Dear David and others;
I've been brooding on this issue, which certainly does exist, and getting stuck on wondering why it has emerged. David points to "the pressure on PhD students to come up with new knowledge," and, as Ken notes, Lubomir mentions the huge volume of 'literature,' for which "I don't have time."
But there must be a further explanation for why there is such pressure on both writers and time-stretched readers. I'm thinking that the most probable explanation is a creeping glut of professional managers. In commercial business today, MBAs busily plan ventures that are profitable to shareholders but destroy the lives of employees and their communities. In higher education, the same managers busily apply business principles to a field that has nothing to do with business.
To ignorant yet conscientious educational administrators, publishing may offer a reassuring metric as they try to micro-manage something they know nothing about, like the value of faculty. Junior tenure-track faculty today struggle under directives that sometimes stipulate how many papers they must publish, how often, in what journals, and on what topics. Under the control of managers, senior faculty, already tenured, are being replaced by underpaid, overworked and insecure sessional lecturers or adjuncts, who deliver what looks to outsiders like the same service, just more cost-effective — and adjuncts also must publish if they are to have any hope of scrambling out of the underclass and into a real academic job.
As Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
David notes, "the impulse to seem to go where no-one has gone before must be irresistible." I would further guess that many copyists aren't even aware of their academic malfeasance, if they are juniors. Why might their age be significant? Well, young people haven't had time to put in the mentioned decades of reading to establish grounding in a complex "land full of rich knowledge and wisdom." They might be better nurtured with mandates to teach, read, reflect, and teach some more, rather than being pressed to jump too early to publishable conclusions.
An interesting perspective on this scenario might be provided by historian Peter Turchin, in his observations about "elite overproduction." That phrase seems to aptly describe the hundreds of newly-coined PhDs who now fight over prestige jobs, now scarce, that, a generation ago would have been the routine reward for their hard efforts. Expectations are dashed, which Turchin sees as undermining collaboration in the short term, and setting up political instability in the long term.
But why do universities persist in graduating too many PhDs? Well, thanks to punitive management coming down the line from government, educational funding is tied to 'performance.' One performance objective is attracting lots of students, so if enrollment falls, so does funding. Governments also seem keen to see a high percentage of students graduate, and thus, rather than pushing out students who might do better elsewhere, universities find themselves setting up remedial programs to help the stragglers; sucking money out of faculty salaries to support yet another new specialist VP, complete with shiny office and suit-wearing underlings, resulting in the hiring of still more budget-friendly sessional lecturers to pick up the teaching slack.
I personally was lucky enough to escape much of this by working at a community college rather than a university. The heavy teaching load was not dissimilar to sessional work, but it came with a proper salary, security, benefits, and a pension (i.e. a great union), plus no demands for publishing or research. I could spend my spare time on anything I wanted. I still recall the look on my Dean's face when he discovered (from a magazine) that I had won a Gold award from IDSA for participating in a 3D anthropometric research project in China; a topic utterly irrelevant to my teaching duties in a handicrafts program involving glass, clay, textiles and wood. I hadn't told him about the award because (a) there was no reporting mechanism, and (b) I didn't want him to think it indicated lack of passion for my beloved day job. A number of my fellow faculty also indulged in academic publishing, but only those who loved research for its own sake — not a bad development.
If we continue asking why a few more times (the classic model calls for five iterations) we enter realms in which I have no knowledge and no opinion. For this, I count my selfish blessings, as it leaves me free to spend my spare time now writing up my incomplete dissertation. Great hobby for the pandemic.
Merry Xmas!HO HO HO
David Graeber (2012). Of flying cars and the declining rate of profit. The Baffler, 19. Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
Alastair Gee (28 Sept 2017). Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars. The Guardian. Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
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Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
Alastair Gee
Adjunct professors in America face low pay and long hours without the security of full-time faculty. Some, on th...
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On Wednesday, December 23, 2020, 11:25:51 p.m. EST, David Sless <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Ken and all,
A small additional note.
Having read the comments I want to reaffirm my use of terra nullius as the guiding metaphor. In particular the disregard and violence done to existing human knowledges with a long history and established claim by those who have cultivated it and harvested its wisdom.
The craft/academic knowledge barbarism is just an example of the way opportunistic academic undervalue others established know-how, and by no means the worst.
The impulse to take over a land full of rich knowledge and wisdom and replace it With shallow unconsidered methods is rife. As examples consider:
designers using participative/co-design methods attempting 4th order design uninvited in established organisations such as business and government, without investigating the long history of practices and skills in administration and politics.
Health researchers investigating consumer medicine information but only looking at the peer reviewed health literature for precedents and prior research.
The recent predation in many areas of knowledge by so called behavioural science.
What is obvious in these cases is that the presence of extensive on-line literature covering these topics does not make any difference.
Think about the pressure on phd students to come up with new knowledge. The impulse to seem to go where no-one has gone before must be irresistible, particularly from within the narrow confines of an academic discipline desperate to enhance its reputation and gain success in the academy through its publication record in specialist publications.
After such a long sentence, I will shut up.
Seasonal greetings. Please keep safe.
David
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