On administrators, genuinely helpful secretarial work is invaluable. That's not what we get in North America, however. Here it's massive administrative bloat, which ends up imposing additional bureaucratic time wasting nonsense on academics. To say nothing of the absolute cancer of the DIE regime, which is dug into admin like tics.
Speaking of DIE, certainly in my case this has had a fair bit to do with my own demoralization. It is one thing to work hard - research, publishing, reviewing papers, sitting on review committees, teaching, supervising, and all the rest. I built up a fairly impressive CV over the years. Then it came time to try and find a faculty position, just in time for the woke mind virus to completely take over the universities. So now I'm watching all of the available positions being taken by women and 'minorites', because admin have decided that new hires must 'reflect the world we live in today'. Buh-bye motivation, hello burnout.
The hyper-competitive grind is bad enough, in other words; when it's made clear that winners and losers will be selected on a fully arbitrary basis, that grind becomes intolerable.
Arbitrary preferment will always be disheartening to those who work hard. It is demoralising and makes the competent feel like quitting. It creates resentment and pique. This is not a good thing.
I am sorry to hear of what happened to you. The basis for the game (in Storr’s terms) suddenly switched on you, from competence to virtue. Which - as I have said in a prior post, is patronising for the minorities and women too - and does them no favours. I would never want to be chosen on that basis. Finding the rules suddenly change (or realising you’re not playing the game you thought you were) is very demoralising.
One friend responded to my post on “diversity hiring” with the comment that some people get hired on the basis of what school they went to or who they’re related to, so it’s just the flip side of that, and therefore a necessary reversal. My answer was that I do not think either practice is appropriate.
When I worked at a law firm, we had a particularly inept law clerk. I got a very bad advice from him (incomplete, badly spelled, cursory) and was telling him off soundly. I got taken aside and was told I couldn’t tell him off because this kid was the son of a client. Later he got hired permanently, and I felt totally demoralised as well. I suddenly realised why I’d found it so hard to get a job after law school - I wasn’t a client’s kid, or related to anyone important - the whole game was nothing to do with competence at all.
This tendency still exists, too, in academia (despite the diversity push, which exists in parallel) - some people are preferred because they did a PhD at a particular university. I will confess that, after having to prepare several applications for grants, prizes and promotions, and having to count up my citations, I “spat the dummy” about men who’d gone to Oxbridge being cited in certain Australian court cases more than others. It may be relevant that twelve years earlier, I had gotten into both Oxford and Cambridge, but I couldn’t afford to go (I would have had to pay overseas fees, not from rich family etc). The person who got the scholarship for which I was eligible that year had vastly lower results than me, but was related to a politician.
For a period of several weeks, when I “spat the dummy”, I felt as some people must feel all the time: resentful and furious. I didn’t like being full of pique. I calmed down, and now I do my own thing: write on areas I find fun or interesting, help younger scholars and warn them of pitfalls, teach and express my opinions. Someone said to me “Comparison is the enemy of joy”. It’s a big problem with academia. Now that I don’t have to compare, I try not to.
The answer to my predicament, however, is *not* to refuse to cite men who’d gone to Oxbridge, or to refuse to hire them, and to cite me or hire me instead, just because of my identity. I would seriously rather quit altogether, than be “pity-cited” or “pity-hired”. I can’t stress this strongly enough. The answer is to put identity aside. It shouldn’t matter whether I’m Kenneth E. Bennett, DPhil (Oxon) or Katy E. Barnett, PhD (Melb), or Keiko E. Bandai, PhD (Melb). I just want my work to be judged blind. If my work’s not good enough, so be it.
I've said for years that such policies are as insulting to those receiving their dubious benefits as they are demoralizing to those getting the shaft. Of course, family and friends have jokingly (or not so jokingly) suggested that I just identify as having pronouns, to which I reply - but then if I got hired, I'd have to assume it was on that basis, rather than merit, and would feel a fraud for the rest of my life. Spiritual poison, that. It's no accident that the proliferation of ideological cordyceps has been accompanied by a rise in imposter syndrome.
The worst of it is that I used to have to will myself away from the desk, I'd get so wrapped up in research. It was something I loved doing for its own sake. That well feels utterly poisoned now, to the point where I have to will myself to do even the small amount necessary to keep my hand in.
Much as it's fashionable to blame woke professors, it hasn't escaped my notice that these policies are mainly being forced by admin, and their counterparts in state bureaucracies. Hence my pushback - to my mind, admin should be in a subservient position in the academy, occupying a support role rather than a leadership role. Right now they've got the whip hand and, at least in North America, this late stage bureaucracy is ruining scholarship.
TOTALLY. It’s the bureaucracy who is running this. Well, that gets us into principal-agent problems, and the scourge of marketing. You may glean from this that I may have another post up my sleeve.
You brought out something we have all forgotten--administration used to be in support of researchers, or executives, or academics. We called it "secretarial".
"In support of," not "rules over," as is now the case.
I think that I am going to be talking about metastasising bureaucracy. The tail wags the dog, in effect. And at moments I think - hang on, why are we letting these people tell us what to do? But basically the “in support of” has totally died away - there is very little unless you’re a bigwig - and there’s the “rules over and makes you complete ever increasing tasks” instead.
Hard agree. Here in Ireland we used to be about a decade behind the UK or orlther Anglosphere tertiary models in "innovation" but to my dismay we seem to be catching up faster and faster. DIE has reached us now after only about 5 years of Athena SWAN. I'm continually debating with myself when to quit.
We tend to be like Ireland - behind the UK and the US in these things. I hoped Australian pragmatism would help - but I don’t know that it will. We’re also intensely bureaucratic here - always have been since the 1830s (cos early colonial Australia was a schemozzle, so we went the other way afterwards).
Are you in HASS? I have a friend in a HASS area who has been considering quitting for the last four years… The problems seem much worse in pure HASS than in law, but I think it also depends upon the area of law.
No, I'm in a science & technology field and the other part of my problem is just that I've mostly lost interest in it. There's so much else I'm interested in and would rather give my energies too but that's a me issue, not strictly relevant. I know what Australia is like (used to live there) and Irish universities were so old fashioned and relatively unsullied by metrics and targets and overbearing amounts of admin. Their only issue 20 years ago was a bit of idiosyncrasy about how things were done.
Afraid so. You now have a box to fill in on all grant applications to explain the sex and gender dimensions of your research, even if it's in high energy physics or abstract mathematics or antenna design. I just get really cross and splutter in frustration at this complete and utter nonsense.
Oh for goodness sakes! It’s (a) a stupid exercise; (b) a waste of time. This kind of thing drives me around the bend.
For all I know, it’s the same here - haven’t applied for any grants since 2013. I either generally just want to do commercial law research, historical research or comparative stuff, for which sex and gender are irrelevant. And for science grants - one needs equipment and material - one can’t escape grants. It’s why my partner left at the postgrad stage, 20 years ago. Grrrrr. I may be biased but the academy lost a talented researcher and teacher thereby (okay I am biased, but I still think it’s objectively true.)
On administrators, genuinely helpful secretarial work is invaluable. That's not what we get in North America, however. Here it's massive administrative bloat, which ends up imposing additional bureaucratic time wasting nonsense on academics. To say nothing of the absolute cancer of the DIE regime, which is dug into admin like tics.
Speaking of DIE, certainly in my case this has had a fair bit to do with my own demoralization. It is one thing to work hard - research, publishing, reviewing papers, sitting on review committees, teaching, supervising, and all the rest. I built up a fairly impressive CV over the years. Then it came time to try and find a faculty position, just in time for the woke mind virus to completely take over the universities. So now I'm watching all of the available positions being taken by women and 'minorites', because admin have decided that new hires must 'reflect the world we live in today'. Buh-bye motivation, hello burnout.
The hyper-competitive grind is bad enough, in other words; when it's made clear that winners and losers will be selected on a fully arbitrary basis, that grind becomes intolerable.
Arbitrary preferment will always be disheartening to those who work hard. It is demoralising and makes the competent feel like quitting. It creates resentment and pique. This is not a good thing.
I am sorry to hear of what happened to you. The basis for the game (in Storr’s terms) suddenly switched on you, from competence to virtue. Which - as I have said in a prior post, is patronising for the minorities and women too - and does them no favours. I would never want to be chosen on that basis. Finding the rules suddenly change (or realising you’re not playing the game you thought you were) is very demoralising.
One friend responded to my post on “diversity hiring” with the comment that some people get hired on the basis of what school they went to or who they’re related to, so it’s just the flip side of that, and therefore a necessary reversal. My answer was that I do not think either practice is appropriate.
When I worked at a law firm, we had a particularly inept law clerk. I got a very bad advice from him (incomplete, badly spelled, cursory) and was telling him off soundly. I got taken aside and was told I couldn’t tell him off because this kid was the son of a client. Later he got hired permanently, and I felt totally demoralised as well. I suddenly realised why I’d found it so hard to get a job after law school - I wasn’t a client’s kid, or related to anyone important - the whole game was nothing to do with competence at all.
This tendency still exists, too, in academia (despite the diversity push, which exists in parallel) - some people are preferred because they did a PhD at a particular university. I will confess that, after having to prepare several applications for grants, prizes and promotions, and having to count up my citations, I “spat the dummy” about men who’d gone to Oxbridge being cited in certain Australian court cases more than others. It may be relevant that twelve years earlier, I had gotten into both Oxford and Cambridge, but I couldn’t afford to go (I would have had to pay overseas fees, not from rich family etc). The person who got the scholarship for which I was eligible that year had vastly lower results than me, but was related to a politician.
For a period of several weeks, when I “spat the dummy”, I felt as some people must feel all the time: resentful and furious. I didn’t like being full of pique. I calmed down, and now I do my own thing: write on areas I find fun or interesting, help younger scholars and warn them of pitfalls, teach and express my opinions. Someone said to me “Comparison is the enemy of joy”. It’s a big problem with academia. Now that I don’t have to compare, I try not to.
The answer to my predicament, however, is *not* to refuse to cite men who’d gone to Oxbridge, or to refuse to hire them, and to cite me or hire me instead, just because of my identity. I would seriously rather quit altogether, than be “pity-cited” or “pity-hired”. I can’t stress this strongly enough. The answer is to put identity aside. It shouldn’t matter whether I’m Kenneth E. Bennett, DPhil (Oxon) or Katy E. Barnett, PhD (Melb), or Keiko E. Bandai, PhD (Melb). I just want my work to be judged blind. If my work’s not good enough, so be it.
I've said for years that such policies are as insulting to those receiving their dubious benefits as they are demoralizing to those getting the shaft. Of course, family and friends have jokingly (or not so jokingly) suggested that I just identify as having pronouns, to which I reply - but then if I got hired, I'd have to assume it was on that basis, rather than merit, and would feel a fraud for the rest of my life. Spiritual poison, that. It's no accident that the proliferation of ideological cordyceps has been accompanied by a rise in imposter syndrome.
The worst of it is that I used to have to will myself away from the desk, I'd get so wrapped up in research. It was something I loved doing for its own sake. That well feels utterly poisoned now, to the point where I have to will myself to do even the small amount necessary to keep my hand in.
Much as it's fashionable to blame woke professors, it hasn't escaped my notice that these policies are mainly being forced by admin, and their counterparts in state bureaucracies. Hence my pushback - to my mind, admin should be in a subservient position in the academy, occupying a support role rather than a leadership role. Right now they've got the whip hand and, at least in North America, this late stage bureaucracy is ruining scholarship.
TOTALLY. It’s the bureaucracy who is running this. Well, that gets us into principal-agent problems, and the scourge of marketing. You may glean from this that I may have another post up my sleeve.
I'm looking forward to it!
Excellent.
You brought out something we have all forgotten--administration used to be in support of researchers, or executives, or academics. We called it "secretarial".
"In support of," not "rules over," as is now the case.
I think that I am going to be talking about metastasising bureaucracy. The tail wags the dog, in effect. And at moments I think - hang on, why are we letting these people tell us what to do? But basically the “in support of” has totally died away - there is very little unless you’re a bigwig - and there’s the “rules over and makes you complete ever increasing tasks” instead.
Hard agree. Here in Ireland we used to be about a decade behind the UK or orlther Anglosphere tertiary models in "innovation" but to my dismay we seem to be catching up faster and faster. DIE has reached us now after only about 5 years of Athena SWAN. I'm continually debating with myself when to quit.
We tend to be like Ireland - behind the UK and the US in these things. I hoped Australian pragmatism would help - but I don’t know that it will. We’re also intensely bureaucratic here - always have been since the 1830s (cos early colonial Australia was a schemozzle, so we went the other way afterwards).
Are you in HASS? I have a friend in a HASS area who has been considering quitting for the last four years… The problems seem much worse in pure HASS than in law, but I think it also depends upon the area of law.
No, I'm in a science & technology field and the other part of my problem is just that I've mostly lost interest in it. There's so much else I'm interested in and would rather give my energies too but that's a me issue, not strictly relevant. I know what Australia is like (used to live there) and Irish universities were so old fashioned and relatively unsullied by metrics and targets and overbearing amounts of admin. Their only issue 20 years ago was a bit of idiosyncrasy about how things were done.
Sorry to hear it’s in science and technology too. 😞
Afraid so. You now have a box to fill in on all grant applications to explain the sex and gender dimensions of your research, even if it's in high energy physics or abstract mathematics or antenna design. I just get really cross and splutter in frustration at this complete and utter nonsense.
Oh for goodness sakes! It’s (a) a stupid exercise; (b) a waste of time. This kind of thing drives me around the bend.
For all I know, it’s the same here - haven’t applied for any grants since 2013. I either generally just want to do commercial law research, historical research or comparative stuff, for which sex and gender are irrelevant. And for science grants - one needs equipment and material - one can’t escape grants. It’s why my partner left at the postgrad stage, 20 years ago. Grrrrr. I may be biased but the academy lost a talented researcher and teacher thereby (okay I am biased, but I still think it’s objectively true.)
Check out https://www.opengrants.io/ they are working on this very thing!
WOW! That’s great news Darin. Will check them out.