e pur si muove

“It is not that Big Brother is listening but rather that all the small brothers never can shut up.”
- Erik Ringmar, I’m Blogging This: Free Speech and Censorship in the Age of the Internet

Thanks to reader LayZ, who sent in this link to this unbelievable story about heavy-handed censorship at one of the UK’s finest institutions of higher learning, the London School of Economics.

Forget the Footnotes is the blog of an Erik Ringmar, former Senior Lecturer in Government at LSE. Ringmar was tasked to give a speech during LSE’s Open Day for prospective students. Instead of the standard patter expected of him, Ringmar instead decided to be candid and frank in his speech, the full transcript of which you can read on his blog. Long story short, he bared open the naked truth about education at an elite institution¹:

In a way the elitism follows from what I just said. The School is lucky enough to be able to pick the very best scholars and the very best students. Then we put the two together in the same place and make the scholars teach the students.

This is a great idea, of course, but also one that in practice may be difficult to realise. After all, the greatness of a scholar is measured in terms of output — that is, research.[...] This means that the first-class teachers usually will have their minds elsewhere than on undergraduate teaching. They might be away on conferences, and even if they are not absent in body, they may be absent in mind.[...]

What I do know is that the in-class student experience often differs very little between the LSE and a place such as the London Metropolitan University.[...] The kinds of courses taught at undergraduate level are pretty much the same everywhere you go. The courses use the same kinds of reading lists, with the same kinds of books, set the same kinds of exam questions … The lecturers too are not that different from each other.[...]

What I can promise is that our ‘occasional teachers’ are in a league onto themselves. These are the people in charge of your classes.[...] The class teachers are our own PhD students and since we are able to get great PhD students, we have great class teachers. They are all very hard-working, conscientious, and approachable.

This may in some ways sound like a con, and some LSE students do indeed end up thinking so. They are disenchanted with the ‘elite institution’-label and wonder what all the fuss is about[...]

The candour and tone of the entire speech virtually predicts the inevitable reaction. Current LSE students applauded the rare displays of frankness and honesty made by a faculty member, while senior faculty and higher-ups got majorly upset at the perceived insults and tried to force Ringmar to apologize.

They even wanted his blog shut down. How painfully familiar is that?

Ringmar capitulated initially, but then clamored for his rights to free speech and put the blog back up again. Long story short, he left LSE and is now wandering East Asia looking for a position.

He clearly enjoys his current time in Taiwan. At the same time he shows that he understands the motivations of the Asian students very well. Yet more candid, unsolicited advice from Ringmar in his address to the Prospective Asian PhD student reveals an intriguing reference to Singapore scholarship agencies (emphasis mine):

I know you really want to go to the United Kingdom to study. There are very famous universities there — Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, and many others. This is, you’ve been told, where the best students in the world meet the best professors. If nothing else, your parents will be endlessly proud of you and you’ll have a future job in the bag. The prestige value of a UK PhD is immesurable. (sic)

Still, I suggest it’s a scam. They are taking advantage of your eagerness to get ahead in life through educational means. Perhaps it’s time for a short reality-check:

• English universities really aren’t all that good. Far inferior than the best American universities and certainly not much better than universities in Scandinavia, Germany or France.
• Don’t forget, PhD programs in UK universities, in contrast to American, have no course component. All you get for your tuition fee — some 12,000 pounds per year — are a few chats with your supervisor[...]
• The only thing you’ll get in the end is the alleged prestige of a UK degree. Yes, this is still worth something today but only since universities and employers in East Asia are slow to catch up on the serious trouble that UK academia is in. The Singaporean authorities have. They are not encouraging students to travel to the UK for a PhD anymore. Other Asian countries will soon draw the same conclusion.

It’s interesting, considering how many Singaporeans above a certain age (I posit older than 25 as a relatively precise cutoff) still boast about their prestigious UK pedigrees.

I don’t know much about UK academia, but I do realize that when people start axeing expensive departments (notably chemistry) to cut costs and ‘consolidate’ resources across multiple universities, the situation in the UK seems dire indeed. How long, indeed, until only the mighty like Oxbridge and Imperial remain the only universities of any repute whatsoever standing in the British Isles?

1. In his speech, Ringmar says “Great American universities like Harvard and Yale may pride themselves in their multiculturalism, but they know little about it.” As anyone who has attended a ‘great’ US college can attest to, this is a woefully outdated statement, and is clearly false today.↩

It’s a balmy -12°C (11°F) outside. The 25mph (40kmh) winds bring the effective wind chill down to a lovely -23°C (-9°F).

My boss thinks that my last few months’ worth of work is not worth publishing. Instead he’d rather obsess with computer tinkering and trying to proselytize the Cult of Mac to the rest of the group, which to be honest is pretty diffident about this.

Nothing in my research work is going well.

In the twin cities of Urbana and Champaign, the following laws hold, according to this blog post:

In Champaign, one may not pee in his neighbor’s mouth.

In Urbana, it is illegal for a monster to enter the city limits.

Dumb as they are, at least they make sense, even to a five-year-old. Chicago’s laws are, to put it mildly, eclectic:

• It is illegal to eat in a place that is on fire.
• It is illegal to give a dog whiskey.
• It is illegal to fly kites within the city limits.
• It is illegal to spit.
• It is illegal to take a French poodle to the opera.
• It is illegal for women over 200 pounds (90 kilos) to ride horses in shorts.
• It is illegal to fish in pajamas.
• It is illegal for people who are diseased, maimed, mutilated, or “otherwise an unsightly or disgusting object” to go out in public.
• It is illegal to serve liquor to the feeble-minded.

And let’s not forget the state laws:

• It is illegal for barbers to use their fingers to apply shaving cream to a customer’s face.
• It is illegal for anyone to give lighted cigars to dogs, cats, and other domesticated animal kept as pets.
• It is legal to protest naked in front of city hall as long as you are under seventeen years of age and have legal permits.
• It is unlawful to change clothes in an automobile with the curtains drawn, except in case of fire.
• A state law in Illinois mandates that all bachelors should be called master, not mister, when addressed by their female counterparts.
• It is illegal to speak English. The officially recognized language is “American”.
• You may be arrested for vagrancy if you do not have at least one dollar bill on your person.
• You may be convicted of a Class 4 felony offense, punishable by up to three years in state prison, for the crime of “eavesdropping” on your own conversation. -720 ILCS 5/14-2.

This week’s Youtube Monday features a multimillion dollar robot doing a faceplant while climbing stairs.

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