tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/academic-snobbery-12520/articlesAcademic snobbery – The Conversation2016-03-09T04:41:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/557132016-03-09T04:41:53Z2016-03-09T04:41:53ZAcademics can change the world – if they stop talking only to their peers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114045/original/image-20160307-30506-480t7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What's the point of academics producing amazing research if they don't share it widely with the general public?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Research and creative thinking can <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/zeros-to-heroes-10-unlikely-ideas-that-changed-the-world">change the world</a>. This means that academics have enormous power. But, as academics Asit Biswas and Julian Kirchherr have <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you">warned</a>, the overwhelming majority are not shaping today’s public debates.</p>
<p>Instead, their work is largely sitting in academic journals that are read almost exclusively by their peers. Biswas and Kirchherr <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you">estimate</a> that an average journal article is “read completely by no more than ten people”. They write:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Up to 1.5 million peer-reviewed articles are published annually. However, many are ignored even within scientific communities – 82% of articles published in humanities [journals] are not even cited once.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This suggests that a lot of great thinking and many potentially world altering ideas are not getting into the public domain. Why, then, are academics not doing more to share their work with the broader public? </p>
<p>The answer appears to be threefold: a narrow idea of what academics should or shouldn’t do; a lack of incentives from universities or governments; and a lack of training in the art of explaining complex concepts to a lay audience. </p>
<h2>The ‘intellectual mission’</h2>
<p>Some academics <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Professor-Your-Writing-Could/233902">insist</a> that it’s not their job to write for the general public. They suggest that doing so would mean they’re <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Should-Academics-Talk-to-Katie/235341">“abandoning their mission as intellectuals”</a>. They don’t want to feel like they’re “dumbing down” complex thinking and arguments.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1313">counter argument</a> is that academics can’t operate in isolation from the world’s very real problems. </p>
<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/315072876&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true"></iframe>
<p>They may be producing important ideas and innovations that could help people understand and perhaps even begin to address issues like climate change, conflict, food insecurity and disease. </p>
<h2>No incentives</h2>
<p>Universities also don’t do a great deal to encourage academics to step beyond lecture halls and laboratories. There are globally very few institutions that offer incentives to their academics to write in the popular media, appear on TV or radio, or share their research findings and opinions with the public via these platforms.</p>
<p>In South Africa, where I conduct research and teach, incentives are limited to more “formal” publication methods. Individual institutions and the Department of Higher Education and Training offer rewards for publishing books, book chapters, monographs or articles in accredited, peer-reviewed journals. </p>
<p>The department pays universities <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130712145949477">more than R100,000</a> per full publication unit – for example, one journal article. These funds are given to universities, which then use their own subsidy disbursement schemes to split the funds between the institution, the faculty in which the author works and the author. In some cases, <a href="http://www.uj.ac.za/research/Pages/DHET-Publication-Subsidy.aspx">academics receive more funding</a> for articles published in international journals than in local journals.</p>
<p>Catriona Macleod of Rhodes University in South Africa has argued that these financial incentives are an example of the “commodification of research” and that this is “bad for scholarship”. Macleod <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20100605063654105">told</a> University World News:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The incentive system is a blunt instrument that serves the purposes of increasing university income rather than supporting scholarship and knowledge production in South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is nothing in the department’s <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/Policy%20and%20Development%20Support/Research%20Outputs%20policy%20gazette%202015.pdf">policy</a> that urges academics to share their research beyond academic spaces. There’s no suggestion that public outreach or engagement is valued. And this situation is not unique to South Africa: the <a href="http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/pressure-to-publish-or-perish-may-discourage-innovative-research-ucla-study-suggests">“publish or perish”</a> culture is a reality at universities all over the world. </p>
<p>Academics have no choice but to go along with this system. Their careers and promotions depend almost entirely on their journal publication record, so why even consider engaging with the general public?</p>
<h2>Learning to write</h2>
<p>There is a third factor holding academics back from writing for broader lay audiences: even if they’d like to, they may not know where to start and how to do it. </p>
<p>Writing an article for an academic journal is a very different process to penning one for those outside the academy. Naomi Wolf and Sacha Kopp, in an article examining the issue, <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Should-Academics-Talk-to-Katie/235341">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Academic writing has the benefit of scholarly rigour, full documentation and original thinking. But the transmission of our ideas is routinely hampered … by a great deal of peer-oriented jargon.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Universities have a role to play here by offering workshops and courses to their academics and students. This can help develop creative non-fiction writing skills. </p>
<h2>Time for a change</h2>
<p>Academics need to start playing a more prominent role in society instead of largely remaining observers who write about the world from within ivory towers and publish their findings in journals hidden behind expensive digital paywalls.</p>
<p>Government and university policies need to become more prescriptive in what they expect from academics. Publishing research in peer-reviewed journals is and will remain highly important. But incentives should be added to encourage academics to share their research with the general public. </p>
<p>Doing this sort of work ought to count towards promotions and should yield rewards for both universities and individual academics. </p>
<p>Quality academic research and innovation are crucial. It is equally important, though, to get ideas out into the world beyond academia. It could make a real difference in people’s lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Savo Heleta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Very few academics do a great deal to share their often important and relevant research with the general public. What’s holding them back?Savo Heleta, Researcher, Durban University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/515802015-12-03T18:52:25Z2015-12-03T18:52:25ZShift away from ‘publish or perish’ puts the public back into publication<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103839/original/image-20151201-26546-1ygiihy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Too many academic careers are shaped around writing journal articles nobody reads and planning twice-weekly lectures to a diminishing class of students.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sixthlie/4463280095/in/photolist-7NptF6-6exZWd-853ie9-6j1nCw-5uHok4-5uHo6M-5uHq7R-5uHq2a-oKtd57-532VZB-gCYnE-5uHpVi-5uHoVa-5uMNfw-5uHpxZ-5uHpHP-5uMKwQ-5uMMxd-5uMMMW-5uHopR-5uMKVd-5uHoQv-5uMLYd-5uMLmf-5uMM9y-5uHqoZ-5uMMC7-5uMLAL-iLW5F-5uHoMn-3KjAhq-4QX6U6-bmxRwg-cY9gH-igeuAm-3cqpFK-5BjEq5-EZenw-6eHX3K-6eHNe2-6eHZmn-6eJ3nR-9MuMhR-6eEoE7-6eAdfD-6eHXUr-64ysXy-nnHih-7GivPP-zLRm1">flickr/Sixth Lie</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year, I visited the library at the Australian National University with my son so he could borrow some books for an essay on Chinese history. Wandering past shelf after shelf, he asked me, “How does it feel to be writing another book that no-one will read?”</p>
<p>It was just another teenage jibe, but in policy terms it was a prescient analysis.</p>
<p>In recent weeks there have been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/academic-publications-to-become-less-important-when-funding-university-research-20151112-gkxkgl.html">reports</a> that the government is considering making publication output much less important in the formulae that allocate research funding to universities. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Turnbull has signalled a desire to move away from a “publish or perish” culture to a new set of academic incentives that prioritises engagement and impact.</p>
<p>With more than A$1 billion per year in research grants on the table, even a marginal change in allocation methods could see big changes in the dollars flowing to some fields of study. </p>
<p>There is real concern among some academics that the changes will be unfair: scientists will be able to demonstrate impact in the form of patents, commercial spin-offs and industry engagement much more readily than their colleagues in the social sciences or humanities. </p>
<p>When the new Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/academic-publications-to-become-less-important-when-funding-university-research-20151112-gkxkgl.html">talks about</a> the importance of demonstrating “a measurable return on investment,” historians, anthropologists, philosophers and linguists are understandably anxious.</p>
<p>But is a defensive reaction necessary?</p>
<h2>Change on the way</h2>
<p>Those of us who work in the social sciences and humanities place a great value on the persuasiveness of our words. We can write; not perfectly, but better than most. New and genuinely public forms of publication, rather than the semi-private domain of journals and monographs, provide us with powerful platforms for our academic passions. </p>
<p>We don’t need to be afraid of funding formulae that focus on the quality of societal engagement rather than the quantity of journal articles or monographs.</p>
<p>But it will take a change of attitude and of academic practice. </p>
<p>If we continue to shape our careers around the twice-weekly lecture (to a diminishing class of students) and two journal articles per year (in good quality journals, so our peers can praise them without reading them) our future will be much narrower than it could be.</p>
<p>Academic websites would be a good place for reform to start. Most departmental webpages are online ghost towns, attracting negligible traffic despite the effort and angst put into producing and, intermittently, maintaining them. They do very little to generate broader societal impact via outreach or engagement. </p>
<p>Rather, they exist primarily to reassure academic units of their own existence. They are like sacred totemic objects that symbolise the unity of the academic clan – they are brought out from seclusion in times of social crisis (such as a managerial attempt to rationalise unread online content), briefly venerated, and then forgotten. And one of the ironies of university life is that the managers of websites regularly complain that they struggle to receive content.</p>
<p>Effective engagement and outreach will require a much more nimble academic posture. We need to diversify the way we write. It’s time to stop looking down our nose at public commentary as a second rate form of academic communication. We can rediscover the power of images and sounds. </p>
<p>An ability to operate effectively in the online world should gradually become a baseline academic selection criteria; just as important as the ability to give a lecture or write a chapter. </p>
<h2>Rising to the challenge</h2>
<p>In no way should this diminish the importance of basic, speculative and even eccentric research. I am an anthropologist and, as my son kindly pointed out, I know what it’s like to write books and articles that don’t exactly fly off the shelves. But I have spent the past decade combining formal promotion-friendly publication with blogging, opinion pieces and media interviews. </p>
<p>The ideas, inspiration and energy flow two ways: from formal research to public outreach and back again. Some of my research has been rather esoteric (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1835-9310.2006.tb00057.x/abstract">spirit beliefs in northern Thailand</a>, anyone?) but I have always enjoyed using insights from that work in public discussions about power, politics and democracy.</p>
<p>Have I been able to demonstrate, or even measure, the impact of my public outreach? To some extent, but certainly not perfectly. Working on this will be challenging and, at times, frustrating.</p>
<p>But engaging in the debate will be more productive than retreating behind a “nobody understands our worth” barricade. There are many qualitative and quantitative tools that we can use to demonstrate our engagement and impact. It will seem like sacrilege to many, but perhaps re-tweets could become an academic metric that sits alongside citation rates? </p>
<p>The challenge laid down by the government is not to abandon pure research or scholarly writing, but to put the public back into publication. </p>
<p>It’s a challenge we should embrace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Walker co-founded the website New Mandala.</span></em></p>Prime Minister Turnbull has signalled a desire to move away from a ‘publish or perish’ academic culture toward one that prioritises public impact and engagement. It’s a challenge scholars should embrace.Andrew Walker, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/320372014-10-16T00:29:08Z2014-10-16T00:29:08ZSnobbery in the academy is alive and well and doing harm<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59998/original/hpdp55m8-1411620228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If you've ever felt as though professors treat you with less than respect, you're probably not alone.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A female engineering student walked into her first lab class. One of the male students said: “The cookery class is in another room.”</p>
<p>A professor was always willing to drop everything to talk with a colleague. But when one of his research assistants contacted him, he would say to come back later.</p>
<p>A student wanted to do a survey and commented to a mathematician friend: “I think I’ll seek advice from some sociologists.” The mathematician responded: “What would they know about it?”</p>
<p>Snobbery is a sense of superiority or exclusiveness, often expressed with condescending comments or actions that reject others. Snobbery is found throughout societies. Some people look down on those with less money or who live in a low-status suburb or who don’t speak with the right accent.</p>
<p>Then there is snobbery about countries, films, food, manners and knowledge. “Don’t tell me you listen to country music!”</p>
<h2>Snobbery in universities</h2>
<p>You might imagine that universities would be free of snobbery, because everyone is involved in a quest for knowledge and scholars are supposed to make judgements about ideas, not about people. Anyone who has been around people in universities will soon hear plenty of stories to the contrary.</p>
<p>When we started investigating academic snobbery, we discovered that everyone we spoke to had a story to tell. There were stories about arrogant professors, about snooty students and about individuals who thought they were superior to just about anyone. There are some relevant writings about <a href="https://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=11623&edition_id=11986">emotions in academia</a> and, more bluntly, about “<a href="http://thesiswhisperer.com/2013/02/13/academic-assholes/">academic arseholes</a>”. </p>
<p>Academic snobbery comes in multiple forms - for instance, connected with a person’s university, field of study or position. Teachers who are on short-term contracts may not be treated as real colleagues. At conferences junior scholars may be ignored by leading figures in the field. </p>
<p>Those at the bottom of the status hierarchy are invisible. This sort of environment breeds snobbery.</p>
<p>Many students gain their sense of value from their peers and from their achievements at school and university. Snide comments about their clothes, tastes and intellectual skills can be deeply hurtful.</p>
<p>However, this type of snobbery has consequences beyond the immediate effects on people’s emotions. When teachers make belittling comments about students, it can cause some students to quit. Some junior scholars may even reject an academic career because of the patronising attitudes of senior figures. </p>
<p>Another possible consequence for universities is that relevant questions and concerns are not addressed because they don’t come from the right sorts of people. Or research findings may be ignored because they come from the wrong discipline. </p>
<p>Snobbery is not good for universities in another way. If members of the public think academics are inflated with self-importance, they are less likely to support universities when it comes to funding or academic freedom.</p>
<h2>What to do?</h2>
<p>One of the challenges is that those who behave snobbishly often don’t even realise it. They believe they really are superior. They make comments that are condescending without even thinking about it.</p>
<p>Some say: “Just ignore the snobbery. Don’t let it affect you.” That’s easier said than done. </p>
<p>Aside from advice to ignore snobbery, what can be done? There’s lots of research about envy, scorn, inequality, groupishness and other relevant topics, <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/envy-scorn-down">some of it</a> very insightful. However, it seems that researchers have paid little attention to practical techniques to counter snobbery.</p>
<p>We drew some insights from the work of <a href="http://kilden.forskningsradet.no/c16881/artikkel/vis.html?tid=55475">Berit Ås</a> and from a body of research on <a href="http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/backfire.html">tactics against injustice</a>, and came up with a set of possible <a href="http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/14aur.html">responses to snobbery</a>. </p>
<p>One option is simply to avoid people who are snobbish, though this isn’t always possible. Another option is to make a formal complaint, but this may be seen as over-reacting.</p>
<p>Then there is reverse snobbery. Imagine one student saying to another: “I can understand why you want to study medicine, but I decided on visual arts because it’s more challenging.” The trouble is that reverse snobbery doesn’t do anything to stop snobbery more generally.</p>
<p>Directly challenging snobbish comments is a delicate operation. You might try the serious, rational approach of countering condescending comments. In response to a colleague’s derogatory comment about a lower-status university, you might say: “Actually, there is plenty of good work being done there.” </p>
<p>Our favourite option is to counter snobbery by using humour. After a “centre of excellence” involving just a few academics was set up in a department, one of those left out put a sign on his door: “Peripheral mediocrity.” </p>
<p>Just because snobbery is such an everyday matter doesn’t mean we should ignore it. It can have quite damaging effects. </p>
<p>For those who care about creating a more inclusive, equal society where people try to help each other to improve, it is worth practising skills to avoid, counter or deflate snobbery. Changes are also needed in cultures and organisations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32037/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A female engineering student walked into her first lab class. One of the male students said: “The cookery class is in another room.” A professor was always willing to drop everything to talk with a colleague…Brian Martin, Professor of Social Sciences, University of WollongongMajken Jul Sørensen, PhD Student, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.