RAE results are out!

D-Day came a day early.

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) - that paragon of flawed judgement, that epitome of legitimised bias, that nonpareil of measuring the unmensurable - has released local results to the university, and the university have released them to us.  We weren't expecting to hear until tomorrow morning so it came as an anxious surprise; a little like opening a birthday present from a 3-year-old that is as likely as not to contain a carefully-wrapped slug.

We're also under a press embargo until midnight, in case we feel like running off to our chums at the Guardian or, perchance, writing about it on a blog.

So, the big news is that my department didn't do so well.  Not the worst in the university, but certainly in the bottom cluster, depending on how you collapse a 4-point profile into a single value.  True, we only have the university ratings and hence can't be sure how our psychology department compares against others in the UK, but I'll be very surprised if we emerge in the upper echelons.  Probably mid-table, since doing poorly in a research-intensive university means doing quite well on a national scale.

But still.  The hammer is going to fall and I'm not sure I want to be standing there with upturned smile when it strikes.  RAE results determine the direct funding university departments receive from government pockets and bad results mean bad times ahead.

I'm building a list of psychology departments that I think have probably done better than we have (on a very unscientific basis of knowing some individuals and/or research programmes in said departments).  I'll see tomorrow how well my openly biased and underinformed judgement correlates with the nominally objective and complete assessment of the RAE.

Fairytale of No Work

Once upon a time, there was a young, female academic called Ella [not really, but we're all pseudonyms here].  After many years of study and working in different countries, she took up a job at Research University, in Big City, UK.

At first, the job was good.  The people were pleasant, the facilities more than adequate, and the teaching loads nicely balanced.  But all too soon, things started to change.  Because the university management had a new-found desire to top ratings in the National Student Survey, all the lecturers were told to spend more time building meaningful academic relationships with the undergraduates (but not, of course, to spend any less time on their research).

Now, Ella thought that getting to know the occasional student's name was a nice idea in principle, but she also thought that there weren't enough hours in the week to get to know the hundreds of students that passed through her department's doors every day.  So, Ella wasn't entirely surprised when she was informed that her teaching hours next academic year would be double the current level.

Ella was not happy about this.

Ella had left her last job partly because of the heavy teaching loads.

All together now, children:

Isn't is great that jobs.ac.uk is so easy to search?

To be intellectually promiscuous...

Why am I so bad at the "networking" part of the job?

Collaboration is a key part of being an academic, especially in the sciences, but it's not something I'm good at instigating.  Perhaps it's due to the fact that I no longer work in the same subfield as my PhD supervisor, or that I haven't worked as a minion in a research empire, or that I'm a not-so-latent control freak, but my collaborations tend to be few in number and intense in involvement.  By that, I mean that I collaborate with a small number of people that I know and get on with at a personal level and that I devote a lot of time and energy to that work.

Not for me the shameless stalking of big-name researchers in the hope of adding their name to a paper of mine with little effort on their part, nor the scattergun approach of tagging along on every related project in the hope I have a few lines of input at some stage, nor the gritted-teeth gladhanding of people I personally despise because it is useful to be associated with them.  It would undoubtedly benefit my career if I did one or all of these things, but the thought makes me wince like someone has placed a cold hand on the back of my neck.

What is this?  Fear of rejection?  Lingering sense of personal dignity?

Whatever it is, I can't force past it without feeling in need of a long shower.  Looks like I'll just have to get by with my current approach of being visible in my research community even if I'm not collaborating with everyone.

Visible is good, right?

Of ends, finishes and termini

December the first.  Huzzah!  Already the month is getting off to a pleasant start: I have some excellent applicants for a PhD position (and still more to sift through), my long-standing grief with a particular action editor may be coming to an end (if the politeness of his last email is anything to go by), and the effects keep rolling in more or less as expected (as long as I stay on the data fairies' good side, of course).

December is always an odd month for academic work.  Lectures finish up two or three weeks in, which leaves some time for winding things up before the obligatory xmas break.  The university shuts up shop for over a week, from before xmas eve until after new year's day (completely: bolts on doors, etc.).  Many people start to drift back to work a few days into January, but the place stays quiet until at least mid-month as people work from home, travel to interesting places, and do whatever they have the freedom to do before lectures recommence.

The net effect is that December is seen as a time of winding down.  The evenings close in and precious daylight begins to disappear ever earlier in the afternoon.  Mornings increasingly involve switching off the lights before leaving the house.  On good weather days, the sun is so low in the sky that long shadows lean across the street even at noon.  On bad weather days, the quality of the light is so grey and flat that everyone looks a little ill.  Sending cards and shopping for pressies - even for those of us with the religious convictions of a pastafarian -  becomes a welcome diversion even as it occupies mind-space previously reserved for experimental design and grant planning.

Everything is geared towards getting things finished in December.  The idea of starting a new project in December seems faintly ludicrous.

Perhaps this is the one time that academic time-keeping is in sync with the real world.  After all, everyone else thinks of December as the end of one year and January as the start of the next one (our little foible of describing September as "the start of the year" is best kept to ourselves).  There's something aesthetically pleasing in considering the death of a year as happening in the cold and dark of December.  And, perhaps, it's in the cold and dark that we most need the reinvigoration of a fresh year starting anew.

The Unbearable Lightness of Meetings

I was stuck in hours of committee meetings today, sometimes offering information but mostly sitting there wondering if chewing my own leg off would help me escape.  I have little patience for committees at the best of times but today presented two textbook examples of Why I Would Have Been Better Doing My Research.

Meeting 1: A research group meeting (less than half membership in attendance) on business/administrative matters rather than sciencey stuff.  My agenda item, that involved passing on information from another committee about performance indicators, was continually interrupted by irrelevant comments from our logorrhoeic research group leader.  The meeting was scheduled for one hour but ran over time so much I had no time for lunch before going into ...

Meeting 2: A high-level meeting (most of the senior members notably absent) that the chair had decided to schedule in her building (a maze of interconnecting corridors, funny-smelling carpets, and non-sequential room numbering) instead of in the usual meeting room (located in the building normally considered to be departmental HQ).  We spent two hours, plus 10 mins extra time, achieving 15 mins work.  I am new to this committee and still not sure if it serves any useful purpose.  Today's meeting - my second - did nothing to persuade me of its usefulness.

What made me think about my wasted committee-time today is the poor attendance.  The most research-active members tend to be the ones who frequently skip meetings.  There are lots of wonderfully plausible excuses - I was away giving a talk / hosting international collaborators / meeting the Dalai Lama, etc. - but the real reason is inevitably I had better things to do.

So had I!

Right now, I have (to be done asap):

• 2 sets of data to analyse
  
• 2 papers to write with said data
  
• 2 papers to revise (pending feedback)
  
• 1 experiment to finish designing
• 1 grant application to write
  
• 1 grant application to review
• 1 paper to read for journal club
  
• 1 student to select to interview for a PhD position
  

To say nothing of (to be done in next week):

• 6 essays to mark
• 2 student projects to finish designing
  
• 1 ethics application (for student project) to chase up

So why am I wasting my time sitting in pointless committees?  Could it be because I'm an early-career researcher and hence don't have the cojones to stop turning up in case there are consequences for career progression?

Or would anyone notice, never mind care?

Mac-child

I just got a new Macbook - the shiny aluminium one - and have wasted spent a couple of days setting it up and getting to know its layout, functions, quirks, etc.  It's loooovely.

When it was delivered to my office, three passing colleagues wandered in to ooh and aah over it.  The last time I saw this happen, someone had brought in their new baby.  Human baby, I hasten to add, not gadget baby, car baby, or other infant substitute that makes admirers wide-eyed and squeaky.

...which leads me to my thought of the day: is my laptop my substitute child??  I carry it everywhere, spend hours every day interacting with it, miss it if I go away without it for a few days, and fully expect other people to share my high opinion of its looks and capabilities.  And my cats are jealous of it.

Oh dear.

At least Macbooks are cheaper than children.

Discrimination by UK Research Councils

How are UK Research Councils still allowed to discriminate against people on the basis of the country they received their university education?

Specifically, the research councils offer funding for people undergoing PhD study.  These awards are usually quite competitive but are the main basis for student funding in many fields, particularly in funding students of junior career staff who are not yet able to attract large multi-year grants that include postgraduate training.  The scholarship will pay the fees, research expenses and stipend of anyone registered for a PhD in a UK university, if - and only if - that person has been resident in the UK for the last three years prior to starting the studentship.

So, eligible candidates are:

• UK or EU citizens who do their undergraduate degree in the UK and move straight to a PhD 
• UK or EU citizens who work in the UK for three years before starting a PhD

Ineligible candidates are:

• UK or EU citizens who do their undergraduate degree in another country (unless they spend three subsequent years hanging around the UK)
• UK or EU citizens who do their undergraduate degree in the UK but then spend time studying, working or travelling in another country
• UK or EU citizens who do a Master's degree (MSc, MRes, etc.) in the UK that takes less than 3 years
• Anyone who's a non-EU citizen

In short, the net effect is that the vast majority of RCUK PhD funding goes to UK citizens who have just finished a degree in a UK university.  British funding for British students, in other words, regardless of this whole open-EU concept and the equation of degree standards across the EU under the Bologna process.  It's highly unusual, in psychology at least, for an RCUK scholarship to go to an EU candidate (where RCUK will pay fees but the stipend has to come from some other source), let alone an international candidate (where the stipend and the difference between EU and international fees - several thousand pounds per year - has to be sourced elsewhere).

Right now, I'm trying to recruit a candidate for a PhD project that will be funded by our faculty.  Most of the faculty funding comes from RCUK sources and thus is subject to all the above conditions, although some scholarships are available with fewer strings attached.  Most of the interest has come from EU countries and there are a couple of excellent candidates that stand head and shoulders above UK applicants, but I am having to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to consider these outstanding candidates.  Yes, our faculty likes to meddle in matters that are far outside their expertise.

 

It used to be worse.  Until a few years ago, being resident in the UK for the purposes of full-time education didn't count as "proper" residency.  It took a French student bringing RCUK to the European Court of Justice in order to get the discriminatory exception removed.  In my opinion, RCUK are still imposing discriminatory rules: anyone who receives their undergraduate degree outside the UK is ineligible for full PhD funding unless they spend three subsequent years living in the UK, whereas anyone who does their undergraduate degree in the UK is immediately eligible for full funding.

Will it take another case in front the European Court of Justice to sort this out?  Or will RCUK realise that maintaining a culturally homogenous postgraduate population in the UK is in nobody's best interest?