#AcademicVenting Deep in marking (for one of my part time fixed term jobs). It is all blogs and worksheets. I miss essays!
Essays are such an excellent form of assessment. As a lecturer you can design questions that force the student to read the literature, really think about a topic, develop an argument, write well. I can’t think of a better way of embedding knowledge. Marking fairer and more constructive too.
Here’s to the #Essay!
#AcademicVenting 🧵 Higher education, certainly in the UK, continues to be in dire straits - here the tally Queen Mary UCU is keeping.
What are we doing about it as academics? I can tell you.
We are talking about opening new MAs (to generate more money) , or closing MAs (to save money).
That’s what 80% of departmental meetings across the country are taken uo by now. I am not even joking. That’s all we have.
#AcademicVenting 🧵this is a good piece on how #AI “is destroying the university and learning itself” - partly because right now universities are busy embracing AI, spending fortunes whilst letting go of staff
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself
Unsurprisingly, the 'tone' of #AcademicVenting is more of a problem than what the 'tone' signifies.
More institutional time is spent on 'correcting' tones than resolving the substance the 'tone' is denouncing.
I know what that means in my context. Avoiding details, deliberately. Reminds me of Ahmed's 'Complaint'.
@piege yes.
Valuable work isn't systematically promoted. Skewed, status-quo/safe work often is.
I'm not dissing those who get promoted for good reason.
I'm noting that from my perspective, there are macchiavellian chancers who get influential posts based on inherited privilege/performative metrics (eg ill-defined 'impact' criteria).
They work back from criteria so short-term 'impact' is captured. This is different to sustained impact which requires time & #AcademicFreedom
I can't stomach how Trump mirrors-models-normalises #academia 's hollowed-out individualistic promotion-speak:
'I single-handedly achieved X'
'I saved Xn lives'
'I'm the only one who can do X'
'Nominate me for a prize'
'Put in writing how essential I am'
Whilst undermining the collective good.
🤮
#AcademicVenting 🧵and then also the move to online teaching and the reuse of recorded lectures makes us lecturers rapidly redundant. Last nighr a friend told me about how she had to spend hours preparing a new online MSc - all in 6min snippets that had to comply with v strict guidelines (zero ac freedom, critical thinking); this would then be available for 5 years, no further input required from her. And then this morning I read this post by @petergleick
Want an example of how we're going to lose the education race by eviscerating our universities? I've been invited to help develop a course on Water and Civilization. To be taught to 10,000 students. In one university. In China.
#AcademicVenting 🧵Then, of course, the world-wide, very serious political onslaught on universities, already manifesting in many ways. Harvard announced last week that they were cutting their PhD programmes by 50-75% across all disciplines! This is so bad.
I dread to think what will happen to UK HE if/when Reform get in.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/21/fas-phd-admissions-cuts/
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.
Pauline von Hellermann
Dr Julia Molinari PhD SFHEA