“One
hundred academics at the University of Sydney, Australia, have this week been
told they will lose their jobs for not publishing frequently enough. The move
is part of wider cost-cutting plans designed to pay for new buildings and
refurbishment to the university.”
This
article appeared on the Nature News Blog this past Thursday (http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/02/university-of-sydney-sackings-trigger-academic-backlash.html) and I have to say that it was one of the wilder things I’ve read this week--as
in bizarre or very odd news. But I have a feeling this is shades of
things to come globally. The university was quite blatant about its
motives. They want to fire academics they deem to be non-productive in order to
use the money saved to refurbish the university. If it wasn’t for the fact that
this story was true, I would think it was an April Fools’ Day joke.
So we’re
back to the good old question that is being fired more and more at academics
and scientists these days. How can you be more productive? How can you rake in
money for your universities? Can you patent your ideas and your inventions? If
not, why not? How can you make your research patentable? How can the
universities get huge returns on their investments (their academics)? My
question is—how do you define productivity for a research scientist or for an
academic in general? And who gets to define productivity? Administrators? Accountants?
Other academics? Research directors and deans? What is poor productivity and
what is optimal productivity? The University of Sydney defines optimal
productivity as ‘at least four “research outputs” over the past three years’,
and informed its non-productive academics (not just scientists) that their
positions were being terminated because they hadn’t published this amount of
articles. It’s a bit daunting to hear about a university doing this. Why?
Because it is all part of the larger global trend to make everything
more productive, without defining what productive means in the first
place for each respective profession. I’m waiting for the powers-that-be to
start on children and babies next. How can schoolchildren and babies be made
productive? How can they earn money for the schools and child care centers they
attend? And what about mothering? There is no real money involved in doing it,
so isn’t this a non-productive job? But I digress.
I have to
say that I am glad that I am closer to leaving the work world behind rather
than to starting off in it. I know I have a good number of years to go before I
can take early retirement, but I won’t mind leaving behind a work world that is
focused solely on money and how to make more of it. There will never be enough
money. Man’s nature is greedy. He will always want more. Enough is never
enough. It’s boring really. I’ve written about the different management
philosophies that have taken over the business world. They’re all about
productivity, cost-effectiveness, and control of employees. The joy of working
is disappearing. I want to say it is disappearing slowly, but it’s not. For
some professions it is happening at a rapid rate. If every profession becomes
like a factory, what good will that be to society? Couldn’t society get to a
point where non-vocational learning and knowledge will be deemed useless and a
waste of time and money? Where the study of art, literature, and music for the
pure sake of learning will be considered a waste of time? Where turning out
well-rounded individuals who appreciate beautiful things for their beauty and
spiritual worth and not for their economic worth alone will be considered
treasonous? We are fast becoming a work world comprised of super-duper uber organizers,
controllers, bureaucrats, administrators, money-pushers and money-makers. These
are the only types of jobs that seem to matter. I look ahead and I see a
sterile world--an organized, cost-effective world, yes, but not necessarily a
productive one. At least not how I define productive. And that will be the
theme of a future post.
