Ken asked
> What structural systemic features do you believe would inhibit your
> type of research if CRIA were a university-based research institute?
Before answering Ken's question, I need to set the context. First, the
period over which the decisions to take what became CRIA out of the
University sector was between 1984 and 1987. Thus the decisions were
made in the climate of that time. It is difficult to give a real sense
of that climate without mentioning quite specific incidents and I don't
really want to go into a lot of detail. Many people worked very hard to
prevent us from leaving the University sector. At the end of the
process there were quite a few bruised egos and some people chose to
interpret our departure as the result of personal disagreements and
personalities. But this was never really the case. The reasons were
always to do with the structural and systemic features that I have
mentioned. I will nonetheless try to give an overview of that climate
and some limited vignettes.
Second, my own roots and that of many people around me were firmly in
the University sector. I had been an academic for twenty years and felt
an unquestioning affinity with many of the aspirations and traditions
of University life. Our departure from the university was difficult and
involved rethinking a great many assumptions about the conduct of
research and it's nature.
Third, the context in which I and my Board of Governors made the
decisions was not quite as I describe it now, some 20 years later. From
our perspective, at the time, the question was always whether there was
any advantage to the Institute in remaining part of a University, given
that there were always a number of disincentives to remaining. In the
end, we reluctantly made the judgment that the disincentives outweighed
the advantages.
Having said all of the above, let me try and answer Ken's question. But
the question I'm answering is not whether a contemporary university
would today inhibit our type of research if CRIA were a
university-based research institute, but rather what did inhibit us
remaining in a University 20 years ago.
1. In the climate of the time the kind of research I wanted to do was
not widely valued within the academy. This was in sharp contrast to its
perceived value in business and government. My feasibility study into
setting up the institute demonstrated that there was a real need for
research into communication between large organisations and citizens
and customers. Moreover, there was a strong interest in funding that
research. But there was a strong body of opinion within the academy
that did not see either the need or the value. As an example, during
one critical meeting about the setting up of the Institute, I was asked
what we would be doing research on. I explained that in the first few
years we would probably do a lot of research on such things as forms.
"Surely" said one senior academic to me, with a look of disdain,
"that's the sort of thing best left to jobbing printers!". I mention
this to give you a flavor of the climate. This was not the only view
expressed to me. Some senior colleagues were very positive. But the
balance of opinions were not in my favor, which meant that I had, at
the very least, a fight on my hands. Given that there was potential
funding for the research, it seemed to me that I was in the wrong
place, if I wanted to develop this field of research further. Why stay
and consume vast amounts of energy fighting the establishment, when
that energy could be more usefully deployed doing the research in a
more favorable environment? Does this resonate with anyone else's
experience?
Faced with the prospect of a hostile environment, my reaction was to
try to find a more favorable University environment, and indeed for a
period I thought I had, but it was not long before the conservatism
reasserted itself. Once again, let me give an example. It was clear
from the research on information design that the more recent research
undertaken by human factors specialists into people's use of
information had merely confirmed the good practice that had developed
as part of a craft tradition going back centuries. Moreover, many of
the human factors studies used designs that were of a very poor
quality, leaving many professional designers in the field to simply
dismiss the research. I therefore decided that any material we
developed and tested had to at least begin from that developed craft
tradition. But the University had a problem. People with these skills
and craft knowledge did not necessarily have degrees, and the
University policy on hiring research assistants, let alone
collaborators, required at least good honors degrees and preferably
some postgraduate qualifications. I had a wide variety of eager young
post graduates knocking at my door, but I really needed an experienced
typographer (or even a jobbing printer) on our team. Once again, the
reasons for being in a University were brought into question. Is this
familiar?
The other problems we faced did not become apparent immediately, but
had fully asserted themselves within a few months. The scale and nature
of the University administrative clumsiness and conservatism made
itself apparent. Once again a little example. In 1985 we were helping a
large government department develop methods for designing forms to a
high standard. It was clear from our research into different methods
that iterative testing and refinement were essential to achieve the
high standard they were after. But the cost of doing so was extremely
high-about $300 per page of typesetting- and it took 10 days to produce
a new prototype for testing. As we were considering the difficulty,
Macintoshes and laser printers became available and we thought it would
be worthwhile to do some research and see if we could speed up the
iterative design process by using this new technology. The government
department approved the funding and we placed an order through the
University. A month later when nothing had happened, I checked. I was
told that the University Computing Committee (to which all requests for
computers went) had declined our request, because the University was a
serious computer user and did not want toys on campus. When I
protested, I was told that the next meeting of the Committee was in two
months and any reconsideration of my request would have to wait till
then. Our workaround was to avoid all mention of the term computer in
our order form, and the order went through unchallenged. This was just
one of many such incidents which cumulatively made us wonder if we were
in the right type of environment. Sound familiar?
The final area of concern that eventually made up our minds for us was
financial. All the Institute's salaries, including my own, were covered
out of the money we brought in from projects. We had secured our
academic freedom by our own efforts. By any financial measure we were
being 'successful'. In order to cover the costs of housing us and
providing us with administrative services (of uneven quality) the
University took 10% of our income from research projects. This was a
fairly low figure, with some Universities taking as much as 40% of
external funding to cover overheads. I had been informed by the
University administration that the figure would indeed rise to 40% once
we became more established. I went away and did some arithmetic and
discovered that even at our then level of income the 'value' of what we
got from the University did not add up to the 10% we were then paying.
After much sole searching and some attempts by the University to offer
us 'security' of tenure, we left and set up CRIA in its present form as
an independent not-for-profit research Institute. Following our
departure we were courted by one of the 'top' Universities of the kind
Ken speaks, but when we got down to the detail of negotiations, it was
apparent that it was just more of the same. What fascinated them at the
time was our bank balance.
Taken on their own, each of the examples I have given do not make the
case, but these specific examples were part of a recurrent pattern of
similar incidents, a structural systemic feature of contemporary
Universities. Moreover, they would be familiar to many people on this
list.
Now it may well be that had we hung around and stuck in there, then
things would have been different. Perhaps we could have done the same
research, but I doubt it.
From today's perspective much of this may seem old fashioned and would
not happen now. Perhaps. But then our research has moved on and some of
the things that interest us today would probably not find favor in
today's Universities.
There is nothing particularly unusual or novel in any of what I have
said. Universities, good and bad, are conservative, slow moving
institutions. They are unable to adapt quickly to rapidly changing
circumstances and needs, and their capacity to identify and nurture
good research, particularly in emerging fields, is quite limited. Their
capacity to stimulate and encourage innovative teaching and learning is
also very patchy. That is the nature of the beast. I think the only
thing that was unusual about our circumstances was that we had
sufficient funding to make our choices possible. Given that choice, we
saw no advantage in being part of a University.
There is one final thing worth mentioning, because it has a bearing on
our academic freedom. Because we are independent, not in the pocket of
a single or even major paymaster, we have been able to take on a number
of issues and directions that would not have been easy for us to take
on in the academy. This only became apparent in retrospect. On a number
of occasions when we have taken on specific public issues, particularly
government policy issues. Some of these have been controversial. After
some of these I have had inquiries from the senior bureaucracy asking
"who funds you"? My standard answer to that question is "You don't!".
We have also taken on a number of intellectual issues, including a few
on this list. I have been told by some of my academic colleagues that
my approach is at times 'unhelpful'. I doubt if I could remain so
'unhelpful' if I was dependent on a University for patronage.
The one area where it seems to me we do need the University sector is
in post-graduate teaching. Much as we would like to undertake such
activity in our own right and share our knowledge with the next
generation, we do not have the appropriate infrastructure or scale of
activity to make it self funding. I should say, however, that with the
recent rises in University fees, we are daily getting closer to the
point where such an activity could be self funding.
I hope you find this useful Ken. I will try to keep my posts much
shorter in the future.
David
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