What academics do.
In his latest newsletter, our Dear Leader worries that it is “difficult to discern the outputs of self managed time”. One has to wonder whether the Riverhouse Rat knows anything about the way academics work. What are they paid to do, apart from teach and produce “outputs”? Perhaps we’re old fashioned here at Dissenter’s Blog but when they’re not teaching academics mostly read and think and sometimes talk to each other. The products of all this thinking are not direct: they appear later in research papers, the teaching itself, and in ways which cannot necessarily be pinned down such as the filtering of ideas throughout the community. Or perhaps they lead to nothing at all. That is the way academia works; “outputs” can never be guaranteed, unless we have no concern for the quality of what we do.
Perhaps when Ratty moves on to his next job, which we hope will be soon, he should find out the nature of the work of his new employer before going on to wreak more havoc.