She expected to be asked to give the number of monographs, studies, articles, book chapters, conference papers, and reviews produced by her colleagues within a given time window, and was dismayed, as were all the other chairs in Humanities, to find that the 'productivity assessment' was to be based on NOTHING except the amount of grant money attracted by department members during that time window. The university did not care if they'd done anything with the money - produced anything with it. They only cared how much cash they'd brought in.
In my own university my chair told us last year that he was perturbed to read a administrative memo that remarked in passing that the amount of grant money brought in by an individual or department "was not the ONLY measure of productivity".This grant money = productivity model seems to have originated in the sciences, where research is expensive, and it is genuinely very hard to get any work done if you don't have any grant money, and where grad students are generally supported with research grants. But in Humanities, I really don't need the money. A library and a computer, and I'm good. A little travel money once in awhile is nice but I can live without if I don't get any.
As long as this difference in the disciplines is understood, it doesn't matter. But if the science-based "grant money = value as a scholar" model is applied willy-nilly to every discipline, as seems to be happening, Humanities faculty, who do not require grant money to do their research as a rule, are put at a gross disadvantage. We look like pathetic hangers-on who aren't even close to pulling our own weight.
Does this seem to you like putting the cart before the horse? Surely the point of grants is to produce useful and published research? Since when did the amount of the grant, rather than the amount and quality of the research, become the measure of "productivity"?
Try being a scientist who can work relatively cheaply... oh boy do those who need a lot of cash just to run their machines/buy their supplies look down on your measly grant income, even if you are supporting the same number of people
ReplyDeleteIt's really, really warped, but money (with a small side of "doing cool media stuff" or being on government committees) = status seems to be pretty universal, whatever we'd like to think about the ideals of the academy.
But then, I'm having a cynical day today...
A humanities teacher, I came upon a federal grant intended to help teachers develop new courses. And I applied. The biggest pain was explaining again and again and again to everyone on every level of my institution that I was applying to teach a class, not to get out of teaching a class. One person actually asked, "grants are for money to do research and reduce your teaching load, right? Is this thing legit?" It was amazing how many people here involved in grants didn't really know what the "h" is in NEH.
ReplyDeleteWhat Grumpy Academic said.
ReplyDeleteMy last grant review actually praised my lab for getting a lot of work done on a small budget - then reduced my grant.
The idea that money=productivity may have originated in some of the more expensive disciplines, but that doesn't make it 'scientific' or 'science-based'. It simply rewards wealthy spendthrifts, and is just as stupid in the sciences as it is anywhere else. Please don't tar all scientists with the stupid ideas of a few.
The reason grant money = productivity is that the Uni gets to siphon off a percentage as overhead costs; some places take 40-50%. Those of you with cheap research agendas need to get with the program.
ReplyDeleteI know the scientists where I teach are pissed off by the overhead costs and that's part of why they think Humanities profs are parasites -- when in reality, our salaries are lower, we teach more students, and we are incredibly cheap to maintain because we have no labs and require very little in the way of technological equipment unless we are in the digital arts or something. But I am still glad R & G is here to remind me that the money = productivity equation is greed, not science.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that if the dean wants to hit the brillo pad...
ReplyDeleteA lot of recent efforts of this sort, including last spring's UT-Austin study, seem to trace back to the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which certainly seems to have the ear of Washington Post reporters and bloggers lately (a phenomenon I really, really hope isn't related to the Post Co's ownership of Kaplan; for the moment, I'm assuming that the Center is just doing a better job of press relations, and offering plausible solutions to very real problems, than anyone else). The center is directed by Ohio University professor Richard Vedder, author of, among other things, The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy. So maybe it’s all just a plot against the hard-working denizens of Miami U of Ohio. Or, more seriously, this is an effort by someone who may just think that colleges and universities would be more socially useful if they operated more like Wal-Mart, with mass production and distribution – a theory which accords with the Center’s expressed preference for larger classes as being more “productive.” That, of course, relies on a reductionist model of higher education as information transfer, which makes about as much sense in a fast-changing world as measuring research productivity solely by how much outside grant money flows through university coffers.
ReplyDeleteF&T: it's certainly not true that all scientists think that way, and I certainly don't. I support the humanities completely.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, at Tiny Lame-Ass University, it's the scientists at the disadvantage. We don't bring in big bucks from grants, and the university claims only small overhead, so we're not a major revenue stream. On the other hand, keeping our student labs equipped with equipment built sometime in the last century costs the university a huge amount of money, disproportionate to the number of students we teach.
This type of assessment will begin to change, soon, as colleges become tuition dominated. Humanities will be seen as larger contributors to the bottom dollar line. All rational faculty understand that science faculty teach less, write more grants; and arts & letters teach more, with very few grant avenues.
ReplyDeleteI suspect Vedder is a plant from Miami of Ohio to ruin OU's reputation...
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it's just another part of the attack on mass public education. The humanities don't make a profit so they must be parasites!
Since when has the amount of external funding brought in acted as the sole determinant of scholarly productivity, you ask? Since external funding became common on American university campuses in the wake of World War II. Numbers of research papers published in refereed journals and number of citations per year can vary radically from discipline to discipline (a productive astronomer or zoologist can publish over a dozen papers per year; a productive mathematician is doing well at one), but number of dollars is objective. It makes for very skewed research priorities, as you observe.
ReplyDeleteEven worse is when the amount of external funding brought in used as the sole determinant for whether a faculty member is awarded tenure. That's not uncommon, either.
If you want to stir up a shit storm in short order, try using the argument, "the students we get here are of such low quality, it's a waste of federal money to support them." Oh boy, NO ONE wants to hear that, even if it's richly deserved.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNote to all:
ReplyDeleteOver the past day or so, Blogger's automatic spam filter has been snagging more comments than usual. As Fab discussed here months ago, we have no control over the spam filter, and we don't know what stirs it up. (There were some fun attempts to find out though, with a whole series of deliciously profane comments that never got caught.)
if Asst Dean and Prickly Prof are still with us. When I logged on and saw your notes in the spam filter, I just kicked them back into the system and they appeared.
Sorry for any inconvenience. There was nothing else that I could do as I was in class most of today.
This is NOT directed at Asst. Dean at all, because this has happened here before.
ReplyDeleteBut because the Blogger software doesn't work perfectly every minute, don't assume some cabal of moderators is trying to squelch your truth.
Sometimes posts get eaten. Sometimes comments don't show up - or become spam - and sometimes, just sometimes nobody is working feverishly against you.
I hate to admit that I run a small state-uni-related blog of my own and I get so pissed off when these same problems happen over at my place.
Just my observation.
is *this* the post you're referenceing?
ReplyDeletehttp://collegemisery.blogspot.com/2011/01/comment-spam-blocker.html
I just checked the teaching schedules of all of the Miami 4. Not a single one of them was "in class most of today."
ReplyDeleteWhat next? Are you going to blame Rose Mary Woods for deleting 18 comments?
Shame on you!
Google doesn't make mistakes. Conspirators make mistakes.
ReplyDeleteyou people aren't even smart. it's clear from the time on these comments that Bubba, Fubar, Wisconsin Will, and the main moderator of this page ARE ALL THE SAME PERSON.
ReplyDeleteWhen will the other 5 readers of the page say, sorry, but your scam isn't fooling us any more?
I know I've had enough.
I've already established that Ben and Bubba and Archie are the same person. So you do the math.
This is my fault, I am on sabbatical in China, so trying to penetrate the "great firewall" may cause the spam filter to invoke (a lot of spam comes out of China).
ReplyDeleteTo the moderator, sorry, no one expects you to be on duty 24/7. I will re-post in the future.
Virginia Ham? I think not.
ReplyDeleteNotice, if you will, that this so-called name is an anagram for, "Ha! I am Irving!"
We know your true identity, Irving.
We will not be duped.
@Asst Dean
ReplyDeleteDo not worry one bit. Sorry to Merely Academic for hijacking the bottom of the thread. I fear I started it. My apologies.
Gordo
It's not all about the money. Probably 80% is about the money. The other 20% is about Gordon Presto. Perhaps I speak only for myself, but I won't be satisfied until that is 50/50. He deserves better. 20% is an insult to our good majordomo.
ReplyDelete:)
ReplyDelete