Submission to the Higher Education Review Committee
by
Dr. Stephen Alomes
Senior Lecturer in Australian Studies
This submission concerns: the need for a complete redefinition of the 'Research Quantum' and the points system used for its allocation.
It is in two parts:
(1) 'Stars and Elephants for Good Little Boys and Girls' (OR the tale of the 'Miss Vanstone' in our school and the one in the DEETYA school)
(2) Following Commentary and Recommendations.
Stars and Elephants for Good Little Boys and Girls
Once upon a time, at primary school, the teacher Miss Vanstone used to give us stars and elephants when we were good at our work. If you wrote 'The cat sat on the mat' just as she wanted you got a star, a bright golden star on your forehead. If you wrote 'Pretty polly wants a cracker' with every letter done just right you were the lucky one who got an elephant.
Later, they put stars in my homework book with rubber stamps. That must have been particularly good for my friend Ayse's parents as they didn't read English. Miss Vanstone was very nice on her good days. But if you did anything slightly different that was 'naughty' and you were more likely to get a slap on the arm rather than a star.
My older brother Johnny is now one of those businessmen. He has a fancy schoolbag (like a flat box) and a mobile phone and his uniform is a dark suit. He tells me that he gets things for being good when he has to go to Perth or Melbourne in the plane. They don't have stars, though and he calls them a funny name - 'frequent flyer ppp points'. (That is hard to say.)He must be very nice to the teachers on the plane and always eat up all his dinner to get them. (And he said something about 'doing a Colston' and then you get a lot and can fly very high, but I'm not sure what that means.)
His friend Alison says she gets points too. And she has a 'Miss Vanstone' too. She works in a big school called a 'university' and she says that this Miss Vanstone, who is not in the classroom but in Canberra can be very demanding and she has her own ways of writing and counting. Her Miss Vanstone is head of this funny school called DEETYA which doesn't even have a playground.
They don't get stars but get 'brownie points' but I'm not sure if they're in the Brownies. And as well as the teachers they have points-counters who sit in little, windowless rooms and count. And they give more points for what you say you're gonna do than what you do. So, when Alison's 'colleague' Jeremy (that's a funny word for a friend- I suppose he is a friend) said he would study Mars and filled in a page or two in a book and they gave him some money for some binoculars or something, which they called a 'Grant', he was seven times more popular than if he had written something in his own workbook and showed it to other people.#
Alison said something I couldn't quite understand too. She said that it was like McDonalds turned upside down.# It was as if they gave more points for how many rolls, lettuces, milkshake cartons and how much beef they had bought (the 'Grants' she said) instead of counting how many hamburgers they sold. Seems a funny thing to do.
And they only care about what adults call 'little books' or 'Mickey Mouse books' - if you can make a book of around 80 pages (which seems like a lot to me) you get as many points as for a book of 500 pages which you might not finish till you get to grade 6 (that seems like a 'ginormous' book as my brother said!). ++ And they need two to three teachers to look at each book so that the counters can say its worth points. If not, no matter how nice the writing, it gets only a couple of points from these people who Alison called 'bean-counters'. (Perhaps this has got something to do with Jack and the Beanstalk!)
Stars and Elephants...
Although they say they like books I'm not sure. Alison's class wanted to do a class magazine (or she did anyway) and they said we couldn't do it unless we got a 'blind' person from another school to read it- or it didn't count! Although they've got Brad in their class and he's blind and is very good at school they said it had to be a blind boy or girl from another school. Gee, did they say it has to be read by a boy and a girl from another school who are blind; there must be a lot of blind students today.
And they can be really cruel. If the teacher doesn't like something or adds it up wrongly the children are scolded in a very nasty way (even if the teacher hasn't done any books herself). Sometimes they fight amongst themselves over points like boys arguing over how many marbles they had and who lost them. Even when they play marbles they don't have any fun any more - there's always a spoilsport who says 'Only DEETYA rules' matter and we must do what 'Amanda says'.
She can't be like our nice Miss Vanstone, their Miss Vanstone. They all seem terrified and school for them doesn't seem like fun any more.
And Alison says that their workbooks aren't as good as they used to be. And some of them feel really bad when they have spent too long on a big book and the junior teachers declare them a 'non-person' (I think that's the word Alison used). ++ And if you get one of these crosses against your name they won't let you go and talk to students at other schools. This must be much worse than being made to sit in the corner for a morning. I used to think big school would be better than little school but it sounds like it's not much fun and they don't get a chance to do much work either (except for all that 'rithmetic).
Perhaps this DEETYA is an evil giant and the boys and girls are just scared. If I was in their school I'd slip a banana skin under his giant clodhopper feet or put a laxette in the chocolate milk of one of those grey people who count beans.
I do like writing books and colouring them in too. (I suppose you don't get any ppoints for that either.)
* Stephen works hard at school but sometimes finds studying for points very pointless.
Allocation of the 'Research Quantum'
- Revised Points System Required
- Stephen Alomes
My submission - as elaborated in the attached story - concerns the allocation of research fund and the need for an abandonment of both the input/output arrangements and the current points system.
Firstly, a business which allocates 82.5% of its investments on the basis of inputs rather than outputs is operating by what I call in the article the Inverted McDonalds Principle # - measuring the beef, rolls, lettuce, cheese, etc bought rather than the products sold. #
That principle is patently absurd if the aim is to reward success rather than merely aspiration.
Therefore I propose that a revised points system based on outputs, not inputs, should be the basis for the allocation of the Research Quantum.
80% of funding should be allocated on the basis of published achievment, rather than, as at present, on the basis of grants obtained.
The existing points system must be completely revised. In its current bastardised form it discourages many serious academic research activities.
It means that any academic who does what will satisfy their employer's desire for 'points' rather than achievment will not do a number of things which at present they do (most of which I have done in the last year): write a book review for an academic journal; work on a long book ++; organise a conference or a series of seminars; act as a reader/referee for a journal; mark a Ph.D. or Master's thesis; edit a journal; or contribute an original article (in my case on the as yet not understood subject of 'populism' in Australia) to a Companion or encylopedia or other reference book; or submit a serious article to a quarterly or a regional history journal which does not operate according to the rules of the DEETYA circus.
The points system discourages the university's obligation to the community and seeks to deny the major elements of academic work.
While I have no problem with recognising achievment*, (in fact I commend the principle) any academic system based on the current obsession with measuring will inevitably break down. The worst-case result will be unsatisfactory Pavlovian impulses quite appropriate for rodents but inappropriate and ineffective in a university.
Research Quantum... Points Stephen Alomes
Finally, we are now in an era in which most commercial publishers and most academic publishers are not interested in publishing serious books (because of the lack of legal protection against them being supplanted by photocopied material) unless they are prescribed for a first year course or fit one or two narrow popular categories (eg biography/war). Therefore there must be a place for subsidised books and books published under a legitimate institutional umbrella under any points for achievment system.
That is, unless the Australian higher education system decides to reject entirely the idea of the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge through the form of the book.
The crude application of the points system is already leading to journal editors being forced to jump like performing seals, research directors squirming over every detail of documentation and an army of administrators (the money could better be spent on employing teachers and researchers) cutting down trees to provide more and more information. It has an horrific impact on the morale of even the most distinguished researchers;in fact some have left Australia in part because of it.++
The 'Miss Vanstone' of the story could equally be any other Minister presiding over this absurd grants/points system which could make Australian higher education, DEETYA, the Minister and the government a laughing stock.
* A Necessary Note. I am the author of one book, the co-editor of three others and presently have three articles in press, most of which will win points under this pointless system.