Dark Academia by Fleming Peter;

Author:Fleming, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pluto Press

7.

Something radically changes the nature of scientific inquiry more generally in this ‘high impact’ setting. The expectation of direct and measurable relevance, usually bureaucratically monitored on a continuous basis, often doesn’t take into consideration how proper research is conducted.

Much of the time, breakthroughs (both large and small) are not accomplished with this overt instrumentality in mind. That’s true even of applied research fields that are presumed to exemplify practical knowledge.28 A range of very useful innovations were created under conditions that were intrinsically motivating (driven by internal satisfaction, curiosity, adventure, fun, etc.) rather than compelled by carrot and sticks.29 Oftentimes discoveries are made by chance (e.g., penicillin, pacemakers, insulin, safety glass, radioactivity, etc.). Others take years of tinkering, with many dead ends and false starts along the way (e.g., television, monoclonal antibodies for cancer treatment, etc.). New ideas in one industry may find successful dissemination in very different social fields (like NASA’s incredible miniaturisation of computer screens in the 1960s and their later use in mobile phone technology).

I do not want to idealise any of this. Of course profitmaximising businesses have combined inventive inspiration and extrinsic rewards, with some successful outcomes. But what the corporate world (and increasingly the state apparatus) excels in is application and commercialisation. And this points to an even more serious issue. We need to realise that impact is a two-way process. When universities seek industry relevance, it shouldn’t be surprising that industry soon impacts on universities too, changing their institutional logic in noticeable ways. Here we can recall the University of Utah example discussed by Jennifer Washburn.30 When researchers discovered a chromosome 17 gene linked to hereditary breast cancer (BRCA1), they didn’t make it freely available to fellow scientists in other universities or medical schools. Instead the breakthrough was quickly patented and licensed to Myriad Genetics, Inc. Money was to be made after all and it didn’t seem to matter that the initial research had been funded by the public system.

This doxa of utility has yet another troubling consequence concerning the university labour process. Whether intentionally or not, it sends a strong message to academics, befitting of insecure workers in an era of market discipline: how do you contribute to business and society? And perhaps more incisively, exactly how have you added value to your place of employment? When pragmatism is symbolically institutionalised in this fashion it puts faculty on the back foot, in a position where they must prove their worth, both to university management and themselves. In other words, it tips the power balance in favour of employers. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, it isn’t coincidental that the impact agenda appeared precisely when models from neoclassical economics proliferated in higher education. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You must demonstrate your practical worth to an organisation (or ‘Employee Corporate Value Proposition’) in order to be counted a valuable member of its community. The immense pressure on academics to apply for external grants at the moment – particularly those linked to business and industry – is part of this.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.