
On Quitting Academia - pseudolus
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/malcolm-gaskill/diary
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The UK university sector is the victim partly of its own short-term thinking
and partly of successive governments blind to its strategic importance. The UK
still has arguably the second best university system in the world, together
with the huge advantage of being an English-speaking country. It therefore
ought to be investing massively in its university and research sector. This is
one of the few areas where the country can really punch above its weight
globally (just think of the soft power implications of educating some of
China's future elite). But in meek submission to bumbling, penny-pinching
government oversight, UK universities have made a series of devil's bargains.

The end result? On the research side, UK academics expend almost as much
effort documenting and evaluating each other's research output as they do on
actual research. They work on topics that have 'impact' according to an
official definition rather than topics that they are interested in. And when
it comes to education, all but the most elite institutions compete for
students simply by giving them everything they want. Slowly but surely, the
universities are cannibalising their own credibility. In their efforts to
please students, they are devaluing the very qualifications that those
students are paying a lot of money to obtain.

It's not all bad. Good research still gets done. There are occasional
brilliant and/or enthusiastic students who make teaching feel worthwhile. I'm
sure that bitter academics and ex academics have been predicting the imminent
implosion of the university system for decades or even centuries. But I do
think that education in the UK has been radically reconceptualized in a way
that's quite harmful. Classically, education is the transfer of knowledge from
teacher to student. Humans being more than just passive epistemic vessels, the
results of education can range from the mundane (Jane can now solve linear
equations), to the efficacious (Bill gets a well paying job) or the profound
(Tom is inspired to produce a great literary work). If you are really
committed to education you respect the autonomy of your students and don't try
to bring about any particular outcome directly. This approach is, of course,
totally antithetical to the metrics-driven approach that has now taken over UK
universities. The transfer of knowledge is regarded merely a means to an end,
and is considered really important only if it increases student satisfaction
and success on the job market. This makes the relation between teacher and
student fundamentally manipulative and unhealthy.

