Why do some academics feel like frauds?

I thoroughly agree with the basic tenets of this article. A group of us at the European Association for Institutional Research recently identified that we all held a deep belief that we would be 'found out for the frauds we are'. I think we referred to the feeling as 'inadequacy syndrome'. However, the underpinning message of the article, that this is primarily a current issue I think is wrong: I have felt this way since I started teaching groups of students in the early 1990s. Perhaps it is also an element of humility - only the arrogant have an unshakeable view of their own value and influence.

The article raises also a question about how one perceives the role of the university nowadays. The feeling of not "playing" on the right "stage" is sometimes overwhelming because societal mechanisms contribute to this. They make university look like a crown for an absent queen/king. I also feel that vocationalism is that not often met magic wand that can give a real sense to working as an academic. Because it is all about our students and their promised future.

I do not feel fraudulent... just outraged. Tight’s (2009) analysis of ten national work surveys undertaken since 1963 which shows that the average UK academic has had a fifty five hour working week since the early 1970’s. Tight reports that “not only are academics expected to teach larger classes and research and publish more but they are also expected to document and justify all of this activity, filling in forms and undergoing evaluations.” Many of the activities that are required for good academic delivery are unseen, unrecorded, unrecognised and unrewarded and thus the ‘cost effectiveness’ of educational ‘delivery’ is predicated on recognitive injustice. Well said, Ruth Barcan.

I am reminded of R.D. Laing's 'Knots': "They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game."

This echoes a lot of the discussion in Rosalind Gill’s 2010 chapter ‘Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of the neoliberal university’ (in R.Ryan-Flood and R.Gill Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections, pp.228-245). It was reviewed in THES by Hilary Rose http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/secrecy-and-silence-in-the-research-process-feminist-reflections/412114.article

First time I read about this state of being was in grad school when I came across Peggy McIntosh's work. Barcan does a great job of laying it all out in the current contradiction that is the modern university. See McIntosh P. (1985). Feeling like a fraud. Work in progress. Wellesley, Massachusetts: Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies, Wellesley College. By the way, I tried to rate this as four stars, but somehow it got recorded as two!

The article and James Williams' rephrasing "inadequacy syndrome'" reminded me of an explanation I heard years ago. In the humanities we havedeclared it as our duty to question everything. Doubt has become our credo. If we do that honestly, how could it not backfire on us? We have condemned ourselves to self-doubt. Compare that with how economists actually doing business out there seem to see their duty: they are supposed to make people believe in the value of all sorts of papers and enterprises. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them actually believe in what they are saying - and above all, firmly belive in themselves.

I agree with Charlotte Fregona. The Barcan article is excellent but I don't think the fault lies with the academics who are keeping a light alive for the idea of the university. It strikes me that we are quite like others in other sectors, for example the NHS (eg the mid-Staffs hospital scandal), who try to maintain their commitment despite a deluge of systematic managerial stupidity. Ultimately the system cannot function without us and our commitment, to students and yes, through research, to principles of critical thinking and the truth. I think the system as it is must be heading for a breakdown - the only question is whether the systemic breakdown arrives before our individual personal breakdowns.