Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse • Hacker News Board

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#81

Post by pdimitar » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:48 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #73

pdimitar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really though, what is there in an university that justifies a dedicated team of managers? One person in power (say, the dean) is enough to make sure grants are coming on time, and negotiate those beforehand. They need one accountant to make sure salaries, taxes etc. are in the legal bounds and people receive what they were promised. Honest question: what else is needed? Most of the managerial work I've witnessed in…

Really though, what is there in an university that justifies a dedicated team of managers? The same thing there is in any company with several thousand employees (let's not even start to consider the administrative hassle of dealing with several thousand students). Probably a lot more actually, since very few companies are doing research in oriental languages, nano technology, abstract algebra and contemporary music…

You might be right, but my girlfriend currently is a "leader" of her group in the university -- she's responsible to bring the student's "grade books" (sorry, my English fails me here) to the proper administration, she creates polls for the freely choosable disciplines, makes calendar events for the occasional meets etc.

Takes her 2-3 hours a week and is FAR more efficient than the awfully rigid systems I come from, 15 years ago.

Self-organization is a powerful phenomena. It can't solve everything for sure, but a good balance between it plus a smaller bureaucracy has in my eyes shown a strong promise for the future.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#82

Post by Clanan » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:49 PM UTC

BaronSamedi wrote: post #74

n4r9 wrote: post #8

I'm sure this resonates with university lecturers all over the Western world. The late writer and university academic Mark Fisher has some interesting points about this effect in his 2009 book "Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?"[0]. He saw it as an inevitable byproduct of the infiltration of neo-liberal ideology into the academic sphere. Setting targets and measuring performance indicators are justified wi…

Setting targets won't solve anything since this is a structural problem. You cannot leave those structures in place and expect a different outcome. That is just treating the symptoms. In my view the solution is simple: instead of letting bureaucrats and administrators decide, let parents and students choose the classes and teachers they want. Those teachers that offer classes and a teaching style that students actual…

This might be the start of a good approach, but I think it would largely reward popular teachers and easy classes. Back in university I would not have trusted myself to decide which were the necessary classes. With family, stress, work, etc. it would be too tempting to take the easy road. Maybe some combination of students and teachers...

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#83

Post by deong » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:50 PM UTC

quantum_state wrote: post #48

pdimitar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where the quote is from but it represents my only hope for the future of research. Of course, the hardcore bean-counters would not let that middle ground happen either; they are people in power who absolutely positively won't give you almost any leisure. It's still a good idea however. And some managers would embrace it since the notion of "paying somebody for possible benefits 5-10 years in the future"…

In a university setting, it seems to me that teaching in combination with support from endowment (not research grants) can be one of the scenario for this ... key is still to have fundamentally good people with passion and joy for the endeavor ..

The thing that always infuriated me about computer science (my field), is that I don't actually need the big research grant. There are people who do, of course, but I could do most of what I found interesting and useful with a high-end desktop PC and some free time.

But universities don't operate that way anymore. It doesn't matter that all I need is $5K and some time -- the university needs their 40% cut of a multi-year, multi-million dollar collaboration. And so the entire system is set up to fund those projects and those projects only.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#84

Post by dkural » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:50 PM UTC

I had a similar problem with hiring product designers. How do you get & measure great design? What I ultimately decided was, the only way to get great design, is by hiring great designers, and only other great designers recognize who's very promising vs. who's not, with some degree of success.

Research is the same. However, due to the inherent entanglement of historical biases with merit, it became very fraught in the U.S. to rely on expert judgment to pick new professors, every school clamoring to find some objective metrics to avoid charges of discrimination.

This is coupled with the fact that most departments are filled with mediocre people who are not particularly qualified to pick promising young scientists to begin with.

So ironically, discrimination is still there & at times worse, but now there is metricized cover for this bias. "We found that tall white dude X has more publications than Y".

Meanwhile, academia right now is almost irrevocably filled with pedantic scientists, drip-feeding papers with maximal verbiage at a steady pace.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#85

Post by pdimitar » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:52 PM UTC

csneeky wrote: post #69

pdimitar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists aren't employees. They are given the tools, real estate and funding to do their thing, usually through research grants or private funding. The fact that nowadays they are treated as employees is exactly the problem. ...Oh, and by the way, nature has no hierarchy.

Scientists are employees in many contexts (almost all contexts). We may just have to agree to disagree on that one. Be they in service for an NGO, school, or oligarch. But to say nature has no hierarchy? I suppose "hierarchy" can mean many things. But in my case I mean fitness and selection for it. The most fit are at the top. Nature tends to select for those better suited to their environment. And those best suited…

If you look at any nature's habitat of N kinds of animals, even there what you see can't be called a hierarchy. It's a semi-stable state on the verge of chaos which can be very easily broken by introducing a species of animals new to the area.

So no, it's not hierarchy. Lions can kill almost anything if they feel like it, but hyenas kill lions on a regular basis. Does that make them the top of the food chain in the savannah? Definitely not. It only makes a pack of hyenas stronger than a single lion or lioness.

Rock, paper, scissors. No hierarchy. It's the same in the human systems. Hierarchy is an artificial system enforced by humans and has almost zero relation to anything natural.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#86

Post by alphonsegaston » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:52 PM UTC

erelde wrote: post #59

aaron-lebo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you be a realist while still being idealistic? Isn't that a bit of an advantage, too - seeing the world for what it actually is? Searching for historical examples, JFK was both?

Expressed in a very rough way: I think one has to be realist about their tools and idealist about their goals. And the drive is the most important factor. If they're just going through the motions without intent, without ideal, it won't lead anywhere. The will to preserve (imo absurd[0]) or the will to change. Of course, there isn't any one true model of thought. So I'm surely wrong. [0]: I don't think anything can l…

Pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#87

Post by _jal » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:52 PM UTC

dasmoth wrote: post #16

johan_larson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to need some sort of controls, if only to kick out the folks who retire in place.

If one were being truly radical about this, a possible solution is to replace researchers' salaries with pensions -- remove the incentive to retire in place by allowing you to retire at home if that's what you want.

And then you have a pool of professors made up of people who can afford to teach for free, or perhaps create a system where some finance leech buys your future pension for NPV payouts now.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#88

Post by helthanatos » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:54 PM UTC

BaronSamedi wrote: post #74

n4r9 wrote: post #8

I'm sure this resonates with university lecturers all over the Western world. The late writer and university academic Mark Fisher has some interesting points about this effect in his 2009 book "Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?"[0]. He saw it as an inevitable byproduct of the infiltration of neo-liberal ideology into the academic sphere. Setting targets and measuring performance indicators are justified wi…

Setting targets won't solve anything since this is a structural problem. You cannot leave those structures in place and expect a different outcome. That is just treating the symptoms. In my view the solution is simple: instead of letting bureaucrats and administrators decide, let parents and students choose the classes and teachers they want. Those teachers that offer classes and a teaching style that students actual…

The problem with that is then who teaches will just become a matter of who knows the parents more and who gives good grades... There is some need for administration but not near the extent that exists. The waste of money is truly a large problem. My school district has spent millions in useless computers and radio towers that 1/40 of the school population will ever touch. Reducing the number of tests children take may help; I don't think giving parents and students free reign over teachers would be best.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#89

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:57 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #76

sjg007 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree but checklists have been shown to reduce error all around.

The target of the checklists is the problem. “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The measure has to be concrete enough to not be manipulatable. For example, aircraft mechanical failures or hospital infections are very clear and obvious metrics. And besides outright lying and manipulation, the metrics speak for themselves and can't be corrupted. You can't, however, measure "education" or…

> ... hospital infections are very clear and obvious metrics.

Are you kidding? There are all sorts of ways for hospitals and doctors to manipulate this stuff, e.g., attract healthier patients (less compromised immune systems) or ones who are wealthier, younger, and more likely to follow instructions; give more prophylactic antibiotics; classify more patients as palliative http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-hospitals-... ; slant cause-of-death classification when there is ambiguity.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#90

Post by deong » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:57 PM UTC

BaronSamedi wrote: post #74

n4r9 wrote: post #8

I'm sure this resonates with university lecturers all over the Western world. The late writer and university academic Mark Fisher has some interesting points about this effect in his 2009 book "Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?"[0]. He saw it as an inevitable byproduct of the infiltration of neo-liberal ideology into the academic sphere. Setting targets and measuring performance indicators are justified wi…

Setting targets won't solve anything since this is a structural problem. You cannot leave those structures in place and expect a different outcome. That is just treating the symptoms. In my view the solution is simple: instead of letting bureaucrats and administrators decide, let parents and students choose the classes and teachers they want. Those teachers that offer classes and a teaching style that students actual…

> I suppose you could make the authoritarian argument that the experts know better than you and should be allowed to force you take the classes they think best.

I'm not sure that's especially authoritarian rather than just practical. I have a CS PhD focused on optimization and machine learning. I trust a student to mostly decide whether they feel like computer science is a good field for them to go into, but once they've made the choice to work on machine learning, they have very few useful opinions to offer. I don't care if the student thinks statistics or linear algebra are useful, boring, whatever. Part of what that money of theirs is buying is for someone like me to make the plan that gets them from where they are now to where they want to be.