Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.
Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities #AcademicChatter #neoliberalism
#AcademicVenting
Yesterday we say a friend who normally works in different sectors but had recently done a term of teaching as University Guest lecturer. He said he couldn’t believe what awful places universities are to work in: nothing works, management treat you badly and so do students - he found it *humiliating*. Perfect description!
It really is weird - all that research, thinking, writing, and then you are just treated by everyone as an (underperforming) customer-service person.
#AcademicVenting All day long pleasant email exchange with someone from my virtual learning environment team. Something is not working on one of my pages. I have now been sent 3 short video tutorials (about things I KNOW).
Anyone else find it annoying, always being sent video tutorials when you report a technical issue? Implication: this is YOUR fault, you don’t know what you are doing; and as an academic you should be spending more time watching tutorials because you are so time rich
#AcademicVenting i attended yet another local #UCU emergency meeting today and just want to say that, if you work at a university that you do, despite everything, really love - because of your genuinely wonderful, brilliant students and colleagues - and if that institution is in real peril, for all the usual reasons that UK HE is crumbling - then that adds yet another layer of sadness and heaviness to your days. It’s not just fear of losing your job; it honestly is more.
#AcademicVenting just out of a college wide “Transformation” meeting due to our ongoing disasterous financial situation. SMT need to take much more responsibility for their epic failures, but of course the larger context really is terrible. 40% of UK HE institutions are in decifit, and it won’t get better; nationwide 24/25 UCAS applications down 11%.
I am so so so SOOO incredibly angry how the Tories with their crappy values and policies have really destroyed UK universities, in so many ways
#AcademicVenting What makes all this all the more sad is that my we really do love Goldsmiths. Just these last two weeks, I have had truly wonderful seminar discussions. Goldsmiths students and cilleagues really are amazing; depite all our problems there is so much #AcademicJoy , too. It’s just 💔 that all this is in so much peril.
#AcademicVenting Now have to share this brilliant article - well, have only read the abstract so far, but: count me in! Here’s to #AdministrativeAbolition!
“we argue for administrative abolition, that is, the elimination of all college presidents, provosts, deans and other top level administrators who we argue form a parasitical group”
#AcademicVenting this is not venting, just crying. Things are bad enough at Goldsmiths but Kent announcing it is closing 9 humanities and social science departments - including #Philosophy and #Anthropology , and focusing instead on business and law as areas of growth, is just 💔💔💔
#AcademicVenting #Anthropology #Kent
Here is a petition you can sign and share to try and save the anthropology department. Please do.
I really do think that anthropology has so much to offer for navigating our way out of the polycrisis. The world needs so much more anthroplogy, not less.
https://www.change.org/p/save-anthropology-at-the-university-of-kent
#AcademicVenting Our financial crisis has, of course, resulted in a huge proliferation of work as we are all scrambling to try and salvage things. Hours of emergency meetings on top of all the usual stuff.
Meanwhile also been scrambling this week to support PhD funding applications; up all night revising proposals and writing Statements for two who will now compete against each other. This is the process. And now heard that redundancies will be announced next week.
#AcademicVenting But I also got an email that the staff #Wellbeing had reopened. There is now a special room where we can go talk. That will make us feel better! That will fix things!
Yesterday we were informed we will have 130 FT redundancies. More with part time staff are included. We are 644 so potentially a quarter of us. From 11 departments, including #anthropology.
We don’t know yet who. I don’t know how these decisions are made (it’s related to which programmes or modules will be closed). I feel completely sick the whole time. Far beyond venting, just existential fear.
#AcademicVenting It occurs to me that some of you might not know Goldsmiths - my university, now being decimated.
So I want to tell you about #Goldsmiths. It is a unique, brilliant, important university. We combine arts, humanities and social sciences, producing amazing critical research, politics, practice.
I have the best colleagues and the best, best students. The fact that all this is being destroyed now is just 💔💔💔. Not just existential fear, much more.
#AcademicVenting. Today the opposite of venting. Taught the MA Applied Anthropology and Community (see this 🧵for more info) and then we recorded testimonies to use for publicity- something the students initiated & organised . All I can say is: ❤️❤️❤️. Our students are amazing and it is a privilege to teach them and learn from them. And our MA is amazing, too! A unique, necessary programme providing both critical thinking and professional practice.
#AcademicVenting Mood (haven’t actually read this yet, but will)
#AcademicVenting well, we ALL (everyone in the 11 departments “in scope”) have to reapply for our jobs. The scale of proposed job cuts is just staggering.
Those of you who’ve been through this will relate: the physical manifestations of stress are something else. It does all feel quite existential- not just worries about mortgage, unemployment etc, but also because being an anthropologist at Goldsmiths is so central to my whole being. And to see something u love (G) falling apart is just 💔
#AcademicVenting ❤️ (on the office door of Andrew Douglas - spotted on X)
#AcademicVenting Awful news from Kent University (see posts above). It really is happening.
“We have taken the decision to phase out Anthropology, Art History, Health & Social Care, Journalism, Music & Audio Technology, and Philosophy/Religious Studies.” 💔
@pvonhellermannn The link returns a Not Found error
@benjamingeer yes - it was a full article, which i read, yesterday evening and early this morning. It now has this error message. Looks like they removed it, I don’t know.
