Well said, John.
The entire academic system is like the Vatican before the Reformation.
What is needed in each university a Martin Luther to nail 95 useless
PhD. Theses to their Vice-chancellors' respective doors. Perhaps if
they read the rubbish, then someone will get the message.
Seriously if you expand the university population to 50% and still
cream the PhD students on the Bell curve you are going to have theses
produced by people who wouldn't have got Hons. under the old,
decrepid but effective 5% system.
Peer review is no longer an effective deterrent, so anyone with
tenure should be allowed to publish what they dare directly on the
internet then the entire geological community can respond with
appropriate criticism. That will soon sort the sheep from the goats.
Malcolm
On Mar 8, 2006, at 10:43 PM, John F. Dewey wrote:
> 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
> --
>
> -----------------------------------
> 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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