{"id":119,"date":"2010-03-05T21:04:10","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T21:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/2010\/03\/05\/theyve_got_form_for_that\/"},"modified":"2010-12-21T21:52:22","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T21:52:22","slug":"theyve_got_form_for_that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/2010\/03\/05\/theyve_got_form_for_that\/","title":{"rendered":"They’ve got (a) form for that"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things UK academics can probably all agree on – apart from that they are not yet entirely convinced by NN’s<\/em> new MT4 blogging platform – is that meaningless oversight, audit, form-filling and box-ticking has risen inexorably in the last decade.<\/p>\n

It seems that the Times Higher Education<\/em> agrees as well: read\u00a0one of the best leader articles<\/a> I have seen in the THE<\/em> for a while and you will get what I mean.<\/p>\n

Red Tape: A Form of Distrust<\/strong><\/p>\n

Academics are vociferous in their condemnation of bureaucracy, especially when it tries to measure the unmeasurable. Obviously, higher education must be accountable to its public paymasters, but if the audit becomes the goal, human nature is such that people will put more effort into the things that can be audited – never mind the quality, feel the paperwork….<\/span><\/p>\n

But banal and mind-numbing though it is, bureaucracy isn’t neutral. It is insidious, changing the nature of both teaching and research; it also, of course, has been used to push academics in uncomfortable directions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The comments after the article make interesting reading. It appears that University administrators think the academics should stop bloody whingeing and do what the administrators tell them. For their own good, you understand. And because administrators know best.<\/p>\n

The academics, as you would expect, are not impressed by what the administrators say.<\/p>\n

A senior academic commenting as “Mark”<\/span> sums it up nicely:<\/p>\n

“In so many cases, the main justification for the paper work is that “we have to be seen to be doing”. \u00a0In other words, it doesn’t actually matter if the monitoring is working, it just matters that we have a sufficient paper trail to prove to others that we are doing it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

To which I suspect many UK lecturers – in science and other subjects – will be shouting:<\/p>\n

“Yes!”<\/span><\/p>\n

Not, sadly, that that seems likely to change any of this rubbish anytime soon.
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\nPS If you didn’t spot the rather feeble pun in the title, read the definition here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things UK academics can probably all agree on – apart from that they are not yet entirely convinced by NN’s new MT4 blogging platform – is that meaningless oversight, audit, form-filling and box-ticking has risen inexorably in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4,23],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annoyances","category-grumbling","category-universities","tag-bureaucracy-administration-box-ticking-form-filling-time-wasting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/notranting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}