Watching a "debate" (it's very much not much of one, it's variations within the, say, anti-woke side) about higher ed. Many opportunties for spicy disagreement if anyone's feeling a need for that today.
Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.
Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities#AcademicChatter#neoliberalism
#AcademicVenting We now have a GoFundMe for our Goldsmiths #UCU hardship fund, due to 50% salary reductions for marking boycott. If you are in HE and in your union, perhaps you could ask your branch whether they could contribute? Feel awkward about saying this but: every donation welcome.
Just had an emergency #UCU meetings at our university, after the “discovery” (best word - it suddenly tripled from previous figure) of an absolutely enormous deficit. The situation looks pretty dire, redundancies wise.
Discussing what union can do has left me yet again
angry about the complete lack of democracy in UK #Universities. They are really top-down, undemocratic institutions, and this is a major contributing factor to the mess #HE is in
Question to #IT people on here: can you explain the awfulness of digital platforms that #University staff have to interact with on daily basis? True probably in many sectors and life in general, but it seems to be particularly bad in #HE. My trophy for worst, worst platform of all goes to #Je-S #RCUK#UKRI - whatever it's called. It is painful, horrible to use. I don't care if I come across as stupid. You shouldn't be made to feel stupid when you do free work for others. #AcademicChatter
Our paper “No Research on a Dead Planet” is out today! Aaron Thierry is very much the lead author, but it’s been great working on this together with AT, Laura Horn and Charlie Gardner. Why do #Universities, #ClimateEmergency declarations and all, still largely continue with #BusinessAsUsual? For us it’s about #CognitiveDissonance as well as the structures of neoliberal #HE. HE needs to change & lead on true #ClimateAction. Open access @ScientistRebellion
I was just thinking about how hilarious it was that in the original superman comics he was a reporter for a newspaper
That really dates things, doesn’t it?
It’s been so long since I read the comic that I’m wondering …
Did he ever … write anything? Did the comic, with any frequency, describe stories he’d filed, the reception of them … the execution of his job, as it were?
there have got to be Superman experts on Mastodon who know the answer to this question 😂
@academicchatter Trying to pursue this & HR are citing potential candidates use of AI as a reason to not do this (!) 🙄
AI isn't going to be able to write what somebody's experience is (it might extract it from their CV perhaps, but that would be fine since the experience is real and exists.
If the concern is that AI might help them lie / make up answers to the questions, well - isn't that also a problem that could happen without AI?
Just like blocking all traffic from GeoIP'd ASNs originating from Russia, China and North Korea is usually considered an act of self- and mutual IT defense.
#HE could've chosen to instead force the other providers connecting #AS397702 to DROP them under threat of terminating them as customers, but that would've had actual collateral damages.
Ministry - He's Angry (Unreleased 1984) (www.youtube.com)