Grenville Draper makes important additional points. Academe is
becoming a big artificial unscholarly game driven by government
bean-counters . Part of the problem is recognized in the novels of
David Lodge. Many researchers are not engaged in scholarship but work
at a rapid, quick and dirty way, do not read or know the literature
before five or less years ago, and push out as many papers as they
can on a wide variety of topics, which they cannot know or understand
in depth.
There are far too many meetings and conferences, many designed for
the aggrandizement of the conveners, from which poorly-conceived and
unoriginal publication volumes result. There are also too many people
competing for scarce resources. In structure and tectonics, one could
easily become a Morris Zapp flying around the world to an endless
string of useless conferences from which one learns little or
nothing. Science, geology included, needs to move from the present
frantic random motion mode into a more contemplative, quieter,
scholarly mode in which people are given the breathing space to do
long term quality research. The science will benefit, people will
not feel the pressure to push out garbage onto the conveyor belt, and
we will not have to read much of the trash in journals. However, our
government and university masters and paymasters have generated a new
growth industry of constant review, assesssment, and accountability
resulting partly from the fact that mutual trust has vanished from
academe. This growth industry pays the salaries of armies of
non-productive paper-shufflers in quangos and universities, who have
a vested interest in keeping and expanding such a system. Hence, it
may be too late to reverse the progressive deterioration of
universities in Britain and one has, therefore to play the ridiculous
game. We need a system where clever people just get on with the
research that they wish to do without interference and being
constantly reviewed and assessed , to change direction whenever the
see a new idea or opportunity and to be given a modest background
level of funding to do it, rather like the South African system. Just
as in the NHS, where it is time again for medics to take over and run
the system again, it is time for academics to take over their
institutions and run them as universities, peaceful havens of
scholarly research and teaching, not businesses. Irish universities
seem to do be doing well in this regard.
John Dewey
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John F. Dewey, Professor of Geology
Department of Geology
UC Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis CA 95616
Telephone Nos:
530 754 7472 (office)
530 757 7915 (home)
530 752 0915 (Fax: )
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