It’s been a tough 2017 for universities in public life – and behind closed doors there have been struggles too. This year’s Academics Anonymous columns have tackled themes ranging from Brexit and the vice-chancellor pay scandal, to mental health and sexual harassment. If you’d like to lift the veil on what’s happening in your university, do get in touch.
Every column has shed light on how big picture issues affect staff working at the coalface of academia, but these ten are the ones that really got our community talking, or which we think have shown particular insight. Let us know which blogposts resonated most with you in the comments section.
I’m a lecturer, and I don’t feel I can speak freely any more
By tapping into the controversial issue of freedom of speech on campus, this column didn’t just resonate within universities, it struck a chord with the wider public as well.
The writer sought to grapple with the conflicting imperatives within universities: “The theory of lively debate in the classroom becomes, in practice, an exercise in giving multiple ideas equal air time, regardless of their merit, as universities take great pains to show their commitment to competing viewpoints.”
I voted for Brexit – why do academic colleagues treat me like a pariah?
Taking a different perspective on freedom of speech in universities, this contributor aired arguably the most controversial view in a majority-remainer community: why it’s tough to confess your Brexit vote among academic colleagues. Regardless of your view on the referendum result, their point is an important one: “At a time of national divisions, universities could do more to promote real dialogue and understanding, as well as urging staff to exercise tolerance towards dissenters. Maybe you’ll change their mind, or maybe they’ll change yours. After all, isn’t openness to intellectual diversity what university should be about?”
How do you finish a PhD when, as a working-class student, you don’t feel you belong?
Academia is all a confidence trick, this blogger argued, and the people who have that confidence are largely drawn from the middle- and upper-classes.
“I am not one of those people. I walked into the university and I felt that I didn’t belong. I’ve been very lucky that lecturers, my family, and funding bodies have supported me. Yet, I am still struggling,” they wrote.
The blogpost received an empathetic response from many fellow academics who said they’d never felt quite at home in their ivory tower either.
Pressure to publish in journals drives too much cookie-cutter research
One topic that never fails to get the academic community talking is scholarly publishing. Most notably, how does “publish or perish” skew research priorities?
One anonymous academic took this thorny issue head on, describing how colleagues were entirely focused on getting published in prestigious journals, not conducting socially useful work. “Research [in my unit] was conducted with such an eye to the advancement of the research unit or the researchers’ careers that its whole purpose was compromised,” they said.
It’s hard to articulate grief after a suicide – but we still need support
The most moving column this year tackled what it’s like to go through a painful, complex suicide bereavement while holding down a lecturing job. “Every year, a fresh cohort of students arrive, full of potential, while another moves on, for whom we have to believe we’ve done our best,” they wrote. “Like our careers, society as a whole is meant to move forward, with universities playing an essential role in that progress. The stasis of grief and the pessimism associated with suicide bereavement jars in this context.”
Students cheat in ever more creative ways: how can academics stop them?
This anonymous academic, who sits on an academic misconduct board, gave us insight into the ever more colourful ways in which students cheat on their assignments. She observed how students seem to be growing increasingly desperate to secure that all-important 2:1 to justify their considerable financial investment.
“Students have been known to hide earphones in headscarves, buy essays online or articles from content writers, and steal other students’ papers,” they wrote. “One grabbed another student’s USB stick when he went to the toilet, downloaded a project and sent it to himself. Another submitted the exact paper his sister had submitted for the same module a year earlier.”
As a young academic, I was repeatedly sexually harassed at conferences
The Harvey Weinstein scandal has spawned important debates around sexual harassment across multiple industries, ranging from Hollywood to politics to the NHS. This anonymous academic shared dispatches from early in her career, in which she regularly travelled alone to conferences abroad – as many junior researchers are required to do. She described the ways in which older, male professors sought to take advantage of her naïveté in thoroughly depressing detail.
No one told me about the hidden costs of maternity leave
Maternity pay and conditions is a problem affecting women across most careers, but academia carries its own distinct challenges. This writer thought she had everything in place, but when she fell pregnant she realised only her salary was covered, not the additional costs of keeping a project running. She was reluctant to pass on her hard work to another colleague. “In the cut-throat world of academia, handing one’s project over to someone else for an extended period risks losing intellectual ownership and paper authorship, potentially leaving you not only without a job but also without a career,” she warned.
Bullies have no place in academia – even if they’re star scientists
The arrogant, bullying supervisor is sadly an all-too-common trope in tales of academic life. And too often they’re protected by their status as a star scientist. One anonymous academic sought to expose the impact that such supervisors can have on the mental health of their colleagues. “The generalised anxiety disorder I had managed since adolescence had become debilitating,” they wrote. “I experienced severe depression. Unable to work, physically unwell and mentally unstable, I had hit rock bottom.”
Campus security on sexual health week: ‘we’ll be as frank as our contracts allow’
Our secret security guard continued to supply the weekly confessional slot with some light relief this year. Our favourite column this year took a light-hearted look at sexual health and guidance week on campus.
But there was a serious message about its importance, and a call for university staff to get behind SHAG: “As well as discussing sexual positions, they’ll advise on when free clinics are open, try to get photos with the senior management team, book speakers from the International Union of Sex Workers, and share anonymised sexual assault stories with the new intake, warning them how ugly a dalliance can become.”
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