pumpkinstrokemarrow

So not to be left out, the NYRB has now published another lament by an academic with UK affiliations if not residence, very much focussed on the connection between income and research. The author reports on what sounds like a very unpleasant and seriously bureaucratic process of scoring the research turned out by academic institutions. A process which results in a lot of pressure on academics to turn in the sort of research which reliably attracts a good score. Which results in a lot of academics spending a lot of quality time managing the process rather than doing the teaching or research they signed up for. And all the bureaucrats have lots of fun keeping the academics on their toes with continual tinkering with the detail. All of which sounds rather depressing. No more wandering the sunny groves of academe, wondering about the dialect of cuneiform used in Tikrit by the monumental masons of the third millennium.

But what is almost as depressing is that, just as in the previous lament, the present lament, despite the no doubt exalted qualifications of the author, offers no recognition that I noticed that there does need to be a process for deciding how much money to give to universities and for deciding how to share it out. Beyond perhaps a nostalgia for the days when Oxford and Cambridge got quite enough dosh to live on from private endowments and did not have to answer to the government for anything much.

Along the way the author takes a swipe at the fact the the Treasury, in complete and blissful ignorance of university life and values, does much of the deciding about how much money is to be given to universities and has a lot to say about the process of allocation to universities. In which he follows in illustrious footsteps: Winston Churchill as a very young but very well connected MP in 1902 was already complaining about how ' ... control of expenditure ... lay in the hands of Treasury clerks ...' (page 40, volume 2, big biog.). Things have moved on a bit and such control now lies in the hands of assistant directors, directors, director generals & such like (most of whom, as it happens, went to Oxford or Cambridge) - but there is still, or at least there was until quite recently, a middle ranking person with the job title of 'Estimates Clerk'. An echo of the Bank of England where quite an important person goes under the job title of 'Chief Cashier'.