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
#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.
#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
#AcademicVenting oh God
#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
#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”
#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 💔💔💔
#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.
https://www.change.org/p/save-anthropology-at-the-university-of-kent
#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.
#AcademicVenting But I also got an email that the staff #Wellbeing had reopened. There is now a special room where we can go talk. That will make us feel better! That will fix things!
The Neoliberal University
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.
#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
#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.
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. It is a unique programme combining theory and practice, academic with professional qualifications. There are three pathways: MAs in Applied Anthroplogy and Community Youth Work; Community Development; and Community Arts https://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-applied-anthropology-community-youth-work/ #CommunityArts #Anthropology #CommunityDevelopment #Youthwork #Masters 1/3
#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 💔
#AcademicVenting Awful news from Kent University (see posts above). It really is happening.
“We have taken the decision to phase out Anthropology, Art History, Health & Social Care, Journalism, Music & Audio Technology, and Philosophy/Religious Studies.” 💔
#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].
#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.
#AcademicVenting Queen Mary @ucu are keeping a tally on UK universities currently reducing staff. As they put it: it’s all shrinking.
#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.
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.
#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
#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.“
#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.
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Secret-Lecturer/Secret-Lecturer/9781914487217
#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!!
The biggest 2 problems with Academia:
- admin staff outnumbers the teaching staff
- STEM is mostly replaced by completely irrelevant subjects.
Mediocracy won 😢
Point 1 - agree.
Point 2 - disagree (and I'm a STEM educator). One of the points of the humanities is to make the life enabled by STEM worth living. There are many other reasons too, but insufficient space here. It'd take a book. How do you define "irrelevant" anyway? From the student perspective, is the university experience ever "irrelevant"?
@Henrysbridge @pvonhellermannn
#2: The discovery of the fire preceded the discovery of philosophy. I like reading Kant and Nietzsche, but in a warm. well lighten room, holding a glass of 15 years old cognac… (a process of destination, and other biochemistry).
@pvonhellermannn
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.
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. So why do they want us to get more grants?
Isn't that how they got to be VCs?
@pvonhellermannn I'm so sorry. It's unbelievable until it really happens. 💚💔
Where is everybody going, what are they going to do?
@pvonhellermannn this is very short sighted.
It’s underfunding and poor management to blame.
The march toward a bland uniform world of IT drones continues.
Damn, sorry to hear this. 😕
Thinking of you. What a sad situation.
Thinking of you and all your colleagues! Condolences for the destruction, and wishing luck to the people whose jobs get removed. And sympathies for the uncertainty :-(
Hi there,
Sorry for the delayed reply. It looks like the Kent UCU branch web pages are the best place to head to:
https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/ucuuok/
There are links to further info and contacts here:
https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/ucuuok/2024/02/01/important-jobs-news-and-support/
Thanks for your support; I’m sure the local branch will appreciate it.
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