Haven’t the bureaucrats heard of national databases

Actually we could access the database but to do so in our department requires an application to the assistant under-secretary’s assistant who will forward this in triplicate for consideration at the biannual oversight committee’s working party to develop guidelines for the proposal of the establishment of an advisory committee to the council’s executive assistance working party advisory unit on reducing unnecessary administrative layers and paperwork.
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it’s simply quicker to make you do the course.

A while back in my shit-job days I completed maybe two hundred Health and Safety courses 99% of the content of which was obvious to anyone with half a brain.

How about three mandatory Child Protection courses in three months (one for each of the employers I was working for) plus a mandatory form to fill out for each employer every time you are likely to come within a jackasses cooee of any little blighters under 18?

Haven’t the bureaucrats heard of national databases

At the end I was ready to go out and start a new career as either an abortionist or a serial killer

To some extent and sometimes, would be my reply, but that’s hardly more than a feeling, and I’m happy to agree that it’s a bad thing where it occurs, and very bad if it occurs more often than I am assuming.

Adrien, could I get you to enlarge on what you personally mean by ‘credentialism’? I may be misunderstanding you.

Schwoitenly. By credentialism I generally mean the notion that competence in something requires institutional authorization and/or certification. Used in the way I have – with negative connotation – I mean it in the instance when it is taken too far, applied unnecessarily or is nothing but a means to obstructing competition.
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Naturally I wouldn’t want to eliminate it altogether. I have encountered one or two libertarian purists who advocate anyone being able to practice medicine: degree, registration or otherwise. This would be disastrous.
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On the other hand I’ve encountered some ridiculous applications of it that seemed designed purely to create jobs for TAFE instructors. A while back in my shit-job days I completed maybe two hundred Health and Safety courses 99% of the content of which was obvious to anyone with half a brain. The best example of extraneous certification was a one-week course in computing that basically taught one what a keyboard was and how to access a website. I wonder how that cost.
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My commentary here is pretty much in aid of provoking a debate about this issue. I’m not actually arguing that Humanities academics don’t have real jobs or that I could whip up an astrophysics paper in three weeks. I wanted to be an astrophysicist once upon a time but don’t have the maths head. It’s the increasing division of labour. I’ll never be a Renaissance man.
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I just wonder to what extent credentialism prevents more open discourse in our society. And also to what extent credentials legitimize banalities or downright stupidity. Here I’m thinking of a psychologist I once worked with who was Obnoxio the Clown personified. He was finally formally spoken to about his uncanny ability to offend everyone on an hourly basis. His response was that he’d done a course on interpersonal relationships at Uni and received high marks. Therefore we didn’t know what we were talking about.
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Often I read the discourse of ‘intellectuals’ in the popular press and get the impression that they’re being published not for what they say (which is banal) but for their title.

Einstein was perfectly well qualified to write his papers; he had been studying physics at the Polytechnic for nearly a decade and was in the process of (finally) receiving his doctorate. (Indeed one of his three ‘miraculous’ papers was largely based on his doctoral dissertation.)

Yes perfectly true. However his PhD thesis was probably the most conventional thing he submitted for publication in that very successful year. And his educational track record was hardly an undeniable success. He was working at the patent office ’cause he couldn’t get a job teaching.
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Outsider, not. It’s an argument. So I was lazy and dishonest.

Yep, this was my main reason for being involved in academia, to extract ‘worship’ from non-academics.

Sorry I can’t lonk cause I always have problems with that, but they’re both easy enough googled.

Sorry you can’t lonk either…I’d have loved to have seen it

Anyhoo…

I love the noise the boffins make
When they earnestly discuss
A piece of writing few have read
One wonders at the fuss

Some cannot help but “lecture” us
Classroom habits do die hard
Others are more modest
And others try us hard

I do suspect some knowledge wonks
Want us worshipping at their feet
Humbly tasting pearls as swine
With them as the “elite”?

Conscious or unconsciously
Those who practice thus
Must recall even Socrates
Would have dialogued with us

But not at LP, surely not
We do not do such things
Nor should we punish those who err
On minor, petty things

For Death Beasts, trolls or idiots
we can put up a shield
But genuine inquiring folk are
But fellow toilers in the field

http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/ras

I see some of your other reviews in the archive there. Congratulations, BTW, on finishing your review. I look forward to reading it.

Should be published in the on-lone journal, Australian Studies in the next couple of months. (Have other book reviews there too.)

Nice one Paul…come on everyone, don’t be shy. Give us your linked pearls

Hmm I wonder if an “on-lone” journal (yeah I know it’s a typo) is for either work no-one will publish or sites which publish everything

Channelling Richard Glover here…

Upshot seems to be peer review, and metrics like citation data, expert review panels based on research clusters – rather than reams of nebulous bullshit about “impact”.

And well done yourself. After 10 years in the system, you do get a nose for irrelevant hype about latest white elephant.

But as for “had to take it seriously” – did they? Plenty of unis didn’t bother. Mine appeared to be just sucking up to Nelson/ Bishop when they took it on.

Losers!

You bloody star! Prescient, discerning, non-gullible, an intellectual giant. (Me too. – strains arm while patting own back vigorously…)

The RQF was riddled with difficulties and sillinesses. And yet the admin persons and Deans etc, had to take it seriously while it existed.

All praise to Kim Carr for dumping it….
but I wonder what he’ll replace it with?

Shocking I mean he wasn’t qualified.

I know it’s a pedantic irrelevancy, but the cartoon picture of Einstein-as-outsider is so misused that it really deserves to be pulled up.

Einstein was perfectly well qualified to write his papers; he had been studying physics at the Polytechnic for nearly a decade and was in the process of (finally) receiving his doctorate. (Indeed one of his three ‘miraculous’ papers was largely based on his doctoral dissertation.)

The question is not why was a patent clerk able to write these papers, but rather why was a doctoral student with a teaching degree not able to obtain a university post? Indeed he was the only graduate from the polytechnic that year who did not.

The answer of course lies in social dynamics. Although a highly motivated and independent student, Einstein had managed to annoy most of his teachers, in particular his first supervisor Weber, for a range of reasons, some interesting some less so.