Here’s the thing

I had occasion recently to mention to some colleagues ‘the new face of academia’. I’m not sure they knew what I meant (even less so that I did). Nonetheless here are a few thoughts on our changing nature, apposite I would suggest as so many of our valued colleagues will shortly depart from a life of public service in the educational sector before their time-and without the fanfare or acknowledgment which they might deserve.

Increasingly academics as I’ve mentioned previously are disappearing as a numerically majority force on our campuses. In their place there are now either new or an increasing number of:

Researchers (now also research professors-begging the question what do the rest do)??

Post docs as increasingly no entrance level posts as academics appear

Part timers

Specialist administrators- these for all manner of additional academic services and initiatives from recruitment to promotion of programmes to ICT.

How then is academia different from previously? Has the lot of the academic changed?

When I started as an academic I like others lectured and taught as I was told and enjoyed it, but was also expected to do-and did-much more. That ‘more’ involved things like promoting our programmes to schools persuading them of the value of a University education (by travelling on a (rickety) bus to far flung places like Youghal); journeying across Europe to meet French and German colleagues & persuade them to take our students; later travelling further afield to the USA to do the same. This was additional to teaching at night and day; publishing; innovating where possible or desirable in the curriculum; and meeting my students. The latter ranged from supervising postgraduates, to mentoring first years and others; while in between chatting to colleagues and performing the usual quasi admin academic tasks like student discipline; exam appeals ; plagerism; as well as speaking at student conferences and events on campus frequently at week-ends. Those ‘additional’ items, apart from the strict delivery of lectures and exams, are part of the fabric of campus life as much as the excitement and shared pleasure of lectures and seminars with students who share one’s own peculiar interests. Some amongst them stick out:-a discipline issue involved a good looking but slightly scary Russian boxer with lots of funds; a tale of a student involving brothels and fires which would turn your hair; a similar episode involving a lost passport; and a charming pre Philosophical society dinner with Clement Freud to which he had brought a very old port for the students to taste (I assisted) which enlivened the subsequent debate on pornography no end.

These kinds of events would be recognised by all academics and those now retiring would have many such tales. But if I talk of the changing face of academia, has that in any way changed? I think it helps answer that question if we look at what academics are now meant to be doing in the sense of what offers reward (at least theoretically) through the promotion scheme in our Institutions. In these one might find amongst the characteristics of the ‘ideal’ (new) academic amongst which would be the following:

Writing research and grant proposals; watching citation indices; creating networks for grants; gathering peer esteem indicators; producing scholarly articles (in peer reviewed journals only) and perhaps monographs. All of this being effected at some speed.

There is visibly less of -or at least less emphasis upon- the importance or centrality of the ‘older’ academics lot of teaching in often overcrowded lecture halls filled with sometimes less than motivated students (themselves obsessing with crafting a CV with ‘suitable’ internships and opportunities and impressive referees amongst which should number the ‘new’ type academic). All of this of necessity causing somewhat ‘slower’ production of research-(but before the pundits reach for the red pen here, think of the ‘slow food movement’ as a parallel).

Nowadays some academics may not do that much teaching in that the said research grants may provide for ‘buy out’ of their teaching; so that they like the above-mentioned researchers engage full time in research. Hence students may not meet these newer academics and researchers in the course of their degrees. The recruitment rounds will not find them visible either to attract students onto the campus, as these are hived off to specialist recruiters, agents and non academics. Yet the loss of the excitement of the communication of the story by the crafter of the postgraduate programme is the loss of a powerful recruitment tool. The student does not get the taste or feel of what a lecture from this person might be like (whether terrible or great).  Meanwhile on campus the student experience for the undergraduate, who is busy polishing their CV, engaging in internships and placements; acquiring transferable skills and documenting how they are engaged in the (always ‘cutting edge!!’) research of their professors in a campus with facilities of accommodation (self catering) and broadband access on a par with anywhere, could possibly be anywhere else.  What happens to the feel of college life: to drinking coffee, thinking subversive thoughts, exchanging views over pints with a lecturer in the old college bar after a student debate; being part of an organisation on campus that does something vaguely shady (I will go no further than to point out that the occasional occupation of college offices; showing of the banned films Patriot Game or Life of Brian and sale of prophylactics in the Kampus Kitchen sufficed in my day). That stuff may now only be found on our campuses in the brief to the ‘marketers and branders’ (new people also on our shore) and may surface solely in vignettes about college life to recruit postgrads.

So where the CAO entrant might ask is the excitement/the beef? Why should they come to us rather than the Technological University of Munster? If the only difference lies in the title, and we take comfort in the assurance that Minister Quinn has stated ITs must try harder to be Universities, that may cause us to rest on our laurels-Yet of all people we should know that aspiration eventually equals grasp, at least on the part of some. If for example we take comfort in the fact that the staff of the ‘technological University’ do not in sufficient numbers have PhDs, they may yet garner the necessary quotient of PhDs holders amongst their staff as indeed we –and other venerable Institutions- did previously. -One of the most impressive exponents in my own field of interest for instance was based in Oxford and proudly known as Mr Peter Carter MA.

If it is that extra ‘zing’ the ‘je ne sais quoi’ that made and will still save Universities, we need to find and safeguard it at a time of disappearing colleagues and emerging competing collegial institutions. To be, and by being different, we need to focus on it-before it also disappears out the door....

Happy St Bridget’s day and best wishes to all our departing colleagues!