Bureaucracy: why won’t scholars break their paper chains?

Ou

" Is this an awkward truth – that while research and writing are highly prized and fiercely defended by academics, form-filling provides convenient and increasingly ubiquitous relief from the taxing intellectual labour that those really important activities require?" I am afraid this is true. Very highly paid "Professors" increasingly spend their time on "Leadership" - a euphemism for bureaucracy. We went from having a VC and a Registrar with direct links to Deans and Professors to a whole army of highly paid deputy vice-chancellors, chief operating officer, and associate dean.

I agree completely. Great article Elaine. Thanks. We will be discussing these very points at this summer symposium: www.politicsofevidence.ca best, marc

Bureaucracy has become a hot topic in recent weeks following the publication of Graeber's new book. Your article read as one of the more conventional "common-sense" appeals against administration, and did not seem to offer anything beyond the "ubiquitous cliché of modern academia". In terms of an analysis of large scale 'professional bureaucracy' you have carelessly conflated bureaucracy, managerialism and marketisation. These concepts can all be used to critique the current higher education system, but they are not the same thing. In terms of form-filling, I would agree with Graeber's advice: if you suspect a form is "pointless" do not fill it out and wait to see what happens. If there is a purpose behind it, a reminder will often follow with further explanation. You will probably cut out 1/3 of the forms you complete this way. But I think the apparent indignity experienced through filling out forms is a bit extreme - purely administrative form filing for the typical academic role is likely to take less than one hour per week. But I confess that when I am working away from the university campus there can be nothing more frustrating than when an email comes in demanding my signature on a piece of paper. Bureaucracy is an unavoidable effect of large scale human organisation. Try to imagine a university without any records of its activities - do you honestly think this would lead to a better system? The challenge, as Graeber concludes, is how we can live playfully alongside bureaucracy - creating a system that is sustainable and fair, but is also open to creativity and imagination.

Just looking at the survey, I find the examples of "superfluous" documentation odd. Take grant applications - without that information how are funders, how should sponsors decide what is worth funding? The 'efficiency' behind REF is to make sure that more financial resource goes to the institutions doing the best research. You may disagree that the REF identifies the best research or the way funding is distributed, but it's obvious why it is prudent for universities to comply with it when it can mean millions of pounds of income. Without some kind of assessment process, how do those allocating the money know they are doing so effectively? You may think they're not as it is, but that means there needs to be changes to the assessment system, not to remove it entirely.

I suspect Mark Gatenby has a greater tolerance of form filling than I have. Certainly mere time spent is not the important metric. Its more the toil it takes on ones notion of self worth. The timesheet system under which I toil is particularly soul destroying in the utterly transparent nature of its pointlessness. I receive an automated reminder each month to fill in the hours I've worked across two different projects. I am costed on to each for a particular percentage of time, and I am left to assume that this percentage must be reflected back in what I report. Its important to note that not only is this impossible to do accurately, but were one to rigourously structure tasks according to a monthly time quota, rather than according to the demands generated by the project, one would be a terrible, terrible researcher. The bottom line: you must tell the system what it wants to hear, not what happened. Accordingly, I ignore these requests. Then, about every 12 months I get a personal email from someone somewhere telling me my timesheets *need to be done*. I usually ask the sender why. They reply that they *need to be done*. In its parsimony this is a difficult line to rebut. My first line of defence broken, I retreat, and spend half an hour trying to remember the password I used last time (the system makes you change the password regularly, and not reuse old ones, so this quickly becomes impossible). I stew in my rage whilst I wait for the password reset to arrive. I have a brief moment of pleasure when designing a new expletive-ridden password. The pleasure lasts as long as it takes me to realise that the next time around I wont remember this password and will have to wait for the reset again. In the spirit of resistance (and professionalism - this is my work time being wasted), I devised a means of maximal efficiency when filling out the timesheet. I divide the total monthly paid hours by the percentage I am formally allocated to each project. I then report working 18 hour days (the maximum it will allow you to enter) for as many days as it takes to fill the required quota for each of the projects. Every time I enter "18" into a box I have to tab to the next box, at which point there is a second-long pause whilst the page saves the entry, just long enough to break me out of the monotony. In this second I think about the fact that my life is finite and I'm closer to death now than I was a second ago. I end up with a timesheet that shows me working 160hrs in 9 days, and then taking the rest of the month off. Despite my act of defiance I am nevertheless furious, because the system accepts this absurd record as legitimate. My resistance isn't even noticed. In my head I wonder if clicking the Submit button does not in fact execute a Delete command. Of course it does not matter if this is true of not, the system just needs me to have that thought in my head for it to have won. In the hour since I started the task I have earned £18.90, performing an imaginary data entry job for the benefit of a machine. Now I feel guilty as well as angry. The system is called "AGRESSO", as if the designers wanted me to know I'm being trolled.

Surely, it's a great article. However, why are academics disinterested in developing performance and accountability indicators themselves? Why does bureaucracy do the job?Georg Stompel

Most professions involve an element of paperwork, why do academics think they should be different? From my experience many spend twice as long moaning about it as it would take to just do it, and they complain and vent to the admin teams they see daily, who are not those senior managers with gold-plated salaries!

Murraygoulden, I suspect you are not alone!

Great article. But in addition, I'd emphasise that the growth of audit culture and bullshit jobs comes out of a crisis of authority. For a long time few have defended the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, truth and beauty. 'Student centredness', employability, social cohesion, social justice, self-esteem, diversity, sustainability etc have crowded out the acquisition and development of knowledge. Even in University mission statements, knowledge is often just one of a long list of goals. These extrinsic goals (if not the bureaucracy accompanying them) have been established by the Left and the Right. For the former, too often the transformative power of education has come to refer to transforming people, rather than enabling them to transform themselves. Without a unifying commitment to knowledge, what is a university for? What is distinctive? In fact, very little. So both institutions and individuals seek to justify it through extrinsic goals. Bureaucracies seek to measure these to show the 'value' of the institution. Without a clear mission with knowledge at the centre, accountability revolves around extrinsic goals. and education itself becomes an instrument of these extrinsic goals. That has been internalised across the sector, as I think you describe well. So, yes, let's stop filling in the forms. But a bold reassertion of the authority and centrality of knowledge is needed. I suspect that may be a harder argument to win. But is, in an important respect, logically prior to binning the forms.