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mastodon - Link to source

@pvonhellermannn It was many years ago now at a college dinner when one of the dons gave a speech for us alumni in which he expressed bemusement that the students were now treating the dons as shop assistants with whom they had a commercial transaction.

Seems logical to me as a direct result of the abolition of grants.

mastodon - Link to source

@pvonhellermannn I left academia three years ago. At first, I thought I’d come back and adjunct just because I like teaching and would appreciate the extra money — but that died so quickly. Actually being paid a fair salary ruined me on ever coming back to a university, and I already have freelance side hustles in addition to my salary.

Higher education is broken.

mastodon - Link to source

@pvonhellermannn Is it "employment", or "supply of potential labour"?

After all, it's students, not employers or government, who gamble their time and money on the skills and knowledge that might lead to employment in future. Get it right and neoliberal hellscape. But get it wrong and penury.

In that wager, a university plays the part of bookmaker, so naturally adopts the motives, methods and morals of a racetrack satchel-carrier, for whom the money justifies the means, whatever the result.

mastodon - Link to source
@pvonhellermannn The collapse of UK higher education is definitely not helped by the fact that the Conservatives needed to invent some enemies for their confected culture war & plucked academics out of their top-hat. That and the disdain for letting the working classes have an education that prepares them for anything other than working in a factory or the gig economy.

mastodon - Link to source

Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.

Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities #AcademicChatter #neoliberalism

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting
Yesterday we say a friend who normally works in different sectors but had recently done a term of teaching as a guest lecturer. He said he couldn’t believe what awful places universities are to work in: nothing works, management treat you badly and so do students. He found it *humiliating*. Perfect description - it is!

It really is weird - all that research, thinking, writing, and then you are just treated by everyone as an (underperforming) customer-service person.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting All day long pleasant email exchange with someone from my virtual learning environment team. Something is not working on one of my pages. I have now been sent 3 short video tutorials (about things I KNOW).

Anyone else find it annoying, always being sent video tutorials when you report a technical issue? Implication: this is YOUR fault, you don’t know what you are doing; and as an academic you should be spending more time watching tutorials because you are so time rich

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

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Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting i attended yet another local #UCU emergency meeting today and just want to say that, if you work at a university that you do, despite everything, really love - because of your genuinely wonderful, brilliant students and colleagues - and if that institution is in real peril, for all the usual reasons that UK HE is crumbling - then that adds yet another layer of sadness and heaviness to your days. It’s not just fear of losing your job; it honestly is more.
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting just out of a college wide “Transformation” meeting due to our ongoing disasterous financial situation. SMT need to take much more responsibility for their epic failures, but of course the larger context really is terrible. 40% of UK HE institutions are in decifit, and it won’t get better; nationwide 24/25 UCAS applications down 11%.

I am so so so SOOO incredibly angry how the Tories with their crappy values and policies have really destroyed UK universities, in so many ways

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

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Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting What makes all this all the more sad is that we really do love Goldsmiths. Just these last two weeks, I have had truly wonderful seminar discussions. Goldsmiths students and colleagues really are amazing; depite all our problems there is so much #AcademicJoy , too. It’s just 💔 that all this is in peril.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

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Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting Now have to share this brilliant article - well, have only read the abstract so far, but: count me in! Here’s to #AdministrativeAbolition!

“we argue for administrative abolition, that is, the elimination of all college presidents, provosts, deans and other top level administrators who we argue form a parasitical group”

muse.jhu.edu/article/917791

Screenshot of top of article, showing this text In this essay, we argue for administrative abolition, that is, the elimination of all college presidents, provosts, deans and other top level administrators who we argue form a parasitical group that was developed over time in order to exercise both political and financial control over faculty, staff and students. We examine the way that the idea of "shared governance" disguises the de facto dictatorship of administration over faculty self-governance, explore the history of how this power grab took place and furthermore explore alternative forms of faculty self-management in both US history and abroad (especially in Latin America).

Project MUSE - For Democratic Governance of Universities: The Case for Administrative Abolition

muse.jhu.edu
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting this is not venting, just crying. Things are bad enough at Goldsmiths but Kent announcing it is closing 9 humanities and social science departments - including #Philosophy and #Anthropology , and focusing instead on business and law as areas of growth, is just 💔💔💔

kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/n…

Screenshot of part of this article with a photo of a Kent uni building and this text below: Anthropology, art history, comparative literature, English language and linguistics, health and social care, modern languages, music and audio technology, and philosophy and religious studies could all be cut.

Nine courses could be ‘phased out’ at university facing financial problems

Nine courses, including journalism and art history, could be phased out at the University of Kent as a consultation is launched.
Joe Crossley (Kent Online)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting #Anthropology #Kent

Here is a petition you can sign and share to try and save the anthropology department. Please do.

I really do think that anthropology has so much to offer for navigating our way out of the polycrisis. The world needs so much more anthroplogy, not less.

change.org/p/save-anthropology…


Save Anthropology at the University of Kent

Ashleigh Hendra (Change.org)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting Our financial crisis has, of course, resulted in a huge proliferation of work as we are all scrambling to try and salvage things. Hours of emergency meetings on top of all the usual stuff.

Meanwhile also been scrambling this week to support PhD funding applications; up all night revising proposals and writing Statements for two who will now compete against each other. This is the process. And now heard that redundancies will be announced next week.

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting

Yesterday we were informed we will have 130 FT redundancies. More with part time staff included. We are 644 so potentially a quarter of us. From 11 departments, including #anthropology.

We don’t know yet who. I don’t know how these decisions are made (it’s related to which programmes or modules will be closed). I feel completely sick the whole time. Far beyond venting, just existential fear.

#Polycrisis #TheCrumble #Goldsmiths #Academia

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting It occurs to me that some of you might not know Goldsmiths - my university, now being decimated ⬆️.

So I want to tell you about #Goldsmiths. It is a unique, brilliant, important university. We combine arts, humanities and social sciences, producing amazing critical research, politics, practice.

I have the best colleagues and the best, best students. The fact that all this is being destroyed now is just 💔💔💔. Not just existential fear, much more.#UCU @ucu

Photo of front of Goldsmiths. Big red brick Building with white windows and big columns around front door, nice trees, side view along building
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting. Today the opposite of venting. Taught the MA Applied Anthropology and Community (see this 🧵for more info) and then we recorded testimonies to use for publicity- something the students initiated & organised . All I can say is: ❤️❤️❤️. Our students are amazing and it is a privilege to teach them and learn from them. And our MA is amazing, too! A unique, necessary programme providing both critical thinking and professional practice training.

mastodon.green/@pvonhellermann…


Pauline von Hellermann (@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

Attached: 1 image Hello! Just wanted to do a quick #ShoutOut here for a brilliant MA at Goldsmiths run by Anthropology and Social and Therapeutic Studies (STACS) at Goldsmiths.
Mastodon.green
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting well, we ALL (everyone in the 11 departments “in scope”) have to reapply for our jobs. The scale of proposed job cuts is just staggering.

Those of you who’ve been through this will relate: the physical manifestations of stress are something else. It does all feel quite existential- not just worries about mortgage, unemployment etc, but also because being an anthropologist at Goldsmiths is so central to my whole being. And to see something u love (G) falling apart is just 💔

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting there were hopes that the unique, important MA Ethnobotany could be saved by being transferred into Conservation, but apparently not. Just when the world needs more #Ethnobotany, not less.💔

The people who have created and run this wonderful programme are colleagues and friends.

[and if you want to respond with “well noone wants to study it ”; “you make more money in IT” - perhaps just don’t].

Mark Nesbitt @Economicbotany Sad news that the @UniKentSAC MSc in #Ethnobotany is coming to an end as the Anthropology Dept closes. I've enjoyed teaching/learning from 300+ wonderful students over 25 years, a great legacy. Worldwide support for the programme but it was not enough: kent.ac.uk/news/statement... 7:31 PM • Mar 21, 2024 • 2,570 Views Four pictures of different cohorts of this MA over the years
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting The irony is, when i started this thread, I honestly didn’t think things would happen so quickly; i had in mind something quite different, little, amusing examples of the neoliberal shitshow that universities have become.

I do have dozens of new ones every week- the handling of our “Transformation” is something else but also other universities- but the bigger picture is so dire that that dominates and also, well, fear.

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting Queen Mary @ucu are keeping a tally on UK universities currently reducing staff. As they put it: it’s all shrinking.

qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/…


UK HE shrinking

This is a live page of all the redundancies, restructures, reorganisations, and closures taking place across the sector at the moment. Solidarity to all. This sector is vital to the country’s…
qmucu.org
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting. Today a different perspective - a much needed critical, honest assessment of the key strategy that UK universities have been adopting to stay afloat: the mass recruitment of international students from China.

No wonder the author had to stay anonymous: it is virtually a taboo to say any of this, but good that someone has done so.

timeshighereducation.com/blog/…

UK universities are self-harming by exploiting Chinese students

Recruiting underprepared students is damaging the classroom experience and is soul-crushing for teachers, says a UK lecturer
Times Higher Education (THE)
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting

Good to see a Guardian article about what’s going on Goldsmitths, featuring Michael Rosen and all.

There really needs to be far more public awareness of the crisis in HE. Really hoping that, with a big public outcry, these savage redundancies can be prevented.

Though putting people through all this (more than 300 of us have been sent “you are at risk”letters - i am personally in a pool of 4, for 2 jobs to go) is itself pretty savage.

theguardian.com/education/2024…

GOLDSMITHS 1 Goldsmiths, University of London 'Cultural and social vandalism': job cut plans at Goldsmiths attacked Union claims up to a quarter of all academic roles at financially pressed London institution face the axe

‘Cultural and social vandalism’: job cut plans at Goldsmiths attacked

Union claims up to a quarter of all academic roles at financially pressed London institution face the axe
Sally Weale (The Guardian)
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting this piece by Gaby Hinsliff provides an excellent, worrying overview of what is happening in UK HE at the moment - the reasons why the tally above of struggling universities is expanding almost daily. Freefall is the right word 1/2

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Sceeenshot of top of this article Opinion Britain's universities are in freefall - and saving them will take more than funding Gaby Hinsliff Fundamental restructuring must happen, along with an honest debate about what - and who - higher education is really for

Britain’s universities are in freefall – and saving them will take more than funding

Fundamental restructuring must happen, and an honest debate about what – and who – higher education is really for, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
Gaby Hinsliff (The Guardian)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting 2/2

The story starts with the freezing of tuition fees in 2017, creating a growing hole in university finances that many plugged by recruiting more foreign students (who pay more than British teenagers for the same degree). That kept the show on the road until the resulting immigration numbers became politically toxic, prompting a government clampdown on visas and a sudden 33% fall in foreign student numbers compared with the same time last year.“

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting ah! For years I have been thinking someone should write “Unlucky Jim” - a 21st century campus novel - now just came across this! Hope it contains all those little details I was thinking about when starting this thread.

simonandschuster.co.uk/books/T…

Screenshot of cover of this book. A gown at bottom, mortar board in middle, no face in between, instead the title of the book there. Overall text 'A sizzling personal account of day-to-day life as a university lecturer DENNIS SHERWOOD The Secret Lecturer What Really Goes on at University

The Secret Lecturer

‘You don’t have to read too many pages of this sizzling personal account of day-to-day life as a university lecturer to appreciate why the author h...
www.simonandschuster.co.uk
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting Swansea is the latest university to announce major cuts. I think this brings it to 50 or more UK institutions.

This really is a major crisis. Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at non-elite universities are crumbling. The last few months of Tories and their disastrous anti-woke, anti-thought agenda is destroying the whole sector, all critical thinking. And many 100s of us out of jobs, all scrambling for the laar few positions. It is really bad!!

walesonline.co.uk/news/news-op…


Swansea University announces redundancies as cost cuts bite

Nearly 200 staff have agreed to go
Wales Online
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting Please read this wonderful piece by Goldsmiths Emeritus Professor Angela McRobbie, capturing why we all weep and weep at what is happening at Goldsmiths now. It was and is something so important: brilliant arts, research, critical thinking in a very non-elite setting, for and by non-elite students. It is so important we don't lose all this. But read the piece.

versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/new…


A Goldsmiths Diary

The UK higher education sector is increasingly under threat. Here Angela McRobbie writes about the sweeping series of planned redundancies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the wider assault on the sector.
Angela McRobbie (Verso)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting

"With low or no fees, undergraduates felt freer to pursue their own dreams of being taught by the kinds of leading scholars and world-renowned artists found in an institution like my own. They could afford to take the time to find their own feet, to chop and change courses and module options. Many would tell me they had discovered for the first time the wonders of anthropology, not having had any idea of the field previously."

So lovely that a colleague from a different

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting

.. discipline talks about the "wonders of anthropology". It really is a wonderful field! Adding here a🧵 on 8 reasons why the world needs #Anthropology. But really what I should have said: the world needs non-elite anthropologists and non-elite institutions teaching anthropology. It can't just be for the privileged at Oxbridge; it needs to be what we do at Goldsmiths - by and for everyone, especially those normally marginalised.

mastodon.green/@pvonhellermann…

Pauline von Hellermann (@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

My discipline, anthropology, is not seen as a “growth" discipline, and departments are being closed down. But the world needs Anthropology and Anthropologists now more than ever! Here are my 8 reasons for this: 1.
Mastodon.green
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting Ok so this piece by Glen O’Hara really is venting.

I am conscious that I & others might come across as incredible whiners. And of course I am aware that we are, for now (50% chance of unemployment for me in 3 months) incredibly privileged. But what O’Hara describes here is completely accurate. In addition to so much other awfulness in the world, the reality of academic life creates its own unhappiness - linked to ideals of what we feel it should be.

voicesofacademia.com/2024/04/0…


It’s Not Your Fault That Academic Life is Getting Harder by Glen O’Hara

Universities are in trouble, and it’s not just money we’re talking about. They are living through something of a crisis of confidence, even of trust and faith. More and more, I find myself, and my …
Voices of Academia
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting

“The modern university has become a site of moral harm or injury, perhaps mildly so, but a hard place to work and keep one’s sense of purpose and morality intact. Universities have moved progressively out of line with their staff’s view of the world, and that gap is another element in the increasing difficulty of keeping a grip on reality.“

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting Was a bit hard at first to read - at Goldsmiths we tend to think of UCL as the “Hoover”, sucking up all students, and indeed cohorts of 300+ history students make you weep! - but of course awful for staff being made redundant there, too, and for students having fewer and fewer module choices, vast classes, etc etc.

Universities ARE staff & students, yet management cares about neither. This is what marketisation does.

cheesegratermagazine.org/2024/…

The Bleak Reality of UCL History Department’s Redundancy Crisis – The Cheese Grater Magazine

cheesegratermagazine.org
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting

“The redundancies show that UCL cares not for their students’ role as a ‘consumer’. With the marketisation of higher education, something that has been critical in making universities neoliberal hellscapes, the student has been poised as a customer, rather than a learner. University is now meant to be a means to a greater end, with that end solely being employment.”

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting I think i said “neoliberal shitshow” at one point somewhere above, but “neoliberal hellscape” excellent too.

Pondering now how UK neoliberalism really is always simultaneously shitshow and hellscape. Shitty hellscape or hellish shitshow maybe. HE, water companies, NHS, the lovely Tory government itself- everywhere the same combination of cruelty, ineptitude and, of course, MONEY thinking.

in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting That is what this is: we are governed by money itself, and it brings cruel unimaginative rightwing mediocrity to the top everywhere. (Second crossover with #FollowTheMoney 🧵 here!)

Sadly forgotten name just now, (will edit), but remembering podcast with Cambridge prof saying people worry about being ruled by AI , nonhuman entities, but that is exactly what corporations are. Nonhuman entities are already running everything.

mastodon.green/@pvonhellermann…

Pauline von Hellermann

2024-03-06 09:06:02


#Budget #UKPolitics This article by Gary Stevenson is so good, please read every word of it.

“Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it.”

This is what the world is - it is run by a minute elite for a minute elite and the rest of us, the masses, the natural world, we just don’t count. It is a #TragedyOftheNonCommons (will reshare my own piece on this below 1/n)

#FollowTheMoney

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Screenshot of the top of this article

Take it from a former banker: the budget is for ordinary people. The mega-rich look on and laugh

Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it, says the author Gary Stevenson
Gary Stevenson (The Guardian)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting 🧵. Different theme but all related anyway: Dr Abu-Sittah’s truly brilliant inauguration speech at Glasgow. Highlighting the moral role that universities play, but also their complicity. He and Glasgow now provide important moral backbone, but all this has withered through neoliberal marketisation in English universities (see Glen O’Hara above). Mostly just shamefully neutral, bland statements on “middleeast crisis”.

mondoweiss.net/2024/04/dr-ghas…


Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah: ‘Tomorrow is a Palestinian day’

For us, all of us, part of our resistance to the erasure of genocide is to talk about tomorrow in Gaza, to plan for the healing of the wounds of Gaza tomorrow. We will own tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a Palestinian day.
Faris Giacaman (Mondoweiss)
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Pauline von Hellermann

#AcademicVenting 🧵. Just realised I hadn’t added here yet Zoe William’s excellently researched piece about our crisis at Goldsmiths. Really great we have had so many people speaking out for us. Loved this piece in particular as it’s also about the student occupation about #Gaza, and it cites a brilliant student who I have had the pleasure of teaching, Danna.

Best perhaps the final sentence: “But I don’t think ita done deal”.

theguardian.com/education/2024…

Screenshot of top of this article The Goldsmiths crisis: how cuts and culture wars sent universities into a death spiral Arts education is essential - yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine? by Zoe Williams

The Goldsmiths crisis: how cuts and culture wars sent universities into a death spiral

Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine?
Zoe Williams (The Guardian)
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Adam Greenfield

mastodon - Link to source

Adam Greenfield

In a class on the architecture of public participation I once taught at [institution], I had cause to show the famous image of the Tiananmen Square “tank man.” Not a single one of the Chinese students in the unit, which was 11 of the 14, recognized the image (or would admit to recognizing it in front of their peers, which is another kind of problem but with the same effect on in-class discussion).
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Ko-Fan Chen 陳克帆

The Chinese students dependency reminded me the pretext of Sino-British War in the 19th century, where Britain demanded free trade mainly to access the massive opium consuming market ( other #histodon may correct me here, at least that is what I as told in high school).

However, some counter examples here: We also have substantial Chinese students but in my case they are usually better students ( we are not a Russell group) also quite a lot of civil movement among them.

A poster advertising queer movement in China in Chinese
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Ko-Fan Chen 陳克帆

A couple of years ago, University of Leicester lost the Neuroscience dept.
Uni continues to recruit neuroscience undergraduates and the restructured colleagues were moved to our dept as teaching only. Apparently Neuroscience is *losing money*
But we haven't entirely recovered the research skillset and reputation, both crucial for Neurogenetics research in my dept.
Your thread and this below 👇 from @neuralreckoning made me seriously consider Uni fiance
neuromatch.social/@neuralrecko…

Dan Goodman (@neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social)

Can anyone explain something about university finances to me? The finance people say that grant overheads don't actually cover the cost of research. I would take this to mean that each grant is a net financial loss to the university.
Neuromatch Social
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Tom Ritchford

Just a travesty. The whole fscking point of civilization is so that we can study things that not everyone is interested in to advance knowledge and humanity in general. I might add that ethnobotany should be even more important today than before as we are (supposedly) attempting to shift humanity to a sustainable future, but even if there were no uses, studying it would be a good thing in and of itself.
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

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MarjorieR

can confirm this is very stressful, as I went through the same 20 year ago at my then university.
I ended up so distracted that I ran my car into the one in front stopped at traffic lights.
So when they offered the chance to take voluntary redundancy both myself and my boss took it, leaving then with no one properly qualified to teach our OR students. They then offered to take her back on piece rates, but of course, she already had a better paid job offer. I later did as well.
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

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Sarah Arnold

I have stepped out of HE and as much as I LOVED being able to mentor students and see them blossom, and lead cool field trips and inspire people, I agree - it was getting so messy and dysfunctional. I worry about how long before something really bad that happens in UK HE. It seems to be burning through good people at a rate of knots.
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

mastodon - Link to source

Paul H 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺

I feel for you. I had a similar experience almost 20 years ago when the department I worked in closed purely for financial and political reasons (despite us having just won a multi-million pound bid for advanced research facilities). The university then set about chasing "fashionable" degrees (forensics and pharmacy at the time).
In retrospect, I'm glad I'm out of mainstream HE - I'm still engaged, but in a "semi-detached" way which lets me do what I love.

#AcademicVenting

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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