The scourge of managerial blah

What you don't realise Professor Moran, is that there are always ad hoc balls to field, that in attempting to aim high up on the waterfall we also have to look at the granularity; workflow enabled on-boarding is an end to end process, and there are a lot of people pedalling behind the scenes. We have to systemise in a richer way. I wrote these down and many more during a career of academic meetings (the best was 'scoping the footprint of the envelope') and I wrote plenty myself, although in my defence mostly in course documents, which once passed by the Quality Assurance committee would never ever ever be looked at again by student or teacher for another four years. The real issue is what kind of managers do we want and how to encourage the best to take on the role. I did it, I tried my best to be a simultaneous interpreter between reality and my colleagues, it was thankless, and the attitude of many of my co-academics was that of Professor Quincy Wagstaff of Huxley College in the US and his inspired presentation, 'Whatever it is I'm against it!'. Best of luck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29E6GbYdB1c

This article is spot on, but the problem is even worse. Managerial blah has taken the rightful place rigorous, evidence-based analysis and critical thinking in university management. The University of Manchester is planning to close its Clinical Trials Unit (CTU), which will result around 50 redundancies and mean it is the only Russell Group university without an in-house CTU. In response to demands that management justify this decision and produce the financial evidence to prove its claim that the CTU is "unsustainable", they have instigated a "deep dive" that will provide a "point in time picture" of the CTU's operations, which need a "step change", and claim that other university's CTUs are not "situated within the context of the Manchester research ecosystem", so using them as a "template" for comparison is not appropriate, and produced no hard evidence. If a student produced such answers in an exam, any examiner would be filling the margins with comments saying, “Has not answered question”, “No evidence of critical thinking”, “Where is the evidence for this assertion?” and demanding the student resit.

It might be that policy papers and the like are not best served by "subtlety". I'd rather they were written in plain English. I have no problem with the notion of a portfolio - for a PVC, or of services for which an individual is responsible. My only objection to "student-centered" is the idea it conveys, but it is pretty clear. The author's real problem is that institutions do tend to focus on particular ideas, to the point where the same words begin to sound boring. That doesn't mean we no longer need an "online learning platform" though -- more likely it indicates we need to get the problem sorted. I have colleagues who write with great subtlety. So much so, that few of their colleagues and fewer of the staff understand what they are trying to say. Or have time to get to the end of the argument. English is a "writer-responsible" language.

I keep a Stochastic Heuristic Answer Generator on the tutor part of my website www.ormondsimpson.com (enable macros) which automatically provides Managerial Blah phrases for every occasion.

Sublime.

An excellent treatise on the topic. I didn't call it 'blah' but used to play managerial bingo with colleagues using the set phrases/grouped nouns as the indicators in meetings - the temptation to shout 'house' was almost overwhelming!

Wait until you discover Labour's 'Organize to Win'.

An excellent article. Of course, the same problem exists at all levels of education and in other areas such as the NHS. It reflects the huge financial waste, demoralization, exhaustion and diversion of resources caused by the bureaucracy industry. Academics alongside professional administrators should be the employees responsible for universities, not those quack ‘manager-professors’ and deputies who, often inactive or unaccomplished in research and related teaching, consider themselves ‘academic leaders’.

An excellent article. Of course, the same problem exists at all levels of education and in other areas such as the NHS. It reflects the huge financial waste, demoralization, exhaustion and diversion of resources caused by the bureaucracy industry. Academics alongside professional administrators should be the employees responsible for universities, not those quack ‘manager-professors’ and deputies who, often inactive or unaccomplished in research and related teaching, consider themselves ‘academic leaders’.

Splendid article; don't forget that the overuse of acronyms also contributes to managerial blah, and if you don't know what they stand for, then you're out of their loop. Currently, our institution is entering a 'transformative consultation to meet the challenges of the 21st century'; to me, it's just turning of the same unproductive wheel that will generate only paperwork, meeting notes, away-days, blah, blah...

"manager-professors"- spot on. Rather manager-professors who failed at academia and no longer publish but can preach to everyone else. Rid the system of these and half the battle is won.