduate years that the best and worst of the class always got the least amount of feedback on their work. The latter are easily deemed lost causes, while the former excel of their own volition. That's not teaching. It's filing.

I understand that formal grading is not helpful for everyone, but Matt's students trashing an essay without even reading the comments seems like a gross waste of tuition fees (especially when others hungry for knowledge and self-improvement can't afford to attend universities). Which begs the question, is it not counter-productive to encourage university students to customize their education so extensively that it renders the teacher and his/her input irrelevant to the experience of learning? Negotiation and collaboration with students to arrive at better learning conditions is good; reducing higher education to a fast food "value menu" is not.

I get that a majority of students could care less what we think about their work. What I don't get is why our respective systems of higher education not only deem this attitude satisfactory, but continue to reward it.

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A brief rant on citations

When did students start adding a list of "unused" references to the end of an essay or dissertation bibliography? Who taught them to do this and who is encouraging it? Please stop.

Let's review. References are not a vanity exercise to make you look well-read and clever. If you haven't cited it within the text, leave it out, and revel quietly and in private at your incredible ability to read stuff (or download it). We are all duly impressed, I'm sure.

Alternatively, upload your impressive list of citations to a public, online database like del.icio.us, CiteULike, Mendeley, Zotero, a wiki, list-serv, an online community or your undoubtedly self-absorbed blog. This process of engaging with other researchers for mutual benefit will at least convert your inability to follow academic convention into something more appropriate and useful.


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PhD students are still a waste of space (update)

Given the widespread support I received from other research students and academics, I felt it pertinent to post an update on the status of the desk debacle described in my last entry.

How and why do things like this happen? Like most academics, I don't mind lashing out at central university administration/managers - notoriously motivated by financial concerns and profit margins - for making poor decisions that affect academic life. In this case, however, according to my university's regulations, as a fee-paying student nearing submission, I am still entitled to the equitable use of university. The "University administration" had not suggested otherwise. Instead, it was my department that had chosen to revoke the workspaces of its research students two months prior to the end of their registrations even though the university gives us the right to use its facilities. Through a gray and murky loophole in wording, the department had chosen to remove itself from the overarching category of "university facilities", restricting this to the university library alone.

To add insult to injury, the department had not taken any steps to notify or consult with students in the final months of their write-ups before making the decision to revoke their privileges within the building. This caused stress, anxiety and a feeling of helplessness amongst students. It is difficult enough entering this unsure time - with heightened deadline pressures and the weight of three to four years of exponentially untenable life/work balances compressing the spine - that losing workspaces should really not come into the equation.

When academics feel that something is rotten in HE, they go to their departmental staff for support. Where could we turn, given that this was an internal act?

Through email and consultation with our supervisors, we fought against the decision and had it overturned (more or less). After an inundation of requests and demands from students that we be allowed to stay in our offices until our registration periods expire, the department has relented and will allow this audacious behavior – working until we're done – to continue as expected. However, I have been forewarned that "furniture will need to be moved" in August, despite any disruption that this may cause. So, rather than shoving the old workhorses out the back door to make way for new recruits, we'll all be crammed into one room. It’s going to be a stuffy August.

The good part: I received unwavering support from my supervisor who was equally baffled by the decision. Student representatives and the student’s union got involved. Senior staff and student advisors know much more about the needs of students and it boggles the mind how these things get through the net without seeking advice and approval from supervisors or the students themselves. Plus, the whole affair has also brought some of the students together and allowed us to reflect on our academic environments, expectations and disappointments.

Of course, this is not just about desks. Problems with space on campuses are perennial and students are not unreasonable. We are likely to share desks, books and facilities and are very rarely proprietary about them. Instead of the issue at hand, it was the unilateral decision-making and disrespect that it implied which were toxic for my department. Some students remain worried about speaking out against the decision, and there is still talk of us losing our spaces, especially for those continuing to extend their work beyond a "standard" registration period. But students who are extending their courses are still paying fees for this reason; they are still students and they still need somewhere to work.

Furthermore, both the original decision and the revised position allowing us to stay at our desks were transmitted second- or third-hand. This has provoked a general sense of detachment. Various statements and allusions made by unnamed persons appear to imply that research students who need more time to write (i.e, failures) are somehow surreptitiously profiting off the department's lack of space by asking to stay at their desks until submission. It has made some of us feel uneasy and as if we were doing something wrong. Is it the fault of research students who have been accepted to undertake their PhDs in a department that the administration of said department has, through mismanagement, run out of space and offered no alternative?

Academics' complaining about a hard life is a joke to most working people, so I think we just tend to take the good with the bad and count ourselves lucky. The truth is that no one really wants to be the one to complain. I was pleased to learn that I wasn't the only one who felt this way and, more importantly, that I'm not the only one notices what academia will be reduced to if we're not careful. In comparison to most things, losing my desk is a small problem, but it is merely one representative example of a much larger problem that any one of us can be affected by.

By airing these views, I do not wish to shame my own department, whose academic members I greatly respect and appreciate, but to draw to light conditions endemic to higher education when fundamental tenets of workplace logic are forgotten or ignored by a few unchallenged managers. In the end, nothing I have said here is revolutionary in the least, unless respect, equality in the workplace and a vested interest in departmental conviviality are things that we shouldn't naturally expect.

I hope that others can learn from the unfortunate mistakes recounted here and choose instead to uphold the integrity of the academic process and support its bottom feeders (the students).

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PhD students are a waste of space

Like most PhD students, I can empathize with many of the typical scenarios amusingly depicted in Piled Higher and Deeper, but I enjoy working with my supervisor and I have been given plenty of encouragement to grow academically. I am challenged to explore my work independently while guidance is available to me if and when I need it. I fear, however, that core features of academic life are increasingly at risk within the vulnerable state of Higher Education in the UK today.

Here is a brief email exchange between my department and myself this morning:

Dear Fran,

I have been asked to write to inform you that from September you will no longer be eligible for workspace within the school and you should vacate the workspace you are currently using by 31st July at the very latest.

You are still entitled to use the University's library and computing facilities.

Many thanks,

xxxx


Dear xxxx,

As you know, my extension year ends on 30 September 2010. I therefore do not understand why I (and other full-time research students) should need to vacate our workspaces on the 31st of July. What happened to the other two months between 31 July and 30 September?

As a side note, I have consistently been told that departmental space is scarce, which I have always appreciated. My desk is basic (nigh on shoddy) and in a room with 8 other students. It doesn't even have drawers to keep things in [edit: There are empty tracks where drawers used to be. I asked for replacements, to no avail]. I had no privacy all year to conference with my undergraduate students. I have had to deal with people moving my computer, unplugging it when it was still switched on, leaving coffee stains on my papers and keyboard and numerous other inconveniences due to the complete lack of respect for my workspace all year. We have been doubling up on spaces as it is. I therefore find it particularly appalling that we are not only herded into too small a space, but quickly discarded to make room for the next herd. I do not have a solution to the department's spatial woes, but as a fee-paying student and a regular, paid member of staff with multiple responsibilities in any given academic year (teaching, IT admin, research), I hope the department does not take my lack of sympathy personally.

This complaint is not directed at you personally, but at the policy in place. I would therefore be very grateful if the powers that be could provide a more satisfactory explanation as to why my extension fees are now worth less than they were last month and why the School is so quick to want to wash their hands of me.

I wish to keep my current desk until my registration expires, or be provided with a decent alternative and secure space.

Kind regards,

Fran

I would normally not air such exchanges publicly, but I was inspired by a call to action from a fellow research student who, like myself, feels that PhD students too often put up with being ignored, let down, and treated like lesser academic citizens.

My concerns are also increasingly in response to the latest tide of fear flooding British HE which sees universities under fire to cut costs, save space and increase efficiency. While I was reading the above email in my student email account, over in my "staff" inbox (the fact that the two roles are incommensurate is telling in itself), I received a notice that the University is now accepting applications for "voluntary redundancy" settlements for positions that will remain permanently unfilled to help pay for more student enrollment:

The costs of the voluntary redundancy/early retirement will be recovered through permanent salary savings i.e. the post will not be replaced.

More students, less staff, less office space, more red tape, less time, less effort, less respect. Is this really where we want to go?

Can lowly PhD students make a difference, or are we as expendable as the email above implies?

In return for their rising tuition fees, students get access to a university library and computers and a well-established academic infrastructure (in addition to qualifications and hopefully chances to obtain fulfilling jobs).

Computing facilities are important. My department thankfully runs and maintains its own Apple computing lab (which I helped to set up and administer) with local servers and brand new machines that are excellent to work with, especially for photos and video. As for university-wide facilities, most students prefer to avoid the packed computer rooms if they can. Plus, not many of the bloated Win Vista public computer facilities on the Kent campus can match the speed of a decent low-cost laptop or netbook.

As for the library, the anthropology shelves are fairly comprehensive, but journal holdings range from good to appalling. I have borrowed less than 10 print books from the library this year - which I could have afforded for far less than my fees amount to - as most of my reading material is available online. But my tuition fees give me access to e-journals and online resources, a bargain compared to running into inflated pay walls. As an Open Access advocate, I hope that this will eventually become a non-problem. At present, there are a considerable number of ways to acquire many free, peer-reviewed journals online, with more on the horizon.

With Universities’ hold over computing facilities and academic literature being challenged by new availability, what allure will these old and archaic institutions have left? Why should research students continue investing in what we can buy for ourselves in PC World or procure freely on the web and with a lot less paperwork?

Put simply, computers and books are not why we should be embarking on academic research. These are accessories to learning, but they do not constitute learning.

The truly priceless asset of a university education – what we should be venturing to protect and nurture – is the academic environment. Departments, buildings and lecture halls are full of knowledge ready to be shared, full of enthusiastic researchers and sharpened thinking, full of collaborative spaces, new ideas, innovation, a sense of community and pride in collective efforts founded on individual autonomy and respect … or?

Take away our desks, close down our offices, replace privacy with open-plan zoos, remove our communal rest areas, put more distance between students and staff, eliminate our ability to share, learn and collaborate openly with our peers and all is lost. A university department should be lively and dynamic. We should see the friendly faces of our colleagues and students who feel happy, respected and comfortable, not the overworked faces of strangers sprinting along lifeless corridors from bookshelf to windowless corner before hopping on the bus home to work in peace. Research is a personal enterprise, one that needs space, time, and solitude. But it cannot truly thrive without the support of others.

We should be inducting new researchers into a pattern of working which values their autonomy and respects their contributions more than the pure monetary value of their office real estate. PhD students are an investment that universities cannot survive without. They will become the career academics who will need to choose whether or not to invest in others in the future. Do we really want to train a new generation to prefer empty desks over full ones and the "bottom line" over the greatest potential?

My department and my relationships within it have always been, for me, the justification for staying in higher education in the UK. But I am confident that I speak for other research students in saying that we would like to stop being made to feel like wastes of space.

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