Meanwhile, in Oslo...

Norway: Jealous.
(Photo by Mikita Karasiou on Unsplash)

As we glory in the sunny, post-Brexit uplands of Britannia resurgent, more evidence has reached us of the 'envy of less happier lands.'

The Norwegian parliament in Oslo is currently in deadlock over ways to fully split its people and cause disbelief, hilarity and ill-will amongst its closest neighbours. As we know, this is the aim of all governments, as it gives people something to talk about in the awkward downtime between seasons of Love Island and I'm a Celebrity.

'The Grant-acquistion Treadmill is Relentless'

Interesting comment piece by Prof Tim Brikhead in this week's THE. He suggest that we need a dramatic overhaul of the way teaching and research are balanced in universities, including a wholesale change in the distribution of grants.
'The grant-acquisition treadmill is relentless. It is also monumentally time-consuming and demoralising because the failure rate is high and the likelihood of success almost random. Without exception, every one of my colleagues has come back from recent research council grant meetings wringing their hands in frustration and despair at the scale of the bureaucratic burden on academics and the utter injustice of the system. A system that requires academics to spend such a huge proportion of their time writing grant applications, awards those grants haphazardly, and then ranks academics according to how successful they have been in this exercise, is deeply flawed.'
Instead he suggests using the Canadian method - note the Institute for Government's interest in this earlier - whereby academics need only spend a relatively short time applying for grants, which are longer term. Prof Birkhead says that some of his colleagues there need only spend a week every five years complete applications. Interesting idea - but would the Government have the stomach to take it on?

Managing Change: Is There Something We Need to Know?

The Institute for Government is, in its own words, 'an independent charity...working to increase government effectiveness.' It 'provid[es] evidence based advice that draws on best practice from around the world...[and] undertake research...and organise events to invigorate and provide fresh thinking on the issues that really matter to government.'

Interesting, then, that they put on a recent event entitled 'Top 200: Managing Change through Transition Periods'. Apparently it drew on evidence from Canada and New Zealand, amongst others, on how best to ride out tough times in the public finances. From what I've heard NZ implemented a drastic cut in research funding in the nineties, pulling back from funding all but the most economically relevant areas. More recently, Canada has announced that it will be cutting back on research funding, to the consternation of researchers.

If the Institute for Government has the ear of Government, we should all prepare for some drastic 'out of the box' thinking, modelled on our overseas colleagues. Or am I just being paranoid?