The tyranny of rankings favors academic corruption and impairs research
Mimicry characterises humans; we prefer to compare than think. Spanish public managers are amateurs who allow themselves to be seduced by the shallowness of rankings. Research teachers’ most important qualities are intangible, perceived with personal face-to-face evaluations: vocation to service, capacity to communicate, curiosity, patience, resilience, humbleness, discipline, generosity, dignity, responsibility, credibility, empathy, excitement, etc. Scales ignore the important point of the matter. The quantity of contributions is not an indicator of excellence. University teachers must teach and research. However, they increasingly do, and are made to, what is administrative, which obviously means paying less attention to typical noble tasks, despite administration staff members not dwindling. The world is turned upside down.
In 1976, Donald T. Campbell stated in a law that all public managers must learn: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressure and the more apt it will be distort and corrupt the social pressures it is intended to monitor”. The fundamental reason for this is human weakness, scarce moral desire, which makes us humans seek short cuts by distorting data.
In 2007 when sinister Zapatero governed, a champion of downward equality and effortless “progress”, he eliminated former teacher exams for lifelong job posts. Although those exams were not perfect, they evaluated candidates in person. “Judging people using an experts committee had to be classist”. The new accreditation system is based on stating research online that is based on the number of contributions.
As Campbell warned 30 years before, quantification would produce corruption. And so it is: the new system does not guarantee candidates’ “real authorship” in frequent publications with several authors. Lack of ethics generates roguishness: the hidden repetition of one same idea by replicating it several times to multiply merits. Detecting it is not easy because referees’ work is not acknowledged, and it is hard to know if authors repeat ideas. It can be perceived only by an expert after carefully spending time on an author’s complete production. This could be done with the previous exams, but not now.
Promoting politics naturally generates conducts. With their design, like that of laws, one has to be wise and prudent, and know human weaknesses. The young teachers who have to be evaluated by this procedure, but have become professionally stable 15 years after qualifying, will always remain. Given their complicity with their mentors, they learn the roguishness of seeking short cuts. They take on risk-free projects to ensure productivity and produce disposable research, which only serves for their evaluation. Research is no longer a purpose, but has become a means. Such research does not transcend.
Do you really think that whoever works in a set way for so long will later change? Quality research and innovation are slow. New ideas are scarce. It is necessary to be patient and calm, far from metric racket. Stimulated by quantity, speed, produces mediocrity because it avoids risk. University teachers are stressed by scales and growing digital bureaucracy, generated by managers with no vacation to service, who only appreciate research as a way to gain resources and they badly treat researchers.
The only Spaniard to win a scientific Nobel Prize occurred more than a century ago. Ramón y Cajal had precarious means, but his talent compared to that of Newton or Einstein. Ramón y Cajal’s published pieces of research advice, and opposed quantitative ideology, should be taught at universities. Excellence is not a theme of means, but an attitude; the habit of doing things well. We need qualitative evaluation systems; we need to educate young people in effort and risk. Introducing more investment would increase a country’s productivity is false if its evaluating policy, managers and advisors are not changed. Eliminating oppositions helps the mediocre to reach the top. Quantitative ideology stimulates academic corruption. Delivering the university’s power to managers is the only responsibility of the rector who chose them. These combined facts have made the public university sink in the last 13 years. Long journeys start by taking the first step.
Post published in Las Provincias