AIBU to think we should be funding this BS?

I should have added that my experience of academia I would sum up as lonely, insecure and highly competitive. I’ve been a couple of decades in industry and I have not regretted moving on.

Academic roles come in many shapes and sizes. A minority are teaching only and most are teaching/research. Academics work year round - my old contract before I moved to industry, stipulated only ‘holidays by arrangement’. An alarming number of positions are temporary, short term, lurching from research grant to research grant and/or zero hours contract teaching; it’s very hard to get a secure post. For each hour of lecturing I did, I would do about 6 hours plus prep. You need a real density and depth of knowledge. It may have got easier if I had a chance
to repeat material but I would never have risked winging it and would have closely reviewed notes and updated them with any research findings that had occurred in the interim before repeating. Academics are judged on ability to source funding, deliver completed PhDs and publish papers. This in itself can be stressful. It’s no cakewalk.

No, it's not a code to which only a few can be admitted, any more than any other language related to a profession. I don't understand mechanical terms, or the ins and outs of IT - but people in those professions do because they've learned. My point isn't to get rid of academic language but to accept other voices as well so that more people realise they're capable of learning and contributing to human knowledge across a lifetime. When studying, one of the most useful pieces of advice I received from a lecturer was to write in my own voice and not feel I had to couch everything in purely academic terms.

I'm not sure why you think that university professors work a 14 hour week - perhaps you're confusing workload with teaching hours? You do highlight one of the problems with the marketisation of education though, and I agree with this. I don't think it was a good idea to turn students into consumers. To an extent it has led to some unwanted outcomes.

@ClarkeandNewman If it is academic code which only those admitted to the circle of knowledge understand then it is pointless because you all just keep things going round and round amongst yourselves. See other posts about keeping the gravy train going. Comfortable lives for Professors.
They work short hours, 14 hrs per week is it? Some students are getting a very bad deal because they see the lecturer for so few hours per week, £10,000 per year?

Most university funding from funding councils (government funding) is for science, engineering or similar. Funding for humanities, arts and social science research is far harder to get and mostly small scale grants from the university block grants for teaching staff to pursue research/attend conferences on top of a full teaching load. There are funding councils for these subjects but it’s a £5k grant perhaps whereas science councils may be £500k!

Are the words invented by the author cited, or are they academic language? I've already said that I believe some use of academic language to be exclusionary. I think we would benefit from the knowledge, views and research of people outside traditional academia, although a lot of people have used the Arday case to argue against this! So I do see your point about the difficulty of interpreting academic language although my solution would be to further democratise academia whereas yours would appear to be its abolition.

You could try and explain what is wrong with what I said. Why do we benefit from word salads where the writers invent new BS words. Are there really not enough words in the English language already?

Agreed 👏

We have to have certain output if on a research and teaching contract each cycle otherwise we’re in bother. It’s difficult for women who take maternity leave or people who get sick but it’s part of the contract. I don’t whinge, I feel incredibly thankful to have this job. That particular research sounds interesting but I can see why people not in the world of academia think it’s all a bit pointless. I come from humble beginnings and there is some research I look and feel a bit sort of … WHY about it. For me it’s things like Shakespeare and I say this as a literature academic. How many more interpretations of Hamlet can we have before someone realises it doesn’t actually matter to anyone?

I’m more invested in research that can and does have a real impact for actual people so I’ve been shifting into the education system and the overall impact the arts and creativity can have on young people (esp working class kids) in recent years.

The irony here is that your post, be it in good faith or otherwise, proves so neatly that we do need them.

Well of course we should not - as Oxford and Cambridge are very rich in themselves, they can fund this nonsense from their own coffers.

I think they were bang out of order ignoring the student complaints about JA as well and the students who had him and got poor value for money should be compensated.

@AlwaysColdHands , I was referring to the Sociology departments at universities when I suggested they be defunded because we don't need them.

You can all unclench on the funding as the guy’s profile clearly identifies he is funded by the Cambridge Trust. It’s a multi source funding body however it is not government money so not from ‘you’. Before anyone says alL Cambridge money originates from the state, that is not correct. Cambridge
and certain specific colleges who also fund the Cambridge Trust, are spectacularly well endowed going back centuries. your eyes will pop.

Could it be autocorrect? I have had to edit so many posts and WhatsApp messages because of it!
(Yet it can still be useful so I haven't disabled it).

“It is crucial to emphasise that this study looks only at those who
have undergone hormonal and surgical transition, which is a much tighter group than
individuals who self- identify as transgender”

The group studied is only post op, male to female trans people, so the findings cannot be extrapolated out to all transpeople.

“It compared the likelihood of a person having one or more criminal convictions, and convictions for violent crime (defined as “homicide and attempted homicide, aggravated assault and assault, robbery, threatening behaviour, harassment, arson, or any sexual offense”

The data isn’t confined to sexual assault crimes, but any violent crime. That means you can’t say that all the people studied were sex offenders, crimes like arson, robbery and even murder are not necessarily sexual in nature.

The statistics of 76 out 129 offenders were convicted of sex crimes only refers to transwomen.

@TidyRose I am an academic who supervises PhD students in a similar area/ academic discipline to Jason Arday.
Not one of them is publicly funded. They all pay for their own fees.
Hope that makes you feel a tad better.

Ask yourself where the anti-intellectual argument logically concludes, and whose interests that serves.

Yes as Ive got older Ive realised what a load of old balderdash it is and taken so seriously as well.

You’re probably not funding it…

Very well said. If we only care about things in terms of how much money they generate then most art, music, books and films would never exist.

I don't understand your point.

This is the exact point - there’s a point to bad research as it can be dissected.

Except that with this particular subject it can’t on a level playing field.

Well I don't believe I said that at all!

I disagree that it's a banal observation, and I disagree that the paper would have got off the starting blocks, so to speak, if it were purely aimed at demonstrating that algorithms were biased.

In fact, you know what? Since neither of us has read the paper and since, by reading the abstract, we have wildly differing opinions on what it may be about, shall we agree that it's not a great foundation for a reasoned argument?

This particular paper. The poor quality of work in academia generally.

It's even in the sciences, it's a massive problem.