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In bureaucracies like this, the fish inenvitably rots from the head. The people who offer the faculty positions are incompetent or indifferent. And the people w
by gen220 3y ago
In bureaucracies like this, the fish inenvitably rots from the head. The people who offer the faculty positions are incompetent or indifferent. And the people who hired those people are incompetent or indifferent.
As such, it's a mess that literally can't be solved from within, it needs to be solved by the administration, and the boards who appoint them. The tenure system means it'll take generations to resolve.
Academia in the U.S. has seen systemic issues like this in the past (see: eugenics). Unfortunately the implication is that it'll continue to get worse until it's mostly made better by people retiring.
- htss2013 3y agoWhat do you mean by eugenics? That academics studied eugenics? Or that eugenics was widely popular among academics? I guess the pendulum always swings to the extreme other direction. Today, the more disadvantaged your intersectional identity, the better your prospects in academia.
- gen220 3y agoThat eugenics was widely popular among academics, especially in certain disciplines like Psychology (the founding members of the APA were all eugenicists). As an example I'm familiar with, the first generations of academics at Stanford University were socially-active eugenicists (see the founding President, David Starr Jordan, who hired people like Ellwood Cubberley and Lewis Terman). Many buildings, awards, dorms, department chairs are still named after these people.
- godelski 3y agoI agree, and I think that is the essence of the meritocracy-metric paradox. Those that hacked the metric become those in charge. I think that only reinforces the idea of metric hacking. I really think this concept is playing out at large and not just academia.