Iaşul are un nou academician. ”Nu este uşor să merg pe urmele tatălui”
Valeriu V. Cotea, fiul celebrului oenolog, a devenit membru corespondent al Academiei Române
Profesorul universitar Valeriu V. Cotea, specialist în oenologie şi cadru didactic al Universităţii de Ştiinţe Agricole şi Medicină Veterinară „Ion Ionescu de la Brad“, a fost ales vineri, 27 septembrie, membru corespondent al Academiei Române, filiala Iaşi. Votul a fost secret şi dat în cadrul Adunării generale a Academiei Române.
Profesor la Facultatea de Horticultură şi coordonator al Centrului de Cercetări pentru Oenologie din cadrul Filialei Iaşi a Academiei Române, profesorul are o experienţă vastă, recunoscută la nivel internaţional. Acesta a continuat munca tatălui său, binecunoscutul academician Valeriu Cotea, fiind specializat în viticultură şi oenologie din 1991, cercetând în mod special potenţialul biotehnologic al soiurilor de viţă de vie pe centre naturale de producţie, dar acoperind şi domeniile chimiei vinului, autenticitatea vinurilor, materiale şi tehnologii inovative în industria vinurilor. „În primul rând sunt încântat. Este o răsplată a unei a munci, şi este important şi pentru universitate. Până la urmă, este un prestigiu al universităţii şi al Iaşului, toate acestea se adună şi contează, e un punctaj emoţional. Nu este uşor să merg pe urmele tatălui, este un anumit reper, şi atunci trebuie să fac un efort în plus. Este, oricum, un pas foarte mare“, a declarat Valeriu V. Cotea.
Acesta este autor sau coautor a 25 de volume de specialitate şi a scris peste 500 de lucrări ştiinţifice indexate în bazele de date internaţionale. Din 1998, acesta este expert din partea României în cadrul Organizaţiei Internaţionale a Viei şi Vinului, unde a deţinut diverse funcţii de conducere, printre care şi cea de preşedinte.
Publicație : Ziarul de Iași
Scrisoare deschisă a unui profesor de la Facultatea de Drept din Bucureşti: Îmi doresc să nu ne mai conducă securiştii
Corneliu-Liviu Popescu, profesor în cadrul Facultăţii de Drept a transmis o scrisoare deschisă conducerii Universităţii Bucureşti în care a solicitat, în contextul alegerilor din această perioadă, existenţa unor criterii clare privind excluderea persoanelor care au colaborat cu Securitatea, alături de promovarea femeilor în funcţii de conducere.
Redăm integral scrisoarea deschisă:
„Alegeri la Universitatea din Bucureşti - scrisoare deschisă pentru o conducere nesecurista şi feminină
Stimaţi Colegi, membri ai Comunităţîi academice a Universităţii din Bucureşti,
Mă adresez Dumneavoastră în mod public, în perspectiva apropiatelor alegeri care vor avea loc în Universitatea noastră. Nu deţin şi nici nu candidez pentru vreun mandat sau vreo funcţie de conducere, am în vedere doar interesul general al Comunităţîi noastre academice.
Sunt profesor la Şcoală doctorală de Drept a Facultăţii de Drept. Sunt membru al Comunităţîi academice a Universităţii din Bucureşti de exact 30 de ani, primii 4 ca student, toţi ceilalţi în calitate de cadru didactic. Aici mi-am făcut studiile universitare juridice - licenţă, studii postuniversitare, doctorat şi postdoctorat -, precum şi cele de formare pedagogică, aici am parcurs prin concurs toate treptele carierei didactice - preparator, asistent, lector, conferenţiar, profesor, conducător de doctorat. Sunt profesor şi la Colegiul Juridic de Studii Europene al Universităţii Paris 1 Panteon-Sorbona, precum şi avocat în Barourile Bucureşti şi Paris.
Am ales forma unui demers public întrucât, deşi m-am adresat în scris structurii administrative competenţe a Rectoratului cu întrebarea vizând posibilitatea de a publică instituţional un mesaj de interes general pentru Comunitatea academică privind viitoarele alegeri, am fost ignorat, neprimind vreun răspuns.
În primul rând, îmi doresc să nu ne mai conducă securiştii mai rău ca pe vremea comuniştilor. Îmi doresc că în toate structurile şi funcţiile de conducere academică să fie numai persoane care nu au fost securişti. Am în vedere orice formă de colaborare cu Securitatea statului totalitar comunist, nu doar cea calificată de lege drept poliţie politică. Prin urmare, îi rog pe toţi candidaţii să prezinte atât o declaraţie notarială că nu au fost cadre sau colaboratori de niciun fel ai Securităţii, cât şi un certificat „virgin” de la CNSAS (din care să nu rezulte că au avut angajament olograf, nume conspirativ şi note informative olografe, adică nu doar că nu au fost securişti „că poliţie politică”, ci pur şi simplu că nu au fost securişti, nici măcar „de drept comun”).
În al doilea rând, sunt surprins că, măcar trecând pe holurile Palatului Facultaţii de Drept (prea mult timp şi sediu al Rectoratului), nu deranjează faptul că, din toate portretele rectorilor Universităţîi din Bucureşti, de la 1864 şi până astăzi, ne privesc numai bărbaţi. Este complet inadmisibil că, în istoria Universităţii din Bucureşti, niciodată funcţia de rector să nu fi fost deţinută de vreo femeie. De prea multe ori am auzit - şi am protestat cu repulsie - afirmaţii ale unor „universitari”, că locul femeilor este în învăţământul preuniversitar, dacă se poate preliceal.
Unei asemenea gândiri de cavernă (chiar dacă nu este generalizată), dar şi unei asemenea situaţii statistice (care este univocă) trebuie să li se răspundă cu măsuri pozitive de protecţie. În Universitatea din Bucureşti sunt foarte multe femei care excelează atât profesional, cât şi managerial, deci care pot ocupa cu cinste funcţia de rector. Este momentul că Universitatea din Bucureşti să dovedească faptul că nu este machistă, este momentul că Universitatea din Bucureşti să aleagă, pentru prima dată în istoria să, o femeie în funcţia de rector.
De aceea, îi rog pe toţi bărbaţii din Comunitatea academică să arate că, pentru ei, drepturile omului şi democraţia nu sunt simple fraze goale urlate pe străzi sau pe la televiziuni, ci sunt o valoare profundă, pe care o interiorizează şi o conştientizează, deci să nu îşi depună candidatura la funcţia de rector. Îmi doresc doar candidaturi feminine la funcţia de rector la aceste alegeri - o măsură excepţională şi temporară, determinată de situaţia excepţională a exclusivităţii masculinităţii rectorului în istoria Universităţîi din Bucureşti. Bărbaţii care doresc să candideze pentru funcţia de rector îşi pot pune virilitatea incomensurabilă în slujba Comunităţii academice şi din funcţia de prorector, că ajutor al unei doamne rector.
Va rog deci, stimaţi membri ai Comunităţîi academice a Universităţii din Bucureşti, să asigurăm cu toţii, în urmă apropiatelor alegeri academice, o conducere nesecurista şi feminină a Universităţii noastre.
Profesor Corneliu-Liviu Popescu", se arată în scrisoarea deschisă, conform mediafax.ro.
Alegerile generale la Universitatea din Bucureşti pentru mandatul 2019-2023 încep luni, 7 octombrie. Prima etapă vizează depunerea candidaturilor, care este desfăşurată între 7 şi 11 octombrie 2019, potrivit calendarului.
În această perioada se vor depune candidaturile pentru funcţia de Director de Departament, pentru calitatea de membru în Consiliul Departamentului, calitatea de reprezentant al departamentului în Consiliul facultăţii şi pentru calitatea de reprezentant al facultăţii în Senat.
Desfăşurarea propriu-zisă a alegerilor va avea loc între 15 şi 25 octombrie 2019, conform datelor Calendarului alegerilor UB pentru mandatul 2019-2023. Acestea se vor desfăşura la nivel de departamente, respectiv la nivel de facultate pentru reprezentanţii facultăţilor în Senat.
Potrivit datelor calendarului, prezentarea Raportului de activitate a Senatului pentru perioada decembrie 2015 - noiembrie 2019 va avea loc, luni, 4 noiembrie, tot atunci urmând să se desfăşoare şi şedinţa comună a Senatului pentru validarea alegerilor de la nivelul facultăţilor.
În intervalul 5-14 noiembrie 2019 va avea loc depunerea candidaturilor pentru funcţia de Preşedinte al Senatului, urmând că la dată de 20 noiembrie să de desfăşoare alegerile pentru funcţia de Preşedinte al Senatului.
Ultimele alegeri sunt cele pentru ocuparea poziţiei de Rector al Universităţîi din Bucureşti. Depunerea candidaturilor pentru funcţia de Rector va avea loc în perioada 20-27 noiembrie 2019.
Alegerea Rectorului Universităţîi din Bucureşti se va desfăşura în două tururi. Primul dintre acestea va avea loc în dată de 4 decembrie 2019, urmând că turul ÎI să aibă loc la o săptămâna distanţă, respectiv în 11 decembrie 2019.
Şedinţa de Senat pentru validarea alegerii Rectorului este programată în eventualitatea în care rectorul este ales din turul I, pentru dată de 11 decembrie 2019. Pentru situaţia în care acesta este ales după turul ÎI, validarea alegerii Rectorului va avea loc în 18 decembrie 2019.
Publicație : Adevărul
What is the point of a university press?
Recent controversy over the future directions of both Stanford and Melbourne university presses have raised questions about the role of in-house publishing arms in a world of commercialisation, impact agendas, alternative facts – and ever-diminishing monograph sales. Anna McKie reports
Earlier this year, Stanford University provoked an outpouring of anger from its academics when it announced that it would be cutting the $1.7 million annual subsidy it provides to its in-house press.
Despite boasting the world’s third-largest endowment, $26.5 billion, the university explained that the cut was being made for budgetary reasons, as the press – founded in 1892 and publishing more than 130 books each year across the humanities, natural and social sciences – was operating at a loss at a time that Stanford’s endowment was performing poorly.
But hundreds of academics and students, from both inside and outside the university, decried the move, described in a petition as “severely damaging and likely fatal” to “the oldest press in the western United States, with a long tradition of publishing major works in many areas of inquiry”.
“If we use a purely financial metric to assess the value of academic books, the scholarly mission of the academy will be lost,” the petition went on. “Presses will publish only profitable books, graduate students will write only profitable dissertations, and tenure will be awarded based on scholarship that is profitable. This will skew research and publication in exactly the wrong direction, away from the mission and purpose of a university, which is pursuit of knowledge and truth.”
The vociferousness of the protests forced the administration to restore the subsidy, and the press appears safe for the moment.
But the incident shone a spotlight on an increasingly pressing question in academia and publishing: what exactly is the purpose of a university press? Does it serve its parent institution best by generating revenue? After all, university presses are not the only publishers of academic work. Plenty of academic publishers also do so. The difference is that university presses have their own “lists” of areas or disciplines in which they will publish, mostly related to their parent university’s existing research strengths. But is that really enough to justify a hefty institutional subsidy?
Peter Berkery, the executive director at the global Association of University Presses, concedes that university presses do find themselves “at a bit of a crossroads”, with their role increasingly being questioned. For him, they service their parent institution by demonstrating its high-quality research and enhancing its reputation. But they also serve another two stakeholders. One is the academic body, whose research they promote. The other is wider society, providing a vehicle for university research to be disseminated. “A lot of stuff is changing, but those three pillars have been there since Cambridge [University Press] was set up in the 1500s,” he tells Times Higher Education.
However, according to a European Commission report published earlier this year, universities “have partially and gradually disengaged from their roles as publishers” over the years. The only exceptions, it says, are in the humanities and social sciences, “where university presses still play a visible role”, and the few cases where universities “own robust and long-lived publishing presses that are also competitive in the commercial sphere”. This decline is largely because the original business model for university presses – selling academic books – is largely considered unsustainable. Ten or 15 years ago, an academic book would be expected to sell 1,000 to 1,600 copies in the first five years, according to one publisher, but that figure is now about 200.
The traditional model clings on because as monograph sales have declined, their prices have correspondingly risen. Moreover, compared with what libraries have to pay for journals, they are still relatively cheap, according to Canberra-based publishing consultant Andrew Schuller, a long-serving editorial director of humanities and social sciences in Oxford University Press’ academic division. However, digital operations are eating into more and more of university libraries’ already declining budgets, he adds, meaning that they can afford to buy diminishing quantities of monographs.
The problem, Schuller notes, is that publishing a scholarly monograph remains closely “intertwined with a professional career – and getting tenure – in the humanities and social sciences”. So economics should not necessarily be the last word on whether university presses should be supported by their parent institutions.
This view is endorsed by David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon professor of comparative literature at Stanford. The problem at his university, Palumbo-Liu believes, is that administrators “don’t understand the difference between the purpose of commercial publishing, which is to reach a large audience, and academic publishing, which is meant to reach a smaller audience, [disseminating] well-researched, objective knowledge and interesting ideas that have been tested by the academy”. The decision to end support for Stanford University Press overlooked “the university as a place for the free exchange of ideas. In a world where facts are almost a thing of the past, this is our equivalent of a free press.”
Nor is Palumbo-Liu alone in noting that, at only 0.03 per cent of its $6.3 billion annual budget, Stanford’s subsidy to its press is very small beer, accounting for just a fifth of the salary earned by the university’s American football coach, for instance.
“It really shows how precipitously we’ve fallen from the aim of an education to the mandates of fiscal responsibility,” he says. “These days, people see universities as job preparation centres, so [universities have adopted] ‘industry logic’.”
Berkery concurs. “The biggest issue is money, but seen through the filter of people controlling it, who do not have a robust understanding of the value of a university press,” he says. “What happened in Stanford was part of a broader trend of not understanding the value of humanities study in higher education.”
To stay economically viable, most medium or small university presses have diversified their offerings. For example, in Australia, the University of New South Wales Press balances the publication of academic books with a line in trade books, and manages the bookshop on campus. Meanwhile, the University of Queensland Press publishes profitable poetry and fiction – including children’s fiction – alongside its scholarly work.
Kathy Bail, chief executive of UNSW Press, says that in Australia “we all receive recurrent funding of some kind from the institution, but also have to show there is revenue from other sources.”
Something similar is reputedly true for other medium-sized university presses, such as the UK’s Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh university presses. Some US presses have it a little easier. Harvard University Press, for instance, has a large independent endowment and is a non-profit corporation of the university, while University of Chicago Press has a successful book-distribution business. But the biggest money-spinners are the world’s two largest and oldest university presses: Cambridge University Press, with sales of £300 million a year, and the mighty Oxford University Press, which boasts sales of more than £800 million a year. In the latter’s case, that allowed it to give more than £200 million to its parent university in 2017-18, according to the University of Oxford’s financial statement.
David Clark, academic director at Oxford University Press, says the 500-year-old publisher differs from other university presses in that it is engaged in a wider set of activities – most notably, education publishing: “We’re not reliant on one market, which means we can be more resilient, he says. Despite this, he says, the press has had to “learn to evolve continually”. And he adds that its focus remains that of any other university press: to support the university in its ambitions for excellence in research, scholarship and education.
Yet, for some academics, any involvement with trade publishing is not the business of a university press. In January, for instance, Melbourne University Publishing shocked the publishing world by announcing that it would no longer produce the general interest non-fiction books that it had used to supplement its institutional subsidy and that had made the press as familiar to Australians as OUP is to British readers.
The move followed a review into the direction of the publishing house. According to Guardian Australia, the decision had a very particular cause, rooted in tensions between the university and the publisher over the publication of a journalist's book on George Pell, the Australian cardinal convicted last December of child sexual abuse. Pell’s lawyer, Allan Myers, became the university’s chancellor in 2017, the year the book was published, and, according to the newspaper, has dismissed the press’ recent output as “airport trash”.
However, there was also internal pressure from Melbourne academics for the press to concentrate on scholarly titles, the press’ chair, Laurie Muller, told the paper. Muller resigned in the wake of the decision, alongside chief executive, Louise Adler, and a number of fellow directors. He was pessimistic about the future of a press that had seen record profits in 2017 despite 40 per cent of its output being purely scholarly works, with a significant proportion of the rest constituting academic research cast for a wider readership.
The press’ chair, Warren Bebbington, admits that “academic publishing is scarcely a viable business”. But the former University of Adelaide vice-chancellor and now professorial fellow at Melbourne argues that the changes at Melbourne University Publishing merely constitute a “refocus back on [the press’] mission”. In its constitution, its core objective is to produce scholarly works from within the academy, but it had reached the point where academic titles amounted to only about a third of what it was doing, in Bebbington's estimation.
Bebbington confirms that the move prompted “delight” among academics. “The University of Melbourne, like many universities, regards the press as an important cultural ornament to what it does, as well as being an important means of communicating its research finds to the academic community and the general public,” he says. “It’s not fundamentally changing but going back to that.”
This alignment with the parent university is “absolutely critical”, according to UNSW’s Bail. “You always have to be attentive to what’s happening in your own university and showing on a regular basis how you add value to the university community,” she says.
The key purpose of a press, she believes, is to be “a part of the university’s social and community engagement efforts, and contribute to the global impact of the university”. As an Australian university press, UNSW’s commitment to publishing Australian research and defining the Australian experience is particularly important, she says.
One frequently cited way of boosting the impact of university research is open access publishing. However, most of the progress that has been made since the movement began two decades ago has been in journal publishing. For some observers, open access monographs will be the saviour of university presses, allowing them to engage a vastly wider audience with their parent universities' research output. The UK, for instance, plans to make open access a condition of submitting monographs to the research excellence framework after the current one, likely in 2028.
For others, though, such a move sounds the death knell for university presses, destroying what remains of academic publishing’s business model. Under the gold open access model, the cost of publishing is paid by the author. Yet academic monographs cost a lot more to produce than journal papers, while researchers in the humanities and social sciences often have little in the way of research grants to draw on.
Because of this, many of the established university presses have not made open access a priority. For instance, at UNSW, “open access is not part of our model at the moment”, Bail says. “But we’re watching it very closely. If there was demand from a particular discipline then we would look at it – but it would require additional funding.”
Not everyone takes this cautious approach, however. Paul Ayris, UCL’s pro vice-provost for library services, wholeheartedly believes that open access is the future for monographs. In 2015, he pushed for the creation of the UK’s first fully open access university press at UCL, to be a “positively disruptive force…We wanted to share UCL’s research output – and that of other scholars outside UCL – with the wider community, and we thought open access was the best way of doing that.”
The traditional monograph publishing model is “so constricted” that he would be “surprised if it manages to carry on being viable over the next five to 10 years...If your target is to make 200 sales in a global market there is something wrong there.”
Instead, UCL Press measures success by number of downloads. Ayris says the 100 or so books that it has published so far have been downloaded 2 million times, across 232 countries. “Each of these books is getting more downloads than it would have got if you were just using the traditional model of selling paper copies,” he says. “Universities need to relate to society in a better way by making their knowledge and wisdom available to individuals who want to experience reading new subject areas.”
The view that the whole of society can benefit from what a university is doing “can get a bit lost”, but that does not make it any less urgent, Ayris says. The culture won’t change overnight, but, eventually, open access will become embedded in the system, he believes.
In UCL’s case, the university’s recognition of the press’ role in its mission has led it to provide a “generous grant” to fund its staff and infrastructure costs, while some of its activities are subsumed into existing operations at the institution.
“I don’t agree with the statements that open access monograph publishing is difficult,” Ayris says. “There have been challenges, but our experience is that it is quite straightforward if you have a clear workflow and you know what you are trying to achieve.”
Nor need it be very expensive; indeed, UCL Press offers its services to other universities that want to begin open access publishing but don’t want to invest in the entire infrastructure, Ayris says. It has recently signed a contract with Dublin City University, its first with a university outside the UK, to help it establish the Republic of Ireland’s first open access university press.
“My dream is that every university will set up its own, or buy into a shared infrastructure," he says. "Together, we can start to reassert influence over scholarly publication and how material is disseminated. It really serves that public mission that universities talk about.”
A number of other open access university presses that focus on disseminating the work of their parent universities have indeed sprung up in the UK recently. One publishing expert suggested to THE that the main reason is to ensure that the universities’ research is “REF-able” in 2028. But a number of small, independent presses have also been established with less worldly motives. One of these is Open Book Publishers, a not-for-profit operation that was set up in 2008 as a result of what its director and co-founder, Rupert Gatti, depicts as "frustration with the way some of the university presses were behaving”.
The publisher operates similarly to a university press in some ways, carrying out traditional peer review. However, it is “not looking to fill a certain number of books in a certain field, or to turn away books that don’t fit our list”, Gatti explains. It does not charge authors but does ask them to apply for any grants that might be available to offset the publishing costs, since “you have to pay wages” to press staff. To that end, the publisher also sells printed versions of its open access books, and runs a library membership scheme, whereby university libraries pay £300 a year in return for access, for all staff, students and alumni, to the various formatted digital editions of every Open Book Publishers title, as well as a discount on any paper copies ordered.
But Gatti does not recognise the average figure of $30,000 to produce a monograph quoted by a recent survey of 16 variously sized university presses in the US: “That is a very different cost-base [from ours]. And yet there hasn’t been a single press that’s asked us how we do it for so much less. Traditional presses aren’t seriously considering how they change their practices in the digital age yet” – even though “high-cost books that are hardly disseminated are undermining the core purpose of the university”.
Indeed, the existing university presses are poor at innovation across the board, he says. By contrast, “we’ve got musical works that are embedded in what we publish; there’s also video embedded, and works that are linked through archives. There are QR codes in the printed work that you can scan on your mobile phones to link to other content.”
Continued public funding depends on justifying how it is spent, Gatti says – especially in the humanities and social sciences, whose benefits can be harder to see than those of the sciences. “If academia is going to continue having long-form publications as an important part of research, then digital possibilities will have to be embraced,” he predicts.
Schuller says that there have been suggestions in the US, Australia and UK that medium-sized presses should come together and seek funding as a group for open access and digitisation, either from the government or a philanthropic institution such as the Mellon Foundation.
“I think most universities would be happy if their press was self-supporting…Not many of them build up reserves, which you need to have if you are going to get into the digital world, which is expensive,” Schuller says. “OUP can do it because it generates a lot of cash, which it invests back in developing IT systems both for operation management and digital publishing. Medium-sized American university presses can’t afford that.”
Nor can medium-sized UK university presses. But nor are academics pushing them to come up with a solution. According to Ivon Asquith, a non-executive director at Edinburgh University Press and, previously, academic director at OUP, there is a “striking lack of interest” in open access among academics from the humanities and social sciences. He also points out that there is little evidence that masses of people are longing to read humanities and social sciences monographs – especially online, as opposed to in print.
The main problem, for Asquith, is the sheer number of books that are currently published: “This is one of the reasons why each title sells fewer copies…people don’t have time to read it,” he says. “Overproduction is also a reason why it’s difficult to get your book into a shop or to get it reviewed. The market is flooded.”
However, he says, the effect of overproduction is to make publishers more important, given the “quality control” that they carry out, signalling to readers which books are worth reading. This is particularly true for university presses, which, according to Schuller, are more self-conscious about being seen to publish books of “scholarly quality” (which is also one reason that their costs are higher, given the screening that this entails).
Ali Shaw, chief executive of University of Bristol Press, agrees. Integrity and high quality are particularly important aspects of her press, she says, especially in today’s post-truth world: “Finding effective ways of addressing the challenges to ‘truth’, expertise and the use of reliable evidence and data are at the top our list,” she says.
Shaw, who has led Policy Press since before it became Bristol's in-house press in 2016, says university presses are also well placed to “help shape academic disciplines, open up new thinking to a broad readership and change perceptions, policies and practice”.
What Shaw would like to see is a recognition from policymakers “that not all publishing or publishers are the same”. For example, open access publishing policies that work well for scientific journals are unlikely to work well for social science books. “We would also like to see an understanding of the positive contribution that university presses make to scholarly communications, be they ‘traditional’ or ‘new’ presses,” she says.
At a time of technological advancement, financial strain and a push for universities to have wider social impact, it is inevitable that the role of university presses is coming in for some scrutiny. If monograph readership continues to diminish, institutional support may leave them as the last traditional publishers standing, as their commercial rivals move out of the scholarly market entirely. But not all may survive, as online alternatives proliferate.
For the moment, however, Melbourne’s Bebbington points out that the number of traditional university presses has held steady, even as independent academic publishers and smaller open access university presses have begun to proliferate. In that sense, it is very much a buyer’s market.
“It’s a changeable sector but, for academics, they now have an array of outlets for their work,” he says. “It’s a much more varied set of possibilities, and I think that’s a good thing.”
Publicație : The Times
Most European campuses ‘use journal impact factor to judge staff’
Preliminary results of EUA survey suggest three-quarters of responding institutions draw on much-criticised metric
European universities continue to rely heavily on publication metrics – in particular, the much-criticised journal impact factor – when assessing academic performance, a study suggests.
However, preliminary results of a survey of about 200 institutions by the European University Association indicate that one of the main obstacles to reforming research assessment is resistance to change from academics themselves.
The survey, to be published in full later this month, says that research publications and attracting external research funding were rated most highly when universities were asked which type of work mattered most for academic careers, selected as being important or very important by 90 per cent and 81 per cent of respondents respectively.
Asked how academic work was evaluated for career progression decisions, publication and citation metrics ranked top, selected as important or very important by 82 per cent of respondents.
And, despite criticism of journal impact factor – a citation-based evaluation of the periodical in which an academic’s work is published, not an assessment of the impact of the paper itself – three-quarters of institutions said that they used it to evaluate staff performance, more than any other metric. Academics argue that journal impact factor is an unfair metric and can be open to manipulation.
Seventy per cent of respondents to the EUA survey said that they used academics’ h-index, a measure of productivity and citation impact, as part of their assessments.
Bregt Saenen, the EUA’s policy and project officer, said that the widespread use of journal impact factors was “one of the most disappointing results from the survey”.
“The quality of a journal article should be assessed based on the merit of the research/article itself, not on the reputation of the journal in which the article is published,” he said.
Dr Saenen said that universities needed to move towards “a less limited set of evaluation practices to assess a wider range of academic work”.
With this in mind, Dr Saenen said that it was “encouraging” to see other areas being regarded as important or very important by respondents, such as research impact and knowledge transfer (68 per cent), supervision (63 per cent) and teaching (62 per cent).
Seventy-four per cent of respondents said that qualitative peer review assessment was an important or very important factor in career progression decisions.
However, asked what the main barriers to reviewing research assessment were, 33 per cent cited resistance to reform from academics themselves. This was one of the most popular responses, alongside the complexity of reform (46 per cent), lack of institutional capacity (38 per cent) and concern over increased costs (33 per cent).
Dr Saenen said that key barriers for universities were likely to be “accountability to research funding organisations and governments in their approach to research assessment, as well as the influence of the competitive environment in research and innovation”.
Reviewing research assessment procedures “is a shared responsibility and will require a concerted approach”, he said.
Publicație : The Times
UUK president aims to show degree value ‘not all about money’
Julia Buckingham also aims to protect funding, as response to Augar review is debated
The new president of Universities UK has said that she aims to counter policy focus on graduate earnings by communicating to the public that the value of a degree is “not all about earning money”, and to secure funding protection at a time of political uncertainty.
Brunel University London vice-chancellor Julia Buckingham, who set out with the ambition to become a concert pianist and then worked in the pharmaceutical industry before academia drew her in, spoke to Times Higher Education after starting her two-year term as president last month.
One key front for UUK, which represents universities in talks with the government, will be the future of funding in England, with ministers expected to reject the Augar review’s recommendation to lower fees to £7,500.
Ahead of an imminent election, the three major political parties in England have “different views on funding”, said Professor Buckingham.
“What matters to universities is that the unit of resource is protected,” she said. “We can’t deliver high-quality programmes unless we have an appropriate level of resource.”
Another key issue raised by the Augar review, she continued, was the question of how “the value of a degree” is defined (the review has been criticised for its focus on graduate earnings by course and university).
A recent UUK survey of student views on value found that earnings were not students’ top priority when choosing their courses, Professor Buckingham said. “They were actually interested in the subject, the learning, the environment, the broader value you get from university,” she said
Brunel’s graduate earnings figures were “very good and we have significant added value, if you look at the entrance qualifications [against] earnings”, said Professor Buckingham.
But, cautioning against solely focusing on earnings, she said that Brunel educates “occupational therapists, nurses, teachers and a lot of our students aspire to do jobs that they see as socially valuable”.
A UUK working group is examining this question of defining the value of degrees and will seek a range of views, including from students.
After that work, the key task will be communicating its findings to policymakers and the public, said Professor Buckingham. “We are a world-leading sector and I don’t think we do enough at the moment to talk to people about how incredibly valuable education is,” she said. “Education transforms lives and it’s not all about earning money.”
She added of that mission: “We have to communicate beyond the people we normally communicate with.”
UUK’s MadeAtUni campaign, which bills itself as showing the general public “the impact of universities…on people, lives and communities”, has been “getting somewhere”, said Professor Buckingham. “What I’d like a better understanding of is where it’s getting, so we can get that narrative out to people of what research is really about,” she said.
On another priority area, she argued strongly against the Augar review’s recommendation to end loans for students taking university foundation years, which she said provided access for disadvantaged students more successfully than other routes.
On Brexit, Professor Buckingham said that UUK was “in constant contact with the government” about the importance of protecting current EU staff and students, as well as securing future mobility and maintaining the UK’s involvement in EU research programmes. She added: “Research networks take a long time to develop; they can be destroyed quite easily.”
Back in her teens, Professor Buckingham’s original ambition was to be a concert pianist, before she realised she “wasn’t quite good enough”.
In the latter stages of A levels she encountered an “absolutely inspirational biology teacher who had just finished her PhD and was very keen to tell us all about her research”, prompting her to turn down a university place to study medicine and opt for a degree in zoology at the University of Sheffield.
“I absolutely loved the city,” Professor Buckingham said. “It’s a civic university: the university loved the city and the city loved the university.”
On graduating, she worked for the drug company now known as GlaxoSmithKline. But after discovering that pharmaceutical research at that time was “pretty dull” and she “wasn’t going to get anywhere without a PhD”, she took a doctorate at the University of London.
“I loved research, but I also found when I did my PhD that I loved teaching,” she said. That led to a career as an academic at Imperial College London, where she studied the neurobiology of stress and how challenges to the immune system influence the body’s stress response, before a switch into management as a pro-rector.
At Brunel, one of her ambitions is “that we become a proper civic university for Hillingdon”, the institution’s west London borough, which she described as “culturally diverse”, with “some really deprived areas”.
Noting Brunel’s breadth of student and course diversity, she said: “Universities should open doors for people. But the doors should be [to] careers that are going to be rewarding to [individual graduates] and of value to society very broadly.”
Publicație : The Times
Focusing on the needs of black students
Historically black colleges and universities in the US have never had the funding or the prestige enjoyed by many other institutions. Yet, argue Marybeth Gasman and Thai-Huy Nguyen, they may have much to teach us all about diversity
America’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were crucial in the establishment of an African American middle class. The 105 that still exist continue to make a major contribution to African American success across many disciplines, especially the sciences.
It is only right that we celebrate this success. But here, as scholars who have studied and worked in collaboration with HBCUs for 33 years, we want to make a different argument. In carrying out the research for our new book, Making Black Scientists: A Call to Action (Harvard University Press), we have come to realise that the practices and approaches adopted by HBCUs to promote scientific attainment among their students have important lessons for all universities.
The first HBCUs were established in the US in 1865, shortly after the end of the Civil War. They were thus born out of segregation, at a time when most institutions systematically excluded African Americans. This makes them unlike any other universities or colleges. The only parallel is the system set up for the non-white population by the South African government under the apartheid regime in 1959. But while there were once nearly 200 HBCUs in the US, South Africa created only five, including some designed for “coloureds” and Indians as well as Africans. Now most have been merged with nearby white institutions (with the exception of the University of the Western Cape, which was established for the “coloured” population). In the US, although there have been a few mergers, and talk of a few more, the majority of HBCUs have maintained the infrastructure of their origins and remain majority African American, while today enrolling a more diverse student population.
As with their South African counterparts, American HBCUs always operated under unequal and structurally inferior conditions. Research by the two of us and others has shown that there are cases where public HBCUs are forced to operate with considerably less funding (per full-time enrolled student) than that given to counterpart predominantly white institutions (PWIs) in the same state, or where they suffer disproportionately from any cuts.
Yet their achievements are remarkable. According to the National Science Foundation, HBCUs confer nearly 15 per cent of all bachelor’s degrees (16 per cent in the sciences) awarded to black students despite making up only 3 per cent of all post-secondary institutions in the US. Xavier University of Louisiana now produces more black alumni who go on to graduate from medical schools than any other institution in the country. In fact, along with Xavier, according to the Association for American Medical Colleges, four other HBCUs – Spelman College, Morehouse University, Howard University and Florida A&M University – are ranked in the top 20 for supplying the largest numbers of black applicants to medical school. When we consider that these HBCUs enrol 2,000 to 10,000 students and are competing against much larger and better resourced institutions such as the University of Florida and the University of Texas at Austin (both with more than 50,000 students), it is clear that HBCUs are doing something right, which any university committed to diversity and creating a positive learning environment for all students should reflect on and learn from. Here we highlight four features that were common to all 10 of the institutions we studied and that contributed heavily to student achievement in the sciences.
First of all, HBCUs generally value collaboration over competition, and especially in the sciences. At most colleges and universities, the sciences are highly competitive, individualistic and built on the idea of “weeding out” students in early classes. As a result of this culture, students often see classmates as competition and don’t want to help each other. Such an atmosphere can demotivate women and people of colour, as they tend to amplify the feelings of loneliness and isolation they already experience in a sea of white men.
At HBCUs, by contrast, students are encouraged to work together and to understand how their success is tied to each other’s. They are urged to ensure that their classmates understand the material, to share notes, to work with peers who might be taking longer to understand the material and to socialise with each other in order to build trust.
For instance, at Prairie View A&M University, one of the 10 institutions in our study, a student shared with us how his peers kept each other accountable during study sessions: “If somebody was missing…we would text them, ‘Where are you? I think you’re taking a nap, but I think it’s time for you to get up.’ We would call them and say, ‘Hey, get up!’ and they’re like, ‘No, I’m sleepy.’ We’re like, ‘We don’t care. You’ve got to get up.’” Such a culture emphasises communal well-being where individual success is tied to the success of others.
Second, HBCUs provide same-race role models for black students. Whereas the faculty makeup at PWIs is 76 per cent white, HBCUs have a faculty that is 60 per cent black (with the remaining 40 per cent being highly diverse). Our research shows that being able to see someone like you in the classroom and having an opportunity to forge friendships with them promotes persistence in science. Even though black professionals make up only 6 per cent of US scientists and engineers, students begin to believe that a career in science – either in industry, academia or medicine – is possible and not merely a dream.
Sometimes white students don’t understand why this is so important. It is the norm for them to be surrounded by professors who look like them and often come from similar cultural backgrounds; in other words, post-secondary education is an extension of their home life. For non-white students, on the other hand, there is a challenging period of transition and adjustment to a university culture that privileges white and middle-class norms. Such students have to exert greater energy and resources to find their place in the campus community.
Gender adds an additional dimension to this. Young black women are far more likely to be taught by black female faculty in HBCUs than in PWIs. The latter can therefore act as crucial role models for their black female students. When we talked to one at North Carolina Central University about the under-representation of black women in the sciences, she said, “I want to be a statistic in a positive manner. So that’s one thing that motivates me a lot, and just looking at my professor and seeing how well versed she is in everything. It’s a mood motivator and eye opener to have her…Seeing how well versed she is in the material and how much she knows is inspiring. And she looks like me.”
Third, HBCUs, by and large, assume success on the part of their students upon matriculation. At many PWIs, African American students are viewed from a deficit perspective: their background is deemed to be an inherent disadvantage, while the structural barriers that make it difficult for under-represented communities to achieve success are ignored. At HBCUs, however, students told us that faculty and staff believed in their success even more than they did. The academics confirmed that they believed in the capability of all their students – even those who required developmental support due to the quality of their schooling. It is worth making clear that this did not mean lowering their expectations or standards. They believed that all students have the capacity to succeed, to meet those expectations, if they are provided with the appropriate resources and opportunities.
As a professor at Cheyney University put it, “It’s incumbent upon teachers…at HBCUs to have high expectations of the student despite what they may think the students’ individual weaknesses may be. If [faculty] don’t have high expectations, they don’t get [good results]. If they think the students can’t learn, the students don’t learn. If they think they can, students will take every opportunity to show that they can.”
Fourth, and finally, when students weren’t doing well on their college courses, HBCU faculty and staff in our study often looked inwards and asked themselves what could they do differently. They may question their curriculum and their approach to teaching. They may ask themselves, for example: “Is the manner in which I am delivering this content accessible to a diverse set of learners? Is the course structured with the right resources so that students with diverse backgrounds believe that they can succeed in the course? Are my examples of successful scientists reflective of my students?”
We can see how such self-questioning plays out at Xavier University, where faculty realised that students benefit from collaborative approaches to the curriculum and the development of the syllabus. On the chemistry courses, faculty work together on joint syllabi so that students can turn to many different teachers for support or can work with fellow students on other course sections. Students benefit from being able to ask questions of all the faculty in their subject area, rather than just the professor teaching a specific class.
Since academic freedom and autonomy are greatly valued in colleges and universities, there is often resistance from faculty when they are asked to share their course content or syllabus in this way. However, HBCUs have found that doing so provides a more inclusive environment that is centred on student needs.
Businesses are constantly saying that we need more diversity in the sciences in order to be globally competitive and to fill many positions that require scientific knowledge. And most universities and colleges do indeed proclaim their support for diversity. Yet we believe they have been far too reluctant to question their own practices and to provide the kind of positive learning experience for black students that embraces both their identity and their desire to earn degrees in science. If they just continue as they are without systemic change, we believe that significant numbers of African Americans will continue to drop out of science majors.
If higher education is serious about being more inclusive, we need to have deeper conversations about the way science courses are taught, the assumptions and implicit biases of faculty and students, and the intense focus on competition. Looking at what HBCUs are doing should offer many important pointers.
Publicație : The Times
Discrimination anti-asiatique: l’université de Harvard gagne son procès
Accusée par une association de discriminer les candidats d’origine asiatique par rapport aux autres minorités, la très prestigieuse université du Massachusetts a gagné son procès. L’association en question va faire appel.
Harvard a donc gagné son combat: une juge fédérale de Boston a débouté mardi une organisation conservatrice qui accusait la prestigieuse université américaine de discrimination contre les candidats d’origine asiatique, et jugé «très bon» son processus de sélection visant à assurer la diversité de ses étudiants.
Le programme de sélection de la célèbre université n’est «pas parfait», mais «la Cour ne va pas démanteler un très bon programme qui répond aux critères constitutionnels, juste parce qu’il pourrait être mieux», a conclu la juge Allison Burroughs, dans sa décision de 130 pages.
Statistiques éthniques
La plainte remontait à novembre 2014, lorsqu’une organisation dénommée «Students for Fair Admissions» («Etudiants en faveur d’admissions justes»), dirigée par un conservateur, avait attaqué en justice le plus prestigieux établissement des Etats-Unis, pays où les statistiques ethniques sont autorisées.
L’organisation, dont la plainte avait été soutenue par le gouvernement Trump, affirmait que, même si les élèves d’origine asiatique comptent dorénavant pour près d’un quart des étudiants de la prestigieuse université, ils étaient proportionnellement sous-représentés, compte tenu des résultats académiques - supérieurs à la moyenne - de leur groupe ethnique.
Facilités pour les enfants de donateurs
Mais après trois semaines d’audiences fin 2018, qui ont vu défiler de nombreux responsables et étudiants, puis d’ultimes plaidoiries en février dernier, la juge Burroughs a estimé qu’Harvard respectait scrupuleusement la jurisprudence fédérale, qui autorise l’utilisation de certains critères raciaux à condition qu’ils visent uniquement à assurer la diversité de la population étudiante.
Si les audiences ont révélé au grand jour certains aspects peu reluisants des admissions à Harvard -comme les facilités accordées aux enfants des donateurs de la vénérable université- les plaignants n’ont «présenté aucun exemple de candidat d’origine asiatique qui aurait subi de la discrimination», compte tenu de «tous les facteurs qu’Harvard valorise dans son processus d’admission», a estimé la juge. Parmi ces facteurs, Harvard évalue notamment la personnalité des étudiants. Or, selon les documents présentés pendant le procès, ceux d’origine asiatique avaient tendance à avoir de moins bonnes notes que les Blancs sur ce critère-là.
La juge a cependant estimé que cela «ne résultait pas d’une discrimination intentionnelle» de l’université.
Un dossier politique
Le dossier était très politique, puisque la plainte de l’organisation dirigée par le militant conservateur Edward Blum était appuyée par le gouvernement Trump. Beaucoup y voyaient une nouvelle attaque contre les politiques de «discrimination positive» en vigueur dans de nombreuses universités américaines, qui bénéficient surtout aux minorités ethniques les plus défavorisées socialement, comme les Noirs et les Hispaniques.
Dans sa décision, la juge, qui arbitrait seule ce dossier sans jurés, s’est posée en défenseure de la discrimination positive à condition qu’elle soit savamment calibrée. Evoquant la Prix Nobel de littérature Toni Morrison, grande voix de la communauté noire décédée en août dernier, la juge a estimé que la discrimination positive restait justifiée dans une société américaine où «les effets d’un racisme bien enraciné et de l’inégalité des chances restent évidents».
«Un jour, nous arriverons à un point où nous verrons la race comme un fait, pas un fait déterminant et pas un fait qui nous dit ce qui est important, mais nous n’y sommes pas encore», a souligné Allison Burroughs.
«Atmosphère de diversité»
En attendant, les programmes d’admission universitaire qui tiennent compte de l’origine ethnique en respectant des critères stricts «aideront à garantir que les établissements supérieurs offrent une atmosphère de diversité, encourageant respect et compréhension mutuels», a-t-elle ajouté. Edward Blum s’est dit «déçu que le tribunal ait maintenu la politique d’admission discriminatoire de Harvard». Il a immédiatement annoncé qu’il «ferait appel de cette décision devant la Cour d’appel et, si nécessaire, devant la Cour suprême».
La bataille judiciaire n’est donc pas finie, et le président de Harvard s’est bien gardé de crier victoire mardi. Dans une lettre postée sur le site de l’université, Lawrence Bacow s’est en effet dit «profondément reconnaissant» envers tous ceux qui avaient défendu l’université pendant ce procès. Et il a réaffirmé l’importance de la diversité à ses yeux, estimant que «l’éducation supérieure américaine tire sa puissance de son attachement à apprendre de nos différences».
Publicație : Le Figaro
Terra Nova veut prendre en compte l’origine sociale dans la sélection des étudiants à l’université
Le think tank propose cette solution pour corriger « les mécanismes inégalitaires ».
Les mesures pourraient avoir un certain écho, à l’heure où le gouvernement planche sur la question de l’ouverture sociale dans les grandes écoles. Le think tank Terra Nova appelle à passer à la vitesse supérieure, dans une note publiée mercredi 2 octobre, intitulée « De nouvelles ambitions pour démocratiser l’enseignement supérieur ». Notre système de formation doit corriger « de manière radicale les mécanismes inégalitaires qu’actuellement, il renforce au lieu d’atténuer », défendent ses auteurs.
Le constat est connu : les enfants de cadres ont près de trois fois plus de chances d’accéder à l’enseignement supérieur que les enfantos d’ouvriers ; quatre fois plus de chances d’obtenir un diplôme de niveau bac + 5. La « stratification » est « de plus en plus marquée » entre les différentes filières, les jeunes issus des milieux défavorisés étant majoritairement présent dans les moins prestigieuses. « Parmi les pays développés, la France est le pays où la performance scolaire est la plus conditionnée par l’origine sociale et le capital culturel des familles », écrivent-ils, et ce, malgré la multiplication de dispositifs estampillés « égalité des chances ».
Au gré des 41 pages de la note, les auteurs s’arrêtent sur le moment du choix sur Parcoursup, la plateforme d’admission dans l’enseignement supérieur, « le moment où tout converge, où se concrétisent toutes les inégalités et tous les phénomènes d’autocensure ». Le changement doit intervenir, selon eux, au cœur des processus de sélection. Pas seulement avec les quotas de boursiers mis en place à l’entrée des licences, classes prépas, BTS ou encore DUT et qu’ils espèrent voir étendus à une partie du secteur privé, comme les prépas des lycées sous contrat. Mais aussi grâce à ce qu’ils appellent une « contextualisation sociale » des candidatures.
Caractère miné
« L’origine sociale des candidats devrait systématiquement être prise en compte par les évaluateurs des dossiers », écrivent-ils. Eux-mêmes reconnaissent le caractère miné de la mesure : « Ceci remet en cause un axiome de notre système éducatif où traditionnellement, on évalue le mérite des étudiants de manière objective plutôt que les personnes », mais « si on veut avancer vers la démocratisation, on ne peut pas s’en tenir là : sans être nié, le mérite individuel doit être mis en perspective ».
Publicație : Le Monde
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