Academic Productivity

There’s nothing like an overtly contentious statement to bring in the traffic. And as they go, this is a pretty good one: “Why higher education is like a Ponzi scheme“.

The linked post is actually for a radio program, the content of which was based on this original article by a professor of psychology from the University of Kentucky. In it, she argues that there aren’t enough tenure-track jobs to support the PhD students coming through the system and that students are exploited to prop up the teaching and research of over-stretched professors:

“In short, I think academia shares many of the classic elements of a social trap: It is in most faculty members’ and departments’ best interests to recruit a lot of graduate students. Churning out PhDs is one of the major metrics of departmental ’success’. Departments need graduate students to teach their classes, and faculty members need them to run their labs. Yet, as in any social trap, when everybody acts in their self-interest, a negative collective outcome ensues.”

Her solution? Not to accept any more PhDs:

“I’m no longer willing to pin my students’ prospects for their futures on an ephemeral job market that shines in the distance like a mirage … I don’t want to be part of the problem any more, and I think I will sleep better knowing that I am no longer contributing to an academic job market that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a Ponzi scheme on the verge of falling apart.”

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The last week or two has seen some serious winter weather here in the UK. Schools have been cancelled, transport delayed, idiots arrested for driving on frozen canals, and all those other things you would typically associate with places like Canada, not the balmy UK. (No, on second thought, I take back that thing about the canals. We don’t do that in Canada, unless you count this).

Anyway, the weather’s meant that a lot of us have started 2010 by working from home. Timely as always, the Guardian published a small article with some helpful tips for those new to home working. As someone who has worked from home for the past two years, I’d say the basic advice is pretty sound and worth repeating here:

1. Have a work space. Prepare a clear work space so that you can mentally, if not physically, separate home and work life. If you have a spare room to use as a home office, great; if not, clear off the kitchen table and do your best.
2. Don’t forget to take regular breaks. It can sometimes feel like you need to prove constantly that you are at your desk working, but remember: it’s very rare that an entire workday at the office would be spent staring at your computer. So listen to the radio, go for a run, do whatever you like: it’s okay to take a break now and then.
3. Be clear about what you’re working on. This is mainly a due diligence tip for those who might not normally work from home and need to demonstrate that they haven’t been wasting their time. But it’s good general advice too. Even if you are a seasoned home worker, it’s always useful to clearly set out what you hope to accomplish during a day. This is especially important for long stretches of home work when it’s all too easy to procrastinate from day to day.

One of the interviewees in the article suggests that people “stick to the work pattern they adopt at the office” and this is a good take-away message. Home work really is like working from the office, with some pros and some cons. In the past, I thought there might be more pros, like listening to music or doing a bit of laundry, but most of the time that doesn’t work. You need to have enough discipline to avoid those distractions and focus on the job at hand. This can be difficult at first but ultimately, it’s worthwhile. Once you get used to the monastic life, you may actually find that you get more done at home as there is very little outside distraction (compared with an open-plan office).

Anyone else worked from home recently? What tips do you have?

When I started my DPhil, I set myself assignments in order to cover the lit review in easy bite-sized chunks. This worked pretty well but the collated material was scattered across different Word documents, which meant that I couldn’t look at everything at one glance or search the content.

However at about the same time, I also started free-writing to generate ideas. If you’re not familiar with the technique, it’s simply writing for a fixed amount of time without stopping. You don’t delete anything on the fly and just go, writing down anything that comes to mind until the timer sounds or your wrists cramp up, whichever comes first.

Instead of putting this writing into Word documents though, I decided to set up a local installation of the blogging engine Movable Type. In retrospect, I think this was probably just an excuse to play with blogging software but it turned out to be a good decision. I could add content from any computer with access to the server, the basic input form meant that I focused on content not style, and of course, I had all the blogging bells-and-whistles attached. Comments could be added at a later date, the information sorted and searched, shared with my supervisor and so on.

I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it at the time but I would now recommend combining the two ideas: use a blog to write your lit review. (I say “write”, but I really mean “draft”. The structure of blog writing is quite different from academic writing and besides, you’ll want to tidy up references, tables, etc. for the final version. But a blog post is still big enough to cover the bulk of the material and help you organize your thoughts.)

The final stumbling block of course is how to get the content out of the blogging engine and into a presentable format. Fortunately, there’s a script called WPTEX that will convert your Wordpress blog into a LaTeX document. I found this software about six months ago and it does what it says on the tin: give it some basic details and it will parse all of your posts, tidying up the code and creating LaTeX source files which you can then compile as a standalone PDF book or for inclusion as part of your thesis.

The script’s not perfect and I can think of several improvements, particularly in the way that it converts URLs for paper presentation. But if you’re starting a PhD, I’d recommend giving it a go. A blog-sized lit review is a great way to manage this difficult task and of course, if you make the blog public, you can engage with the wider community in your field, getting feedback and maybe even making a bit of a name for yourself. Happy blogging!

One of the themes we’ve been discussing here is the idea that prestige and attention are the main currencies of academia. So it only makes sense that you want your online presence to be an accessible and positive reflection of your work and, at the very least, you want to be distinguishable from all of the other John Smiths in the world.

MIT has recently put together a tool called Personas which attempts to figure out this question of online identity. I say attempts because to be honest, it’s a bit hit and miss. The design looks pretty good but the results seem to change each time you run it, you can’t review the underlying data and it doesn’t even have a roll-over to quantify each chunk of your profile (e.g. percent of total, source documents etc).

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It’s a noble effort though and it got me thinking that there are two sides to the question of online identity. (more…)

If you’re not already aware of the excellent TED conferences and talks, I would strongly recommend going to their site and having a poke around. There are some fascinating people and ideas featured but be prepared to spend a bit of time: most of the content consists of 18 minute video talks.

One of the best ones I’ve seen recently is this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of a “journey of self-discovery” type novel which is being made into a movie with Julia Roberts. To be honest, from that description, I probably would have skipped it but I’m glad I did watch it: it’s thought-provoking and in places very funny.

She discusses the idea of “genius” and how the pre-Enlightenment concept of attributing outstanding works of art to divine inspiration/intervention (literally, “having” a genius) contrasts with the modern notion that such works come from within the individual (“being” a genius). “Having” a genius helps the artist maintain distance between themselves and their work, deflecting blame from the self when things don’t go so well and keeping one modest when work is well-received. As she says, it helps avoid the depressive thoughts that make one want “to start drinking gin at 9 o’clock in the morning” and generally helps promote creativity.

What do you think? Sounds pretty reasonable to me and a useful construct for digging one’s self out of rut.