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Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

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Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#281

Post by neuromantik8086 »

cr0sh wrote: post #199
neuromantik8086 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With research it's not the sort of thing you can do on the side after a day spent waiting tables. Depends on your level of engagement. Can you explore your own hypotheses and put together your own experiments? Probably not. Can you engage in citizen science projects like BOINC or Zooniverse (essentially performing drudge work that would otherwise be thrown at some hapless research assistant at the bottom of the tot…

> Can you explore your own hypotheses and put together your own experiments? Probably not. Can you expand on this? I don't see why you couldn't, outside of the amount of money that may be needed for certain research.

My argument for why you couldn't is more one of pragmatism than anything else. After 8 hours slogging away in a cubicle, you're unlikely to have the energy to work with the laser-like precision necessary to tackle a scientific problem. Perhaps it is possible in some exceptional cases, but for the vast majority of people I don't see it happening.

Plus, science is as much about your interactions with your peers as it is your work. Individuals that aren't highly embedded in a scientific clique are liable to miss important information that would have an impact on your research. You can't develop the same level of social capital as you'd need doing science part-time as a hobby.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#282

Post by neuromantik8086 »

neuromantik8086 wrote: post #190
naravara wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the exception of performances (sports, acting, music) you can make a decent living despite not being at the next level. It is generally not so with academia. And even with the stuff like acting and music, the advancemnet of society doesn't depend on the efforts of professional athletes and performers. So we tend to be a lot more tolerant of people falling out of that pipeline and winding up in more prosaic posit…

> With research it's not the sort of thing you can do on the side after a day spent waiting tables. Depends on your level of engagement. Can you explore your own hypotheses and put together your own experiments? Probably not. Can you engage in citizen science projects like BOINC or Zooniverse (essentially performing drudge work that would otherwise be thrown at some hapless research assistant at the bottom of the tot…

For those who are potentially offended, I wasn't insulting citizen science projects (I, in fact, participate in some of them)- having actually worked as a hapless research assistant at the bottom of the totem pole, I was actually just making the blunt observation that qualitatively a lot of the work one would perform in citizen science project is indistinguishable from necessary, but particularly dull, work that higher level investigators don't feel like doing.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#283

Post by fuckemem »

Chathamization wrote: post #210
Lxr wrote: post #49

If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability. Absolutely, could not agree more. This is the only way to beat gamification of metrics in my opinion. There is a worrying trend of treating staff as equally capable but untrusted cogs in a wheel, and metricising performance. I fun…

But that whole strategy is based on hiring "good people," and by what metric do you determine that? It seems that it's just pushing the measurements to another location, one that's less visible and transparent (the hiring process). Or maybe you don't think that there should be a firm set of metrics at all, but having metrics that are too loose ends up meaning the decisions tend to be arbitrary and based on the whims…

Measuring the hiring process is a different kettle of fish, to measuring on the job.

I think being overly measured in a job makes a job about maximizing the metrics at any cost. And a lot of people will cave into that pressure and take shortcuts in areas that are not measured in order to maximise their measured performance.

For example over estimating, less testing, less documentation if the metrics is about meeting estimates.

Whereas without the metrics they might just do what they think is best given their experience in any given situation.

There is never going to be zero metrics, as managers need to know where the money and time is being spent, but I prefer things on the lighter side.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#284

Post by zeteo »

gipp wrote: post #279
jgamman wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think you have to go back to the 18th century for that. i'm thinking britain where science was something acceptable that gentlemen could do in their spare time (with smart+poor doing a lot of heavy lifting) and in particular Antoine Lavoisier in France who literally bought the rights to be a tax farmer so he could do his research. he lost his head in the revolution so there's that. YMMV.

Kelvin, De Broglie, and Brahe come to mind as well.

Kelvin taught at Glasgow, Brahe was a cathedral canon, and De Broglie did his best work for his PhD thesis.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#285

Post by pmiller2 »

iamacynic wrote: post #217
wpietri wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not opposed to managers. I am one, after all. But I don't think "management" is a universal skill. I think somebody who manages developers should probably be a developer. I think somebody who manages doctors should be a doctor. And I think there's a lot of merit in non-hierarchical systems, like the way doctors and lawyers are mainly accountable to professional organizations. I agree that metricising knowledge wo…

> I think somebody who manages doctors should be a doctor. i could be wrong, but i believe in 'real' professions like medicine and law, there's some kind of board/bar rule that prohibits being managed by someone who never had the actual job they're managing. any one know if that's accurate?

There isn't in law, but, in most (maybe all?) US jurisdictions, only a lawyer can own a law firm.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#286

Post by crdoconnor »

metaphorm wrote: post #131
wpietri wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a worrying trend of treating staff as equally capable but untrusted cogs in a wheel, and metricising performance. That's a great way of summing up what I've heard called "managerialism". There's a theory behind, e.g., the MBA that a competent manager can manage anything. That what one manages makes no difference as long as you're a real manager. One of the corollaries of that theory is that all one has to…

> But it's excellent at justifying a caste system exactly. the managerial class claims dominion over the rest of us, and then swiftly constructs a rigid social system that locks in their position on top of it. this necessarily includes promulgation of unfounded myths and beliefs taken on faith to support the ossification of the system.

>promulgation of unfounded myths and beliefs taken on faith to support the ossification of the system.

a.k.a. neoliberal economics

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#287

Post by Fomite »

pdimitar wrote: post #257
Fomite wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given I know someone who works rather hard, full time, on negotiating grants and other contracts and they're far from the Dean level, I'd suggest you're off from the amount of work required to run and administer a university by a pretty hefty margin.

Well, I don't mind being wrong on that one, it's mostly side observations plus some intuition, and we know these aren't exactly objective criteria. That being said, in your example maybe the dean simply couldn't be bothered? :P

More that's a full time job all it's own, and is only one aspect of grant administration. Unless the Dean is some sort of omniscient AI, that's not going to work out well.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#288

Post by Fomite »

tnecniv wrote: post #276
pdimitar wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't mind being wrong on that one, it's mostly side observations plus some intuition, and we know these aren't exactly objective criteria. That being said, in your example maybe the dean simply couldn't be bothered? :P

It's more likely that the dean is just not the person who should be writing the grant proposal. Professors whose groups are actively working in the area the grant is for will write a much better proposal. It's also expected that as a professor you are -- to a significant degree -- capable of funding your group.

I'm not even talking about grant writing. I'm talking about things like negotiating licensing agreements for private industry, contract negotiation to make sure publication and graduate students are protected, etc.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#289

Post by killjoywashere »

iamacynic wrote: post #217
wpietri wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not opposed to managers. I am one, after all. But I don't think "management" is a universal skill. I think somebody who manages developers should probably be a developer. I think somebody who manages doctors should be a doctor. And I think there's a lot of merit in non-hierarchical systems, like the way doctors and lawyers are mainly accountable to professional organizations. I agree that metricising knowledge wo…

> I think somebody who manages doctors should be a doctor. i could be wrong, but i believe in 'real' professions like medicine and law, there's some kind of board/bar rule that prohibits being managed by someone who never had the actual job they're managing. any one know if that's accurate?

I find physicians like the idea of working for doctors, and hospitals have shrewdly supported the role of 'chief medical officer", while keeping financial controls with the other C level officers. The Children's Hospital in San Diego is famously "Rady's" because the physicians ran it into the ground and the Rafy family bailed it out on condition they accept professional management practices. Not coincidentally, the Rady family also funded the the UCSD Rady School of Management. Also not coincidentally, many health care workers loathe working there, generally attributing this to a belief that management is more interested in the bottom line than patient outcomes, and this leads to a general distrust of Management.
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