{"id":6180,"date":"2021-03-28T19:34:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-28T18:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=6180"},"modified":"2021-03-28T19:34:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T18:34:29","slug":"red-tape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2021\/03\/28\/red-tape\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Tape"},"content":{"rendered":"

The announcement of a review<\/a> of bureaucratic red tape in universities may bring either a smile of relief or a hollow laugh. Why are universities (and funding bodies) so entangled in this nasty stuff? Is it because they love to hire lots of makeweight administrators regardless of need (I think not!), or is it because the Government imposes endless layers of regulatory checks and balances? Once upon a time, before Margaret Thatcher\u2019s suspicions alighted on academia (if you aren\u2019t aware of this history, I recommend Jon Agar\u2019s Science Policy under Thatcher<\/a><\/em> to fill you in, an open access pdf), there was less determination to scrutinise academics\u2019 every move. It wasn\u2019t academics who dreamed up \u2018impact\u2019 as something we all needed to have if we were to be funded; it wasn\u2019t the bench scientist who thought the REF was a desirable way of measuring university outputs and thereby creating some of the myriadleague tables we are now plagued with. The design of forms for research grants is just another example of evolution rather than intelligent design.<\/p>\n

So, it is hard not to believe some good might come out of this recently announced review. Who wouldn\u2019t want to cut red tape? However, it does rather depend which particular bits get cut. To give an example of a particular form I\u2019d love to see simplified, one that I cited to a senior UKRI employee recently, I\u2019m all for scrapping the format of the referee\u2019s form for UKRI. It comes in many parts, which tends to lead to a lot of tedious repetition \u2013 tedious for both the referee to write and equally for any soul who has to read it before a committee meeting \u2013 but that fragmentation often ends up making it extraordinarily difficult actually to express a coherent and accurate assessment.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, a referee form simply asked for the grant to be judged in free-form text, so one could more easily say this bit is good, that bit is bad, but overall it\u2019s likely to be illuminating\/rubbish or whatever. Now, the requirement to address numerous specific criteria means that a distorted perspective can so easily accidentally be transmitted, and words need to be dreamed up to cover issues that perhaps aren\u2019t so relevant to a specific grant. I\u2019m sure the intention behind the form\u2019s creation was good, and probably driven by concerns about issues that too often got overlooked such as researcher training, but it\u2019s overly complicated and not fit for purpose in my view. Time for some pruning back, I think.<\/p>\n

The news that the link between Athena Swan and funding was to be broken with no clarity about what might ensue predates this recent announcement but \u2013 as the Athena Swan Review Group recommended<\/a> a year ago (I was a member) \u2013 there is no doubt that the Athena Swan process needs its bureaucracy lightening. AdvanceHE seems to be moving slowly and, I might say, confusingly towards implementing the Review\u2019s recommendations. The tardiness towards introducing a more fit-for-purpose application procedure is to be regretted. Nevertheless, whatever shape the process may take in the future, as with the referee forms I mention above, some things are much harder to capture than others. This was the reasoning behind the Review\u2019s recommendation to implement a culture survey, so that the lived reality in a department could be captured and assessed.<\/p>\n

To give an example of what fundamental behaviours will never be caught by a form of metrics and good intentions, let me cite an example of sickening public behaviour I watched on a webinar recently. This was not organised by an academic institution, although academics were involved, and many minorities would recognize with a sinking heart the behaviour I observed. A panel discussion was the particular format of this webinar, with a white male chair, who was a non-academic, and two men and two women as the panellists. What ensued was that the women were persistently interrupted by the chair, the men never. One of the women tried to intervene to shut the chair up when he \u2013 yet again \u2013 jumped in to silence the other woman. As a tactic it didn\u2019t work; the chair was impervious to this attempt. The male panellists did nothing.<\/p>\n

That, as I say, was not a meeting in an academic setting, but it is too easy to imagine exactly the same occurring in a department meeting. Indeed, one hardly needs to imagine it because many readers will have seen something similar at first hand. It infuriates me that it is the women who have to attempt the corrective measures, while the men sit complacently \u2013 or blindly \u2013 by. My first \u2018excuse\u2019 for the chair was that he was simply old (he certainly looked it!) and out of touch with current social norms. A quick Google about him, however, indicates he\u2019s somewhat younger than me, so I feel less forgiving.<\/p>\n

Men as allies has become something of a \u2018thing\u2019, but at times like this it is crucial that they step in to ensure all voices are heard equally. It was outrageous for the chair to treat half of the panel as second-class citizens by virtue of their chromosomes. But, no amount of form-filling by a department will capture such noxious behaviour, particularly if it happens to be the head of department talking down those who don\u2019t conform to an expected \u2018cis white male\u2019 norm. All one can hope is that processes such as Athena Swan, once they are tidied up and our recommendations carried through, facilitate the honest dialogue about what goes on in a particular institution to highlight inappropriate and damaging behaviour.<\/p>\n

Getting rid of red tape could be wonderful. I\u2019ve highlighted one example of where simplification of forms could really help (in my experience) and one where no amount of form-filling will necessarily capture reality. Every reader will have their own favourite examples. I worry, though, that as long as this Government (indeed, any Government) feels academics are not to be trusted \u2013 viewed as too radical, or at least as containing too many \u2018well-meaning Guardian readers against the bomb\u2019, to quote an old CND badge \u2013 forms will continue to be a staple of our lives, forcing us to jump through hoops, provide numbers of dubious utility and never, unless it is in the mythical beast that will be ARIA, just allowed to get on with our jobs using some common sense and constructive imagination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The announcement of a review of bureaucratic red tape in universities may bring either a smile of relief or a hollow laugh. Why are universities (and funding bodies) so entangled in this nasty stuff? Is it because they love to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,19],"tags":[60,1460,1316,1108],"class_list":["post-6180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equality","category-science-culture","category-science-funding","tag-athena-swan","tag-forms","tag-panels","tag-ukri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}