Amateur experts

Of all the lovely examples of hypocrites wringing their hands over the Leave vote, the reaction of university Vice-Chancellors has been outstanding. They urged us all to vote Remain, of course, with all the authority they could muster (very little, after clamouring for higher fees and paying themselves generously). They seem to have been really hurt by Gove's remarks about not trusting experts during the campaign. They see this as a crisis for universities themselves, the home of expertise, and are urging experts to fight back.

One prof in the Guardian (30 June 2016) contrasts his own expertise (in Political Science!) with the non-intellectual views that dominated the Leave campaign (he says -- but how does he know?).  He said :

Amid the doubt and speculation there is at least some certainty. We now know that we didn’t manage to convince enough people of the importance of our science, our truth or our facts. Voters preferred a more visceral understanding of the issues that we thought mattered. Untruths as opposed to experts. How did it come to that? 

So naively positivist -- 'our truth or our facts' indeed! He suggests university experts must now make a real effort to contact those who despise experts -- not to learn from them, of course, but to be able to hector them more effectively. He must long for the days when people just accepted whatever a nice expert told them, without any qualifications like how the 'facts' were obtained, why others disagree with them, and what the implications might be for 'truth'. That experts do disagree is apparent to anyone who reads the news or uses social media, and so is the intrusion of their vested interests - the monopoly of the paid priests of orthodoxy are gone for good

University managers have done more than any single group to attack academic expertise in their own institutions. They imposed management instead. They manage complex institutions by constructing a specially simplified and far from expert paper world, the home of the amateur. I don't think many of them have acquired any actual managerial expertise (maybe an MBA -- master of bugger all --  here and there), so they have to rely on noddy stuff they have encountered at idiotic management training 'workshops'. The ones I know would never dream of actually researching the effects of their decisions. They think simple managerial techniques and slogans can replace expertise.

This is seen best in the ludicrous practice of insisting on standard validation documents for course proposals: subject experts would have to explain to managers what their objectives were, because it would only embarrass a manager with a background, say, in Sport Science to have to actually discuss English Literature (and vice versa) . There could be no more than 5 objectives in one institution I know. Proposers had to use only predicative verbs (a fancy way of saying they had to be written in ways that promised to do things). People could only suggest 10 titles for the booklist, and had to include 4 articles. Recent publications were demanded, a hilarious requirement for courses like Philosophy or History. Actual 'discussion' took place on the basis of these ludicrous simplifications, so that rank amateurs could have a say on the academic standing of courses and even veto some. Verdicts were delivered in terms of bureaucratic pettiness (eg too many web articles) or childish impressions ('We did not feel full confidence...'), or wild assertions like 'Britain does not need more courses like this'. 

People outside unis have to realize that this is the reality of 'quality control'. The real issues of quality turn on things like whether courses are representative of their disciplines and whether the teaching is adequate in covering the main topics, but managers cannot discuss those issues of course.