How Capitalist Thinking is Bullshitting Around in Academia

Introduction*

A myriad of newspaper articles, blogs, posts and social media threads exist on what is wrong with
'Academia' in Western Europe and the United States. In my home country of the Netherlands there is an entire organization of Academic Activists, trying to improve things for Academics. For now, nothing has been achieved and budget cuts continue to hit universities without delay.

In 2004, when I was still young and full of life, a PhD student at the start of my Academic career, I spoke to one of my 'professor-idols' from a Belgian University, hoping for an inspirational conversation. The first thing I asked him was what he was working on now. The sour answer was: 'administration' and that the only joy he still got from his job was through the research from his junior staff members. This professor was an early example of how capitalism at universities could beat out the passion of some of the brightest minds in their field.

Common complaints from academics are not enough funding, a high workload, monetizing of knowledge and bad peer reviewing. Most of these complaints are justified. In my opinion however, they often circumvent the real problem: Unchecked Capitalism in Academia, which is caused by a blind worshipping of Capitalist Thinking in Western Society. Universities have let this monster in and it still is growing. I will argue here that capitalist thinking and capitalist mentality have invaded Universities to such an extend, that the only way to liberate them from the shackles of budget costs and high workload is pushing this monster out again. Unfortunately, it may only be possible to do this by pushing for changes that go far beyond the walls of Academia.

Capitalist thinking has lead to a situation in which too much work has to be done by too few people. The number of students has increased rapidly over the past few decades, while the number of academics has remained more or less the same. In some fields there even has been a decrease in the number of academics. This means there is not enough labour available to do research, teach, supervise and perform a ton of mostly bullshit administrative duties. Capitalist thinking has created a perverse system of competition, disrespect for academic work, disrespect for unlucrative studies, and the sickening need to 'score' on every level: research projects, publications, graduated students, finished PhD's, et cetera. Power abuse, power struggles, plagiarism, mediocre research and bad teaching and supervising is an inevitable side effect of this.

What I am arguing here is mostly based on my own experiences in Academia in the Netherlands, but undoubtedly can be applied for the bigger part to the situation in other Western countries as well. If you are an academic and do not recognise (parts of) what I am describing, I can only say 'lucky you', but that does not mean these problems do not exist. In my career I have worked at three different Universities for over ten years and have experienced both the best sides and some of the worst sides. Not coincidentally, I have seen more of the worst sides in most recent years.

When I write 'capitalist mentality',  I refer to a thinking that is drenched in  'targets', 'costs', 'competition' and  'efficiency'. Unchecked capitalism is when this mentality becomes the leading motive for any policy decision and for the way academics themselves behave. Academics have tried to improve their situation, but maybe have not looked close enough at their own behaviour and at the root cause of all problems. Academics can ask for more funding. They can ask for more personnel. They can ask for less bureaucracy. In the end this will only soften the blows in the short term: currently Academia, just like any other sector in western society, is supposed to 'deliver', to demonstrate their monetary worth for society, to show they can write a chapter in that 'fairytale of eternal growth'.[1] Many of the most rebellious academics fight for Academia, but simultaneously play along in the capitalist game of showing how Academia has worth. To some degree this is understandable, because people who (still) work in Academia are the ones that came out on top of this same system. In order to get rid of the perverse parts of the current academic system, Academics need to detach themselves from the system itself, which is difficult because they are living in it and are depending on it for their job.

Capitalism kills any study without enough students

Recently the VU University Amsterdam stopped offering the study Dutch, because there were not enough students and it was not profitable anymore. This is only one extreme example, but basically the survival of any study relies on the number of students. Jobs and specialisations are killed off, because they are 'sick' in the view of administrators with a capitalist mentality.  Policy making is done based on the projected number of students. The question on how valuable it is that a study 'exists' in itself is hardly a part of the equation.

Obsession with Quality Papers that are not Quality papers kills Academia 

One of the major problems in Academia is the obsession with counting publications in so-called A journals. "A journals" are internationally orientated and follow a strict process of peer review by high ranked academic staff to ensure the quality of the contributions. The problem however, is that in practice this system is bankrupt because reviewers lack the time to spend on reviewing contributions.
Peer reviewing is done purely on a voluntary basis, which is self destructing if no one even ever has enough time to do the stuff they are being paid for.

It happened to me on several occasions that I had to ask after more than one year what the status of the reviewing process was. On two of such occasions there only was one peer review, which is not enough to base an 'accept' or a 'rejection' on. And those reviews were not even very good. Sloppy, hasty work, with very little helpful comments. Ironically, papers that I submitted to smaller 'B' or 'C' journals received more timely reviews, with more helpful comments and justified criticisms from the editorial boards.  Therefore what I consider my best work is published in the journals and other outlets that do not really count for much in the terms of Academic output. Not only the system itself is at fault here. All the academics worldwide, often high and mighty, who agree to review a paper but then do not meet the deadlines to actually do it, or do it badly, are part of the problem. Delegating such a task to junior researchers with less responsibilities, and who are not battered down yet by a system that more or less expects them to not meet deadlines, would be a logical step that only few seem to do. As an editor of two proceedings I experienced that the best reviews, with substantiated criticisms and helpful comments, were done *on time*, by PhD students. At some point I started avoiding A journals as outlets for my work, because of the absolute bullshitting of the review process, to possibly get an A publication of mediocre quality, that very few people would read. In terms of having an academic career however, that obviously was not the smartest thing to do.

Time Restraints Make Academics Sloppy and Self  Deluding 

A common problem in Academia is that lots of work gets published, but very little work is getting read. It's like thousands of academics worldwide are running on a treadmill to produce as many A rated publications as possible, which leaves 0 time to actually properly read what others are producing. Often academics make references to work they have hardly read, just because they are 'supposed' to do that to pass academic peer review. In order to get work published academics need to at least pretend they have read the work of the colleagues who are probably peer reviewing their papers. Senior researchers often mostly cite the same works they have read when they were still young and promising researchers, because they have not been able to read anything else since then.

This is not limited to papers only. During my last project there was one digital Tool that was cited often as a good example of what was being done in the field. In reality however, very few people who cited the tool actually had an idea of how it was supposed to work. Even the creators of the tool seemed to have only a vague idea of how it worked, and could not reproduce any of the research results or properly interpret new results. So we were all talking about it and had some vague idea about it, but no one really properly knew anything about it. It is quite possible we were all discussing a shit Tool.

Capitalist thinking creates a climate in which we are all doing what we think we are supposed to be doing. In the meantime we are collectively fooling ourselves and each other, in the hopes of becoming slightly better because of it, without thinking enough about whether what we are doing makes any sense.

The above examples are only the mild forms of 'abuse' present in Academia. Less common, but scarily common nonetheless, are malpractices in falsifying research data for fame and more funding. [2]  Plagiarism, and (boarderline) self-plagiarism are also used to boost academic scores.

Funding Schemes in their current form are a Perverse waste of Time and Resources

Other than publishing in journals that are A rated and get little to no attention (my paper in the Journal of Medieval History was highest cited for some time with no less than 6 (!) citations in five years, woop-dee-doo), it is imperative for researchers to at some point get external funding for their research.  Funding for student assistants, funding for a small program with a few researchers attached, or, the most megalomanous one, funding for a European project with a multitude of international partners. During my first Postdoc I wrote or co-wrote many proposals, had some minor successes but failed for the rest. Unfortunately, the vast majority of researchers fail at acquiring funding for their research, with acceptance rates being 10% at best and sometimes as low as 2%. Before going into the perverse economics behind the quest for funding, I will talk a bit about the criteria for accepting them.

All proposals for a 'funding scheme' on a national, transnational or European level are, again, sent out to external reviewers. These reviewers are, again, the overworked senior academics, that sometimes do not do their jobs properly when it comes down to 'extra stuff' like this. Usually there are at least three of them, sometimes more if everyone who was asked to do it actually does it. Since the competition is fierce you know that you need to get the highest, or at least the second highest score from each reviewer. If only one of these reviewers is on the verge of a burn-out, is in a bad mood, is simply an asshole that likes to ruin other people's lives, or couldn't be arsed to read the proposal properly, you probably are out, regardless of committees looking at the external reviews and regardless of the opportunity to write a rebuttal. So unless you are loved by practically everyone in the academic community, you always run the risk of getting all your hard work trashed because of bad reviewing. Bad reviewing that may have been caused by anything,  like old grudges, stress, laziness, bad news for their own research proposal, or finding out their child is on drugs. Naturally it could also work the other way around: getting a positive review because the reviewer had no time to read your proposal properly, but did not want to be mean. Therefore the chances of having a good proposal that is being trashed, or having a shit proposal that gets praised, are quite present.

Unfortunately, not only the research proposal is evaluated, but also the researchers involved. There have been tendencies to eliminate this criterium, and for good reasons. If professor X was successful in acquiring funding for project Magneto in the past, then obviously he is a good researcher and also deserves funding for project Magneto II. There is a high risk of circular arguments being applied here: professor X is a good chap because he already had 5 projects, so let's give him another project which will make him an even better chap for the next funding scheme. It's a brilliant recipe for making the rich even richer.

My biggest beef with the eternal quest for external funding, however, is the waste of time and resources. I will elaborate by providing one extreme example from my own experience. There was a European funding scheme that in the end granted 2% of the proposals. Therefore 49 out of 50 proposals were rejected. Obviously this is not worse than the rejection rate for applications for a job, but when you realise how much *paid labour* is put into each proposal, the waste of it all becomes mind boggling. In the consortium for our proposal we had representatives from the Netherlands, Austria and the United Kingdom, and a few smaller partners. Each partner had people working on the proposal, for weeks, and sometimes for months. We traveled abroad to meet each other. Every partner had administrative personnel looking at the budget. Every partner had Directors of Research giving their stamp of approval. Even when realising that a lot of this work was done in unpaid over hours, the amount of wasted, paid labour, often financed by grants that were supposed to be used for other research, is perverse. How can a capitalist system of competition, that is obsessed by numbers, finances and targets, waste so many resources?

I was one of the coordinators and main contributors to our proposal, because my boss asked me to and because I liked my boss. In the end it left us with nothing, except for a huge waste of time, tensions with our partners, and two postdoctoral researchers on the verge of a burn-out. This funding scheme produced 49 times this horrible result, versus 1 lucky consortium. This is when I decided I would not make such an attempt ever again, no matter how much I liked my boss.

Too Much Support, too little Research

Academics are trained in doing research and reporting about it. When they have to write research proposals they often get help from people who get paid more than they are. External experts who apparently know all about how to 'market' your research, external editors and translators, internal experts who guide your proposal step-by-step, deans and research Directors who are supposed to help, financial experts who have a say on how to spend the money if granted, et cetera. Even though most of these people mean well, there are an awful lot of them. There are more non-Academic people working at Universities than actual academics, and some of them cost a shitload of money.

So a capitalist system, driven by irrational competition, forces universities to waste a lot of money on paying people that help academics to have a proper chance of getting research funded, instead of spending it directly on research. And the worst part is, that there is no evidence that all these helpful people actually play a positive role in getting research funded.

Wasting Money Internationally  

In this capitalist system of Academia international relations are considered to be of utmost importance. Conferences where researchers from all over the world meet and conferences where policy makers strike mutually beneficial deals. All of this is accompanied by expensive flights, lunches, dinners, conference fees, et cetera. I have been to quite a few of such conferences, some of them useful, while others consisted mostly of a load of bullshitting around and were mainly a nice opportunity for cheap holidays. I always was only one of the 'smaller dogs' of the pack, with the top dogs going to a manifold of (international) meetings, flying all over the world wasting even more money and killing the environment.

I once was an invited speaker for a conference in Canada, an 8 hour flight from here. The other guest speaker was invited from Spain, another 8 hour flight. Even though both of us were perfectly capable of delivering an interesting enough talk, there was no way to justify the expenses of bringing us there. Canadian colleagues could have done more or less the same and otherwise Skype could have helped.

If Academics want to reduce expenses, they have to look very carefully at the expenses they are making themselves, even if it is paid out of a 'project budget''  (if you are one of the lucky 2% a lot is possible with project budgets).

Trapped in your own Capitalist Bullshit

Then there is some more brain melting stuff that will vary from University to University, My last employer built so many useless, efficiency driven, capitalist protocols, that one department could take another department of the same University hostage for no reason a sensible person could understand.

Let me give one extreme example. My Mac, paid for by the University, broke down. According to protocol I brought it to the MacStore for repairs. The machine could not be repaired and the MacStore gave me a new machine that was exactly the same. This new machine however, did not have the sticker from the IT department that was on my old machine. When my project was finished after 3 years I had to hand in my machine, which I did. The IT department however, protested that they could not verify this was 'their machine' and therefore would continue charging my old department for the use of the broken machine. The machine I handed in could not be used by any other researchers, because it was labelled as 'unknown material'.

So to summarise: I handed in a machine that was 2 years old instead of the expected 3, which should have been a good thing. Instead of rejoicing, however, my department had to continue paying for support for a machine that did not exist anymore, (even though there was no actual support ever for Macs from my department, it was just another protocol thingie!), while the 2 year old machine would be wasted doing nothing and two different branches of the same University were fighting each other! A prime example of perverse and  irrational protocols created by capitalist thinking, wasting valuable resources.

Bullshitting Around

I had the pleasure of working for and with many inspiring colleagues, who held their heads high in the Capitalist world of Academia. They had ideals and a love for science. Unfortunately, sometimes people with good intentions can do a lousy job, which was the case in my last project. It was an interdisciplinary project, directly funded by two Amsterdam universities with no less than five highly renowned chair-holders from different disciplines involved. Unfortunately the original research proposal, that miraculously, was granted, was vague in its goals, ambitions, and the way in which the research from the different disciplines would have to be connected. 

The result was that most Project Meetings were filled with vague ideas and a lot of bullshit. The project leaders did not (always) prepare properly for these meetings, had no idea what the actual researchers were doing and why, gave input that made no sense, and left the researchers mostly frustrated at the end of each meeting. Drafts of papers were hardly ever read. Contributions to papers were hardly ever made. Agreements on when to do what were not honoured, Deadlines proposed by the project leaders were not met by the same project leaders. One of the project leaders even decided it was none of his business anymore and skipped all shared project meetings after the first few.  This is not because all of these project leaders were awful people. On the contrary, they all were idealistic Academics, striving to always advance knowledge in their own discipline. Unfortunately, the entire project was victim of miscommunications between the disciplines, too ambitious and vague goals, and not having one clear project leader who felt responsible for the project. Most of this can be blamed again on not having enough time to do things properly. The project was funded and there were not enough incentives to continue putting a lot of effort in it.

Obviously, in the end, the researchers themselves, not the supervisors, are responsible for the victories and failures of their own projects. Bullshit project meetings like those however, were counterproductive, and a huge waste of time, potential and resources.

I have seen worse than this though. There are people who are literally bullshitting from one project to the other, flying all over the world and making international connections, but never delivering any research results that go far beyond the original research proposal. To them it does not matter much how they are doing their job. They have convinced themselves that playing the capitalist game is most important to survive and they thrive in doing so, turning themselves into capitalist-academic monstrosities. 

Power abuse

All of the above can potentially lead to terrible power abuse. Fortunately I have not experienced this myself, but this is probably because I am white and male. Recently, examples of sexism and power abuse have become public, that are only the tip of the Iceberg.  People in power, the chair-holders, the directors and the deans, that are responsible for the numbers and the output, and sometimes also the financing of projects and departments, can potentially exert a lot of power on the people working for them and that are dependent on their good will to get another temporary job. There is a small 'elite' at universities with permanent contracts, that is in charge of the "researcher working bees" with temporary contracts. When money speaks, corruption and abuse follow in its wake. While in the past Universities assumed that this kind of corruption only takes place in business companies, institutions with an inherently capitalist signature, it has become clear that universities are not spared from this kind of power abuse either.

Unhealthy Labour Mentality

Capitalist thinking has also led to 'survival of the fittest' in Academia, instead of survival of the smartest (obviously though, it is perfectly possible for the fittest to also be the smartest). If you cannot commit many over hours to your job you are likely to eventually perish in the race for tenure. No one ever seems to question why we consider it to be normal that Academics spend 60-80 hours per week on their job instead of 40. Part time jobs exist, but even for those you often 'are supposed' to work full-time in reality, or write research proposals in 'your spare time' .

Other than this kind of labour mentality being unhealthy, it also creates a system of unfair competition. It is difficult to compete for women who want to get pregnant, for people with disabilities and, in general, for any person who is a 'caretaker'. The number of women in Academia significantly decreases the moment they could continue their career from junior level to mid level. Even though the situation is improving, only 20% of chair-holders in the Netherlands identify as female.

Finally: Recommendations? 

The main argument of this Blog is that even though all efforts to fight for Academia are inspiring and justified, it is mostly fighting the symptoms. The cause lies much deeper, with Academia becoming more firmly entrenched in capitalist thinking over the past few decades.

Improvement will not simply come from 'more money', 'more funding', or 'more personnel'. This would only be playing along in the capitalist system and, to be honest, academics in general are (fortunately) not very good at this game. More than anything, permanent change will require recalibrating thinking. To move away from capitalism to a more social model of being in Academia. Obviously this is easier said than done.

Universities should become more efficient, but not in the way they think. Get rid of everyone who has a supporting role in writing a research proposal. I know these people mean well, but without them there is more money for actual research. Get rid of everyone responsible for publicity and marketing as well. Reduce the salary of chair-holders, deans and research directors. Reduce the number of policy makers. Stop having bullshit protocols between different parts of your own organization. Remember what your core business is: research and education, everything else is of secondary importance. You are a university, not a company. Get rid of all thinking in numbers and efficiency.

Academics should detach themselves from the over hours and demand being able to do their job properly within one full working week of 40 hours. Do NOT accept to peer review anything if you cannot do it properly within the deadline. Do NOT agree to supervise a project unless you are willing to do a proper job at it. Even doing half a proper job will do more harm than good. Stop fooling yourself with 'obligatory citations' and call out bullshit when you see it. Do not fly to Conferences more than once a year. Stop putting so much value on publications in A journals. Stop wasting so much time on research proposals.

External financiers should stop wasting money. Do not run any funding schemes that does not honour at least 10% of all applications, even if this means introducing a maximum number of applicants.
Only ask applicants to write a 'full proposal' if they have at least a 50% chance of getting funded.
Reward external reviewers, let them sign contracts, do not accept delays or sloppy reviewing.

Governments should hand more money directly to Universities instead of external financiers and have some faith it is spent well Stop looking at Universities as companies that "produce" knowledge and graduated students, but instead look at them as institutions in which important knowledge is generated in dialogue and where students become smarter and better people.Stop financing universities by looking at the number of students and diplomas. Have some damn respect for academics and their research



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* Edit 16 April 2020: removed a paragraph on the eroding of the status of PhD students. Not because it is unimportant, but because this blog already was quite long and the situation I described mostly applies to the Netherlands.

[1] Nicely worded by Greta Thunberg in her speech to the United Nations on 23 September 2019.
[2] Most famous example being Diederik Stapel: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel