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

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#301

Post by trishume » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 1:44 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #263

trishume wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think neuroscience is a better way to learn about human behaviour (which is what psychology deals with)? Neuroscience is incredibly difficult and the brain is super complex. We have learned far far less about human behaviour through neuroscience than through psychology studies. Learning about behaviour through neuroscience is working at the wrong level of abstraction, we're not capable of comprehending lar…

What I said was that psychology should be used as an extension of interpreting neuroscientific findings. We haven't learned anything about the brain through psychology we have learned about how humans interpret the brain but we don't have a lot of raw data. That's what neuroscience gives us and so it allow us to focus on interpreting the data rather than making a lot of flawed experiments which are often anecdotal mo…

Just because psychology doesn't tell us about how the brain functions doesn't mean it isn't useful. Learning about how humans behave in practice is arguably more useful.

And yes tons of psych studies are flawed but the reason we have the replication crisis is that we can actually run sufficiently large well-controlled studies that we have some confidence in the results, and when we run those we do learn important things like "that previous study was totally wrong". A lot of things like our knowledge of heuristics and biases (not the scientific ones mentioned earlier but cognitive ones) and our solid psychometric measures have come from psych studies.

I do agree with you that we basically shouldn't believe the majority of psych studies, especially if they are in the news. However, the crappy studies help guide where we bother to do the large studies, and provide fodder for the meta-analyses. That's what we learn from.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#302

Post by hobs » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 1:53 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #236

rattray wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The better managers translated the quantitative metrics into qualitative guidance for their teams. The worse managers provided no such buffer and instead made their teams achieve metrics by any means necessary. This seems like a key insight. Metrics are key to good management – but metrics are for the managers, not for the teams. Managers that pass metrics directly down to their teams as goals aren't doing their jo…

Agreed. What I left out is that being a good manager can be really hard. If this quarter, the metric is scrap, and you've already exceeded your scrap budget, you have to be willing to tell your people to scrap bad material anyway. You have to do that, knowing that you're going to get raked over the coals in the managers' meeting. Knowing that it's going to count against you at review time. Knowing that the people you…

I sense a "its hard but its good" theme in this post, and frankly, I disagree.

Making middle managers accountable for the failure of executives to manage their company, effectively just insulates those people who made decisions from those who know they are terrible decisions.

I was a middle manager who had to do this very thing, and even though my company was happy due to making gobs of money, every review I had was terrible because I wasn't hitting the metric of the month (that generally ended in horrible burn out and hiring even more replaceable people) and I was constantly warned that "You wont bonus this month."

I never got a bonus while I worked there, and yet was highly respected and valued by all my employees.

When I left the company the other great managers followed me, and the business folded, having hundreds of people lose their jobs.

So tell me, why would anyone want this or claim that this type of decision making is "good management"?

Why setup a system that punishes those that help the business and deliver actual value to customers instead of meaningless metrics?

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#303

Post by chimprich » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 1:54 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #205

chimprich wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that the point of academia is that it is valuable to society. The point of academia (from a purist's perspective, at least) is that learning is the target in itself; pushing back the boundaries of ignorance is an end-goal of our species. In many cases the advancement of our state of knowledge brings many rewards but that doesn't have to be the point of it. > Maybe I am wrong but after postmodernism I…

Well not really. There is a reason why learning into itself have value and thats exactly because it benefit society which is why governments have paid for it historically. But if you want to study alchemy you have to do it on your own. My point is that perhaps philosophy and psychology and economics now belongs to that group.

Well yes really. You might disagree but I think a society that knows what Pluto looks like (for example) is a better society than one that doesn't, even if that knowledge does not make that civilisation any materially better off.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#304

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

trishume wrote: post #301

ThomPete wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I said was that psychology should be used as an extension of interpreting neuroscientific findings. We haven't learned anything about the brain through psychology we have learned about how humans interpret the brain but we don't have a lot of raw data. That's what neuroscience gives us and so it allow us to focus on interpreting the data rather than making a lot of flawed experiments which are often anecdotal mo…

Just because psychology doesn't tell us about how the brain functions doesn't mean it isn't useful. Learning about how humans behave in practice is arguably more useful. And yes tons of psych studies are flawed but the reason we have the replication crisis is that we can actually run sufficiently large well-controlled studies that we have some confidence in the results, and when we run those we do learn important thi…

I never said it wasnt useful what i said is that its not the best method anymore and thus shouldn't be a separate faculty but instead be tied to neuroscience exactly to better utilize the raw data which neuroscience gives us.

Not really sure why this is such a controversial suggestion.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#305

Post by DanBC » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #304

trishume wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because psychology doesn't tell us about how the brain functions doesn't mean it isn't useful. Learning about how humans behave in practice is arguably more useful. And yes tons of psych studies are flawed but the reason we have the replication crisis is that we can actually run sufficiently large well-controlled studies that we have some confidence in the results, and when we run those we do learn important thi…

I never said it wasnt useful what i said is that its not the best method anymore and thus shouldn't be a separate faculty but instead be tied to neuroscience exactly to better utilize the raw data which neuroscience gives us. Not really sure why this is such a controversial suggestion.

It's seen as an overly medical response ("Take your meds, you'll be fine") to a thing that has a mix of biological, psychological, and social causes. Treatments should include the range of bio-psycho-social options, even for the more biological illnesses.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#306

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #305

ThomPete wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said it wasnt useful what i said is that its not the best method anymore and thus shouldn't be a separate faculty but instead be tied to neuroscience exactly to better utilize the raw data which neuroscience gives us. Not really sure why this is such a controversial suggestion.

It's seen as an overly medical response ("Take your meds, you'll be fine") to a thing that has a mix of biological, psychological, and social causes. Treatments should include the range of bio-psycho-social options, even for the more biological illnesses.

We are talking research here there is nothing in my model that hinders anything all it does is realign psychology with were it belongs in a scientific context, otherwise we should still have alchemy too.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#307

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

chimprich wrote: post #303

ThomPete wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not really. There is a reason why learning into itself have value and thats exactly because it benefit society which is why governments have paid for it historically. But if you want to study alchemy you have to do it on your own. My point is that perhaps philosophy and psychology and economics now belongs to that group.

Well yes really. You might disagree but I think a society that knows what Pluto looks like (for example) is a better society than one that doesn't, even if that knowledge does not make that civilisation any materially better off.

No not really cause i said nothing about a society that doesent know what pluto looks like these are your own strawmen.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#308

Post by flamedoge » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

jccalhoun wrote: post #125

I'm currently a lecturer at a small midwestern liberal arts university. I don't know what kind of job I will have next year because the Dean decided that there will no longer be one year full time contracts and they won't add any more three year contracts. Theoretically they want to have more tenure track job but in practice our department isn't getting any more. So at worst I will be part time next year which means…

of course that would be outrageous! we should be giving them millions in bonus!

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#309

Post by lgas » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 11:41 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #181

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…

Further reading: The Gervais Principle https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... My friend and I have internally renamed the roles "producers", "regulators", and "harvesters" in an attempt to remove the negative connotations. Feel free to use that in your own discussions also.

What do you hope to achieve by removing the negative connotations? Getting people to buy into the negative ideas without realizing they are negative?

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#310

Post by bshanks » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 11:41 PM UTC

metaphorm wrote: post #252

bshanks wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is not the solution; I've seen this sort of thing happen in academia even with professors with assistants (thankfully my own professors have never been like this). For example, the administrative assistant presents the professor with an employee timesheet that needs to be signed in order for some employee to be paid, and the professor says, "thanks, I'm busy now, just leave that here and don't bother me agai…

well, the problem is professors lack the motivation or ability to properly to administrative tasks so somebody else needs to do them instead. however, installing a massive and expensive and authoritarian bureaucracy seems like an extremely bad solution as well and yet that is what we've got. I'm suggesting that that bureaucracy ought to be dismantled and be replaced by a smaller number of more focused administrators…

I like your suggestion. Yes, separate the job of professor from that of administrator; enhance research independence at all levels by reducing administrative power over the professor from above, and reducing the administrative role of the professor on those below them.

I note that, if they have the authority to supervise employees and allocate budgets, then under many systems this administrator would be called a manager rather than an assistant (which is appropriate b/c this person would be a peer, rather than a subordinate, of the professor). I imagine that the admin would administer the budgets that were formerly administered by the professor, and other researchers who work in the lab would report to the admin rather than to the professor (the admin would consult with the professor over hiring/firing but would not be required to take their advice). The independence of the individual professor is enhanced but, due to the loss of full control of the budget and hiring/firing, their power over other non-professor-level researchers in the lab is decreased.