Academic business

Today I was parttaking in a seminar dealing with an important issue at our Uni, the personnel in which consists of those who are employed by it, the "real" staff, and people who are dependent on scholarships. It is good to get information, it is good to learn how different parties think about the situation.

But there were some things in the discussions that seemed strange to me. A dystopic picture of the future was conveyed by the way people tended to talk. The current situation was depicted in terms of the research student's attempt to be allowed into the élite of academia. If you're not in the élite, then you're a fucking nobody. Then you'll be rejected everywhere and you'll end up unemployed, and you cannot even count on being granted unemployment benefit.

Of course I know that this is a true description of the situation. I don't dispute that, and doing it would be plain stupid. I don't think people are complaining too much, not at all - people were rather asking constructive questions about practical things and about how the situation is to be changed for the better.

But I think it is a bad thing to see this as the only possible options, anything else being "unrealistic". It is somehow taken for granted that the only possibility for universities is to adapt to some sort of business logic. To compete, to attract the big Buck by presenting research projects as something to be applied to and utilized in business. On the other hand: while the legitimacy of business is never, never questioned, the legitimacy of doing research is constantly scrutinized: what makes your research project a useful one?

After having graduated as a M.A, I started a Ph.D project. By that time, I was quite oblivious to how deep concerns about academic competition actually go. Now, I've been noticing it in the way I think about the work I do, and especially in how I think about what kind of work I should be doing.

There are days when I worry about being slow & stupid: when my mind is numb and every question seems irrelevant and everything I read is unintelligible. That is one thing. It's part of the job, I guess. But then there's another thing: I worry that I am too slow, that I should figure things out soon. Soon. That I should gain some sense of how my topic is structured. This means that I start thinking about what I am doing from the outside. It is no longer important what I am thinking about but rather what it looks like in the eyes of the guys who decide about scholarship applications. In the eyes of journal reviewers who would make my article into an entry on my CV.

Today I got an e-mail about my abstract for a seminar on "belief"/"faith". It was rejected. That's OK, it was not a well-written abstract. But what is pissing me off is that I start to think about this in terms of how I should start writing things that will pave the way for grand appearances at seminars. But that's not what research should be all about, is it? Instead of making me more efficient, these types of perspectives make me tired and confused.

That's Bullshit.