Kis adalek az angol felsooktatas belso vitaihoz, a hasonlatossag a magyar helyzettel nem veletlen. A foszereplo, Susan Blackmore valoban egy hires konyv szerkesztoje es szerzoje, jol ismert nev a kognitiv vilagban. udv kgy ================================================ Kampis Gyorgy, tanszekvezeto Tudomanytortenet es Tudomanyfilozofia Tanszek, ELTE, 1518 Budapest, P.O. Box 32. Tel./FAX: (36) 1 372 2924 email: gk(a)hps.elte.hu http://hps.elte.hu/~gk ================================================ Subject: Re: Academic quits over rise in bureaucracy Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 11:22:06 +0100 From: "Benn, Piers M W" <p.benn(a)IC.AC.UK> To: PHILOS-L(a)LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Nathan Widder has put the point very nicely. The phoney managerial style that is embodied in the QAA is indeed comic, and this would be more obvious if the process did not create as much anxiety as it does. I would add that what the QAA looks for has little to do with good teaching, since that is really about the quality of what you say to your students and your clarity and enthusiasm in doing so. This is almost impossible to test through a system whose main obsession is form (aims, objectives, and other spuriously differentiated categories) rather than content. It will not do to say the QAA does some good. Perhaps it does, but it also does more harm. Like the RAE, it should simply be abolished. Piers Benn Subject: Re: Academic quits over rise in bureaucracy Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:52:32 +0100 From: newidder <N.E.Widder(a)EXETER.AC.UK> To: PHILOS-L(a)LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK With respect, you really misunderstand. I certainly don't want to suggest that universities ought to be elitest. That said, I've worked in places which are of similar status to UWE, and while there were some very bright and motivated students, the atmosphere of the whole institution made it very difficult to work there. I suppose I can understand someone leaving that sort of institution with the feeling that universities are too open to students who really don't belong there. Ironically, former polytechnics like UWE usually do very well in the QAA audits, because they are very bureaucratized already and so have all the systems in place that the QAA wants. It's the older institutions who often have to make up these systems in the 6 months to a year before the assessors arrive who struggle. The problem, as is fairly clear to anyone who even casually observes UK higher education, let alone those who work in it, is that both Tory and Labour governments have forced university expansion without providing the funds to do it -- cutting funds in real terms in fact, as well as cutting salaries. The QAA audits aren't designed to assess the problems in a department in order to better understand why these problems are there and what needs to be done to alleviate them (i.e., by providing sufficient funds not only for lectureships but for support staff, library resources, the list could go on), but only in order to condemn the department for failing to reach the required standards. Even if the intent is not to cut funds further (and who would trust that that's not the case), a low audit score damages the department in league tables and ratings, and so only makes it even more difficult for everyone to do his/her job. The result is that all bets are off because the entire process can only be confrontational. The institutions just have to do what they can to get a score of 22 or above, by hook or by crook. Well, frankly the entire audit is nothing more than a paper process (or a collective rectal exam, really something of both). Moreover, it works on a pseudo-scientific notion of professional management that's so ludicrous it's amazing anyone participates in the process with a straight face. The department has to list its aims and objectives for its students -- the skills it seeks to give them -- and then has to show that it can "prove" that the student gets them. How do you "know" that students gain "oral skills"? Apprently only by having assessed oral presentations rather than simply unassessed ones. Now, the fact that the assessed presentations can only count about 10 percent of the final mark for a module, which means that a student can easily fail all of his/her presentations and still leave university, seems to slip the QAA's minds. Moreover, and this directly increases paperwork, the departments need to have paper trails to document every decision and discussion made. Fine, you say, departments should be able to explain themselves. But the consequence is that informal ways of dealing with problems -- which are often better for particular consequences than formal procedures -- can no longer be used. There are ways to deal with graduate teachers having problems teaching other then having a lecture disrupt an entire discussion group by sitting in on the class, then documenting the discussion that the lecturer has with the graduate teacher afterwards, to be signed by both lecturer and teacher. Frankly, since the departments don't usually have sufficient graduate help to meet their teaching needs as they stand, let alone replace people, it's a useless procedure anyway -- there's no one to replace the lousy teacher. But again, that's a resource problem the QAA can't acknowledge. When their suggestions are not followed, how can any improvement With respect again, that rarely happens. Unfortunately, the motivation for making students take an MA is that it forces them to pay an extra year of fees. Again, of course, the problem is that the institution's resources have been squeezed dry. Moreover, MA courses that are offered are usually no more than repeats of third year courses. The reasons: (1) staff are already committed to too much undergraduate teaching to have to create a whole new set of courses for MA level, so at best they can only tweak their undergraduate offerings and that's what gets offered; (2) the stress to recruit MA students, especially high fee overseas students means that the MA's have to appeal to students who have not had a background in the field. An MA programme in political theory, for example, ends up recruiting people who took undergraduate degrees in literature, public policy, political science with little theory in it, history, the list could go on. Moreover, because the net has to be cast wide to get enough students so the MA can turn a profit, the quality of the MA students ends up being lower than the undergraduates -- at least, the scores they need to get into an MA programme at an institution are lower than what an incoming undergraduate needs (whether that means the quality of the students themselves is lower depends on whether you think the scores accurately reflect the quality I suppose). Nathan Dr. Nathan Widder Lecturer in Political Theory University of Exeter Department of Politics Amory Building Rennes Drive Exeter EX4 4RJ United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1392 263 183 Fax: +44 (0)1392 263 305 http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/politics/staff/widder/ Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html. Other philosophical resources on the Web can be found at http://www.liv.ac.uk/Philosophy/philos.html Subject: Academic quits over rise in bureaucracy Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:43:58 +0100 From: Scott Campbell <scott.campbell(a)NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK> To: PHILOS-L(a)LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK The QAA claims another victim: ---------------- Academic quits over rise in bureaucracy Tim Greenhalgh 19 October 2001 Intolerable bureaucratic demands have driven Sue Blackmore, a prominent expert in consciousness, from university teaching and research and into the media industry. Dr Blackmore has left her job as reader in psychology at the University of the West of England to pursue a career as an academic writer and broadcaster. Her decision was made after a year's unpaid leave of absence. She said this week that while it would be "damned difficult" to make a viable living from writing, TV and radio work, it would be a relief from the growing pointlessness of institutional academic life, where the joy of thinking had been nudged aside by paperwork. "The growing teaching burden and the administrative burden made me think about the pointlessness of it all. There were the mindless meetings, timesheets, justifying every lecture on the basis of aims and outcomes rather than having the freedom to occasionally just go into a lecture theatre and talk freely about any given subject," she said. Dr Blackmore said that the rapid widening of access to institutional higher education had been a mistake. It had devalued the degree as a mark of quality and learning. It had also devalued and demoralised those who taught. "It was too elite when I was a student at Oxford University but too many students are struggling now, doing it because it's what they need. There's no value here if what's been learnt is neither used nor enjoyed. It's gone far enough. "People will find other ways to study and we need to be much more imaginative about lifelong learning," she said. Dr Blackmore said that the degree system should not be based on status or wealth but should have an element of elitism. She said:"I'm very keen on the idea that the people in the best universities should be the best, the cleverest, most able and most intelligent people. They should be paid to go there." Dr Blackmore said the government, concerned as it is with excellence, could transform academic culture by abolishing the Quality Assurance Agency and call a halt to any further research assessment exercises. Dr Blackmore is writing a textbook on consciousness, as well as writing and broadcasting. ------------------- __________________________________ Dr Scott Campbell, Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, U.K. and: Institute for the Study of Genetics, Biorisks and Society (IGBiS), University of Nottingham. (44 + 115) 8466 964 __________________________________ Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html. Other philosophical resources on the Web can be found at http://www.liv.ac.uk/Philosophy/philos.html