2006 July 5

Dear Friends,

My Thomas Aquinas moment has arrived as I plod through a few thematic
summaries. These 1,478 words will address the issue “being
academic.” Nothing bold here – just a few common sense thoughts
to round out the workshop.

1) Perspectives on the academic enterprise

We started the workshop on the issue of being academic. It seems that
many of us have an uneasy relationship with universities or academic
life. Some of us suggested that life is greener in business, private
industry, or design practice – or even struggling to maintain an
artist studio without a steady salary. Having held all these jobs, I
find that academic life offers a good balance of responsibility and
freedom. Even so, academic work does not provide the freedom many of us
hope for in art, design, or the creative industries. Few jobs do.

Not even art offers freedom for most artists. Fewer than 1% of all
practicing artists earn a living making and selling art. The vast
majority of individual artists buy artistic freedom by doing something
else to subsidize their art.

Professional design is challenging and it offers many rewards. Most
designers work for someone and follow directions as employees do in most
industries. Design firms follow the old guild patterns. It is no
democracy. The master runs the studio. Bryan Byrne and Ed Sands (2002)
describe the working life of design studios in a book on the creative
industries.

Most of us work in the education sector. Our schools do not pay us
directly to work as artists or designers. Even those of us who sometimes
live as artists or designers work in academia. We are paid to teach, to
help others develop skills, and to do research. This entails demands and
responsibilities. The majority of us in this workshop relate to
different industries or professions from positions in academia. We serve
the community by teaching aspiring professionals the skills they will
need in professional life.

Let’s begin by acknowledging that fact.

2) An imperfect life

Large organizations such as universities maintain bureaucracies to meet
mandated responsibilities. Adapting to an administrative network one
price I pay for the academic freedom I enjoy. I welcome the professional
administrators who manage the important activities I am unsuited for. I
do my best to support their work.

Is academic life perfect? No. Academic work entails contract
responsibilities to employers, students, colleagues, and community. This
limits our freedom. Even so, most of us sought the jobs we hold. Some
aspects of our jobs have changed in recent years as art and design
schools shift from practitioner schools to research schools. Those who
enjoyed the old way of life may not enjoy life after the transition. The
change is here to stay. That’s the starting point.

We cannot go back. This issue is how to move forward.

3) Moving forward and creating change

An important branch of inquiry called “the scholarship of teaching
and learning” has blossomed in recent years. (Google that phrase for
more information.) The scholarship of teaching and learning involves
reflection and reflective practice along with research, interpretation,
and other forms of inquiry. This has come to focus on universities and
academic life at a time of great change. The Carnegie Commission is
active in this area, as it has long been active in higher education.
Other organizations and many universities work in the field.

Those who genuinely question university work and academic life might
find this a useful field of inquiry. It offers opportunities to frame
problems in ways that open them to solution. It offers ways to
understand the nature and rationale behind the activities that have a
genuine purpose even though they may seem useless. Moreover, it offers
opportunities to examine issues from multiple perspectives, learning
from others and adapting their solutions to the genuine problems we
face.

Any system requires improvements. This is especially true of systems
such as universities and professional schools. These systems accumulate
cultural patterns, behavioral artifacts, and rules that seem to take on
a life of their own. Nevertheless, we can enact creative change when it
matters enough to invest time. Change requires developing a case and
building a constituency. An important case has many stakeholders with
divergent interests and a high investment in preventing change.
Important changes take time.

Like any system with an opening to representative democracy in a
legitimate constitutional structure, action based on expertise and
participation goes further than complaint. While I have never lost a
major case, I have learned that winning a major case can take as long as
five years. If you want institutional change while accepting an
institutional salary, you must be ready to work on an institutional time
scale.

Life outside the academic world is much tougher than the life most of
us live. I have never liked the colloquial expressions contrasting the
“real world” with the world of universities. This, too, is a real
world. Nevertheless, this real world offers us protections and benefits
that few employees have along with a steady salary. Freelance designers
and artists have the freedom the want to do as they will. Eating on a
regular basis may not come with the job.

Times are changing. Perhaps they should. During the 1970s and 1980s, I
observed life at many art and design schools. I saw many cases in which
the system worked well for faculty members and badly for students. The
old art and design school system failed to meet many important needs. It
often failed to provide mandated services and benefits. As we reflect on
being academic, I suggest reflecting on our responsibilities as well as
demanding our freedoms.

4) How should we manage universities?

Several notes complained about misplaced managerialism in universities.
This is a problem for everyone, in all the fields I know. Managerialism
represents a serious threat to academic freedom and to university life.
This is a serious problem. It is not the point of this workshop. The
point of this workshop is a review of practice-led research and our
responsibilities as academics in relation to practice led research.

5) Are there too many academics?

One note suggested that there are too many academics in the world. I
may be mistaken, but it seems evident that we need more than we have
today to serve the growing population of students and scholars that most
governments have decided should attend university.

Nevertheless, the question of whether we have too few academics, too
many, or just the right number is irrelevant. We work as academics now.
This workshop is an opportunity to examine our work for better service
to our students, our colleagues, our schools, and our fields.

6) Differences in academic work between studio and research faculty

In [an article titled] “Design Science and Design Education,”
(available on Chris’s web site) I propose a simple solution for
university-based art and design schools. Some people should do research.
Others should not. Some people should be studio professors or craft
masters. This works well when studio specialists and practitioner
experts do not control research programs, and it works well when
research experts do not control the studio and craft skills programs.
The problem in many schools is that studio professors without research
skills sometimes attempt to control research programs. This is where
problems begin.

Art and design schools routinely see cases where unqualified teachers
demand authority over courses where they have no knowledge of subject
matter and no expertise in required skills. Several notes in the
workshop suggested that some workshop participants do not want academic
careers and have no interest in research skills. This puzzles me. Why
does anyone who does not want to be an academic wish to debate academic
questions? Why does anyone with no interest in research want to debate
research problems?

The answer is clear. It involves power, politics, and wealth. Research
means access to money, staff positions, and resources. For this reason,
many people who have no interest in research want to designate their
activities as research to enjoy the benefits of the resources allocated
to research.

Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once proposed that researchers should be
honest enough to state what they are doing truthfully. If society wants
to support what researchers want to do, he said, that is a political
choice. Integrity demands that researchers present their work honestly
without mislabeling it to secure funds. That is the case here. It goes
both ways. If research does not interest you and practice does, you
should not demand research funds. You should make the case for the value
and importance of your practice.

There is room in academic life for all of us. Our responsibility is
being clear and doing well at what we do.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia


Reference

Byrne, Bryan, and Ed Sands. 2002. “Designing Collaborative Corporate
Cultures.” In Creating Breakthrough Ideas, Bryan Byrne and Susan E.
Squires, editors. Westport, Connecticut: Bergin and Garvey, pp. 47-69.