Pastoral bliss

This one is going to be sort of a rant. It's about how the UK university system screws up pastoral care and disability rights so royally whilst pretending to do the right thing. It's a crap situation that I was fighting for years from within the system when I worked in the UK universities and a decade later it is still going strong. I could scream. In fact everyone SHOULD scream.
Let's do a tale of two students. Both have something wrong with them. In one case it's a disability. An invisible one. In the other case it's a sense of entitlement and the morality of a syphilitic mongoose.

Student A.
Student A has a very high opinion of themselves quite unjustified in terms of either their work ethic or their ability. They have experience in how to manipulate the system. Often this comes from either run ins with benefits agencies, indulgent parents, boarding schools or other manipulable entities.
Student A does minimal work during the year, is late for coursework with no contact for extension and does poorly in tutorials. When the exams are approaching Student A, who has carefully read the regulations, finds a reason which is hard to disprove to submit an Extenuating Circumstances form.
Reasons I have seen vary from stress, missing a bus, having a cold, death of grandmother(one student did this 5 times), pet going missing all the way through to boob job. No kidding.
They do poorly in the exam but get to retake with no consequences because of the form. One student I knew did this at 14 consecutive  exam dates.
They are unkillable because they know and abuse the system.

Student B
Student B has an invisible disability. Their doctor knows and they are coping with it but it limits available spoons. They perform pretty well through the year. Sometimes attendance varies. Sometimes they need more time on essays which they arrange with lecturers. They hit the exams and the stress makes their condition worse but they soldier on. They get an OK grade which is well below potential but a testament to their tenacity.
They had no idea that Extenuating Circumstances forms existed and because they are used to coping even if they had they probably think it applies only to people in car accidents not THEM.

So Student B gets shafted royally.
That's exactly how the system works folks. That's what happens time after time. Every exam board at a UK university knows it. They see it all the time. But they can't do much about it.

So what is broken here?
Simple answer is pastoral care. What used to happen and what should still happen is that each student gets a personal tutor who actually does their fucking job.
I used to have my tutees to tea once a week in my office. Give a student free cake and they always turn up. I asked them how they were.
Simple as that.
Doing that I caught 5 cases of undiagnosed dyslexia, one case of clinical depression and saw first hand the damage cfs/me can do (it's why I will get very mad at anyone who implies it's just yuppie flu. Killing mad).
I could tell my tutees to fill in the forms. Get them help. And when it came round to exam boards get up on my hind feet and defend them like a lioness defending it's cub.
But now the common experience is that personal tutors see tutees only once a year. Students often get a new one each year. Some even forget who they are.

The personal tutors are overworked yes. There is no credit for pastoral work yes.

But for the cost of different company at a tea break you were probably having anyway and at most 30 boxes of Mr Kipling you are failing your students and ensuring that the ones with invisible disabilities, the ones the system was written for are YET AGAIN being fucked up the wrong un with a very large pipe wrench.

I have no time for academics who say they can't fit it in. Your priorities are wrong. You are contributing to a bigoted system and you need to change. Do it or resign.

Well, did you eva...

So today at a meeting I was reminded forcibly of how post 92 institutions work, and it was not a happymaking thing. I wont say specifically what happened but I was talking to a very pretty young lecturer afterwards and gave him some warnings. Some of which were  clearly too late.  So herefor anyone working in academia is a list of things to beware of, particularly in post 92s.

The Email Game.
In the mornings you will get a variety of emails. Your colleagues will send them, and they often start "I had thing x brought to my attention and I know this is your area of expertise so wondered..." and then proceeds to detail a task.  Here is the thing, if that task was anything kther thana shitstorm of dingoes kidneys then your colleaguewould do it themselves for the hours credit. They are playkng pass theparcel because they can hear it ticking. It is utterly vital that you pass these on again. Draw a flow chart of expertise and use it to divert. If you get a reputation for saying yes you are beyond fucked.

Do Not Say Yes.
At meetings or in conversation do not say yes. If a task tickles your fancy offer to look into it, in veiled language.  My old boss Tim used to say only do something if you care about it, or can do it well. Or both. He was right. At firstyou will be under pressure to meet your contact hours total and so tempted, but do not do it.

It Starts With An Audience.
This, in the competitive HE world should not need saying. But sadly it does. Do your market research first. Who are you trying to recruit? What do they want from a course? How can you contact them? What do they get from it?  Heres how it SHOULD go...
New course is mooted. Marketing and student recruitment identify a demographic and the demographics needs/wants.  Senior management sign off on the concept. The course is written to deliver this and then passed for validation. Then you recruit actively and launch.
Here is what happens...
Govt funding is announced and only noticed late in the day. A course, any course, is cobbled together at the last minute by junior staff who cant play the email game. The course has been recruited by staff who didnt know the content because noone did. It doesnt address a demographic because the course is about what the institution can easily deliver, not about need. It will work, at low recruitment levels, because anything will. Next time, because it ran ok the course is rerun because, well, it worked and nobody can be arsed to do it right. The course never developes and is dropled after 3 yrs.
Rinse and repeat

Get a Mentor.
You need someone to deflect the shit.

It Is Political, but Not Necessarily Personal
If you think Westminster has politics, buckle up kid you aint seen nothing yet. Do nlt align yourself with a bloc until you know who does what. Be aware of the manouevring even if you do not want to join in. Eventually you will end up doing it too. Find a way to live with this.

Learn The Rules
The only way you can help students is by understanding the power structure. Your jnstitution will have a constitution. Learn it. I am serious, you are pointless without it.

I do not doubt I will think of more. But that is it for now. Good luck Padowan.

And on a lighter note...exciting news from China

Here is one that many academics would recognise...

Once you have published a couple of times your name goes into a massive database of evil which does several things.  Firstly if you are researching SALTM then your Big Pharma shill cheques get activated.  Secondly there is peer review.

Most do not realise that peer review is something scientists do for free.  It isn't done by a Secret College of guardians it is done by workers in the field, in their imaginary spare time.  Well actually it is often done by the Igors of the workers in the field. Its dreadful, that ping in your inbox which means at least 4 hrs work just dropped in your lap.  If you are being honest and diligent that is.  And if you are not then blame yourself for the crappy reviews you get.  That video, by the way, is practically a documentary.

But on top of this is the requests for conferences.  Conferences are a bit like opiates.  being accepted for a talk is a warm, fluffy, addictive experience.  Iin my field, for example, one conference has a 90% failure rate on talk submissions.  Invited lectures are even better.  That goes on your CV.
But...last few years there has been a plague of invites from China.  They offer invited lectures in Qingdao or wherever.  They don't offer to defray expenses.

I got one this morning from someone with the delightful name Vantasy Wang.

I have never knwonw anyone who ever took them up on these invites.  I have also no idea if this is real or a scam.  If it is real I really wonder what is going on in China to give sooo many conferrences.

For many academics the Chinese conference invite is displacing the Nigerian royalty email as the spam du jour.

The Scientific Afterlife

I suppose that many scientists do not think of posterity much when they do their work.  in my experience generally you think of the problem in front of you, the bureaucracy around you and beer.

But in a way the output of your career, those papers you fought to get published, are your gift to the ages.  that is why Researchgate and similar H-indexing type sites focus on telling you who is citing you.

Researchgate is like a propellerheads-only version of facebook.  If you don't log on for a week or so it emails you with lots of things you could find out about if only you logged on.  For all I know ( I dont pay much attention to these things, I am a marketers worst nightmare) it is full of targetted ads for designer labcoats and Igor cages.

Anyway one disturbing thing about researchgate is its ability to raise the dead.

A collaborator of mine died last year.  A wonderfully kind and generous man called Soo-Ik Chang, he died suddenly leaving a young family.  I really think the Korean science community has lost a majr asset.

Anyway such is the time delay factor in science that he is still publishing.  People are finishing papers with him on as an author and publishing them.  We are too.

So this mornings email from researchgate was a bit upsetting.  It featured a picture of Soo-Ik, smiling like always, telling me he had cited my work.  Strange how these things work out.