Dilbert_X wrote:
uziq wrote:
that's how really great ideas and inventions crop up.
That only really applies to STEM subjects though, what have the humanities produced in - I don't know - the last hundred years?
When the only subjects available were Literature, History and Alchemy then I can see they might have been a reasonable choice. But we're not in the 1500s now.
UCL, which is the biggest and most well-funded (not to mention prestigious) college of the university of london.
OK
Besides that I agree that commercialisation of universities has been a catastrophe, but who do you blame? The oh-so-pious academics who are 'only there for the research' seem to be driving their own salaries up - the money does have to come from somewhere.
Also, very well.
actually dilbert most academic jobs and pay rises now are for the admin and management class. it's not the lecturers and 'talent' who have been amassing fortunes. and most recruitment and expansion in universities nowadays are non-academic postings, I.e. PR, marketing, 'brand' consultants etc. But by far the most egregious pay-rise and bonus culture goes to the vice chancellors and chancellors. they all draw a six figure salary and it's the same sort of 'status' culture as in banking. gotta have the biggest salary if your university is apparently prestigious. so it's a little puzzling to me that you're angry at the academics, who have invested a decade of their career into qualifications and could be making 2-3x as much money in the private sector. you're really pissed at that post-doc researcher taking £35k a year in his mid 30's? how much could a maths graduate with a single undergrad degree be making in the city by the time he's 35? lol. it's not the academics who are driving up the cost of university education. with their slow privatisation and marketisation, a whole bureaucrat-business class has risen up on the campuses like an ugly recrudescence. self-justifying with market logic, they mercilessly cut 'non performing' departments (which incidentally means things like the study of modern languages in English universities, your French and Italian and German depts, are soon to be a thing of the past) and spend the savings on flash new plate-glass, white-elephant building projects, to attract more paying students on their glossy prospectuses; and, of course, to hire yet more 'analysts' and 'brand strategists'. they're strip-mining the universities.
and humanities doesn't produce inventions or patentable technology, obviously, but the spirit of free inquiry was borne out of enlightenment ideals and has the same benefit for humanities and sciences. the idea is knowledge flourishes when it is disinterested. the 'product' of humanities thought is a humane education, people inculcated with certain civic values and instructed in how to be a citizen with certain responsibilities. that's always been the broad ethos of teaching undergrads the classical liberal arts – your rhetoric and awareness of history and greats and whatnot. the idea is it gives an ethical framework to all that science research (which is as important as ever in our current juncture, where technology is accelerating ahead ever faster into the realms of post-human adaptation, and we have literally no legal or ethical frameworks to comprehend its vast implications). basically the point is this: narrowly controlled research criteria produces agitprop politicised research. if a conservative government holds the funding pot and specifies its own hot topics, you lose a generation of inquiry to chasing ideological buzzwords. even a humanities cynic can see it has deleterious effects.
btw imperial isn't part of the UoL anymore and UCL is probably still generally regarded as more prestigious globally. for a start it has a much wider reach and impact. it's kind of like comparing Harvard and MIT.
Last edited by uziq (2015-08-27 22:22:07)