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Not long ago most art schools were not in universities. That changed in 1992 with the new universities evolved from the old polytechnics. Now nearly all the art schools are in universities, most in the new, a few in the old. The pointıs system we employ in the UK is often derided, even by those who gain from it. However, in a centralised economy, where all educational funding ultimately comes from one source, there has to be a transparent and auditable means of determining who gets the money and why. We can argue over how that is done. Alternatively we could scrap the system and start again, but it is more useful to debate the possible rather than demand the impossible (sorry to mangle a quote). The panels that assess research actually have criteria for judging value in art and design. This is not based on the personal subjective judgements of the panel but peer review. That is why a show in a private commercial gallery, even a famous one, is not submissable as research whilst a show in a peer reviewed (juried) festival is. The panel hardly looks at the work. They look at the narrative that is built around its dissemination and evaluate that. If a single work is shown in several peer reviewed contexts and widely discussed in peer reviewed journals and at conferences, or in the public press, and if this is at an international level and those publications and juries are of a high standard then the output (it is not called artwork) will be judged as significant enough and of an ilk that is can be submitted for evaluation. That the work may never be covered by the arts press is irrelevant. It is a parallel world, to some degree. It should be noted that there is a quality threshold beneath which research cannot be submitted, regardless of whether it fulfils the definition of research. The minimum quality is defined as of national or international importance. By the way, there are many universities in the UK without creative art programs, including Cambridge, which is regularly cited as our top research institution. It might be hard to imagine a university without creative arts but in the UK it is more often than not the reality. Clearly Canada and the UKıs educational ecologies have diverged over time. Regards Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art [log in to unmask] www.eca.ac.uk [log in to unmask] www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: Myron Turner <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 09:08:19 -0500 To: Simon Biggs <[log in to unmask]> Cc: <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Exclusivity and Heresy | Alternative academic criteria The creative arts have always been a difficult fit for the university. Simon's account of the "point" system (in a previous post) describes something that would be laughable if it weren't true. It sounds like a last ditch effort to interpose a simulacrum of objectivity between art and the requirements of the academic institutions. Even with refereed journals, we know, there is subjectivity of judgment, but with art subjectivity is the name of the game. And from this perspective the point system is ironically as good as any for institutionalizing the practice of art. For, technique apart, what does "peer review" mean in art, if not one sensibility caroming off another? I have a friend whose self-esteem never survived his failure to be promoted to full professor on the basis of his fiction. He was turned down by his "peers", all of whom were part of a close group interested in the same things. Had we had a point system, perhaps this man would have been successful. Who knows? Despite the difficulty of fitting the arts into a university paradigm, I cannot imagine a university where they were not taught. Or, I should say, to imagine such a university, would be to imagine a landscape barren and benighted.