Alexandra Patel
Hello and welcome. Today, I have hijacked my cohost Tracy Dix to talk about academic tribes and territories, which I find to be a very useful way of understanding the idea of academic disciplines. So subject areas of knowledge. So this draws very much from the work of Betcha and Traveler 2001. So these guys did a lot of research into this. They started off in, I think, 1989 like that, with the first edition, and that was based on research from interviewing people at universities in the UK, and in America, and looking at particular disciplines, and thinking about how they actually work as a kind of mini cultures, so small groups of people and how they interact.
Tracy Dix
Okay, so at this point, I feel like asking that, Surely there must be a new term other than tribes, are we? Are we not supposed to be describing things? In academe in terms of tribes anymore?
Alexandra Patel
You are very correct. So I think it was either the second edition or the third edition of this book, because it was very popular. This actually said, you know, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is very colonialist. What are we doing calling people tribes? Because that's what anthropologists used to do when they would go in and observe a group of people and say, Oh, this primitive culture does such and such.
Tracy Dix
And in a way, no question about that. So but what the tribes call themselves? Exactly, exactly. Do they call themselves tribes? Because if they don't do though, I guess not,
Alexandra Patel
like a village that people are family, a community. Tribes is probably a very western type label that we apply for, but not us personally. But that's culturally. Europe. And I acknowledge Tracy is not from Europe at this point. So I can't label you and this one that, you know, is quite happily bandied about. And it's, it's labeled on people. But so, betcha died, I think in around 2000. Maybe. So troller carried on the work on this. And later on, he did acknowledge that there are issues talking about the idea of tribes.
Tracy Dix
What travelers conclusions on this issue of tribes? That's, that's complex, actually. I'm guessing it's ever evolved.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's a simple way of putting it. Yeah. That's kind of what he says.
Tracy Dix
As society, as civilizations, progress, terminology changes as well, it evolves, hopefully, for the better.
Alexandra Patel
Yep, things are actually quite
fluid. When we're talking about academic tribes, the same thing is true. It's very fluid. And as higher education has changed in the UK and America, we've had development of lots of kind of, like interdisciplinary stuff. Yeah.
So it has changed.
Tracy Dix
Intersectionality is another kind of term that's used in relation to interdisciplinary. So I suppose does that mean that the concept of tribes is being challenged in a way because how are tribes intersectional or interdisciplinary? Well, you see, I
Alexandra Patel
think that is the value of this research, because it challenges us to think about it as a discipline, not as a subject, not as in a textbook or, you know, a canon of knowledge, necessarily, but also the culture in the community of researchers.
Tracy Dix
What's the canon of research?
Alexandra Patel
I don't actually know, Tracy, that's, that. I think that I think that is the approved body of knowledge. You know, so if you're talking about biology, you've got Darwin.
Tracy Dix
Yeah. Where does the term actually where does the term canon come from?
Alexandra Patel
I don't know. Sounds violence.
Tracy Dix
I don't know. It's not it's canon with one N, one n in the middle not
Alexandra Patel
two sounds religious to me. Yeah, canonical? I don't know.
Tracy Dix
Well, this is this is a prime example of how terms get bandied around without that much thought given to the origin. And it's something that does happen a lot in academic communities because I wrote an email about it to our mailing list. So if anyone's interested in our random mailings, intellectually or less than two letters, Today, I tried to make them as helpful as I can do subscribe to our mailing list.
Alexandra Patel
Yes, I had somebody, a colleague asked me the other day, what did surfacing mean? So I said, you know, program review processes are very helpful in surfacing the number of assessments and the types of assessments for certain numbers of credits. And she was like, what, what does surfacing mean? I think that as a verb,
Tracy Dix
brings it to light, it's like someone coming to the surface. So, yeah, so you know, you're submerged. And it brings it to light. So it becomes interview to something that can be acknowledged from your deep, dark sea.
Alexandra Patel
So it makes sense to us. But that's because we've heard it a lot in our past team.
Tracy Dix
Well, and also, I'm an English graduate, and not
Alexandra Patel
just awesome at interpreting the verbs.
Tracy Dix
Well, I guess I have an expensive relationship with language.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah, yes. To be fair, the first thing I said, Well, it means coming to the surface.
Tracy Dix
Yeah, I mean, yeah, so I was a little more figurative about it. I
Alexandra Patel
then gave, you know, examples. Oh, language, it's a fun thing.
Tracy Dix
How did they respond to that?
Alexandra Patel
They didn't. Oh, really rocked my emails at this point.
Tracy Dix
is done them with your intellectual musings? Yes. Okay. So academic tribes and territories. So does it imply that tribes belong within separate territories or are the two terms fluid?
Alexandra Patel
No, I don't think they are fluid. I will explain that in a moment. But I guess what I want to ask now, not necessarily for you to answer because, you know, that's putting you somewhat on the spot. I love it. Why is this important? You know, why should us as people involved in teaching and listeners as students care about this whole theoretical nonsense, if you will, about academic tribes and territories? So I can answer that, because I have pondered on this many times, but you can come in as well. Don't worry. Okay. So
Tracy Dix
so why should anyone care about this, I do have a musing about it, which is that people can get very easy to talk about this very kind of informally, people can get quite wrapped up in their, in their disciplines. You know, to the point where, okay, just to give an example, because I work in academic libraries, there are a lot of debates over what to call the thing that librarians teach. And prevailing thinking is, it's information literacy, which I guess, you know, it makes, it does make a lot of sense if you're familiar with things like financial literacy, and in our area of learning, development, assessment literacy. But I think in reality, most academics, and students don't actually think about those terms very much. So if you just, you know, if you go to a presentation and throw them information that you see your assessment literacy, you've just put two words together, that aren't usually associated with each other. And so I think, to them, they just got Oh, it was a term, and it's almost like our brain, if it's something that's not familiar, our brain blocks it out. And we kind of move on to find a relatable stuff. I mean, maybe I'm oversimplifying things a little bit. And maybe academic students are far more intelligent and intellectual and receptive to new terminology than we give them credit for. But, for example, you know, if I come across a journal article that's in a discipline I'm not familiar with. And I see terminology. I do kind of glaze over. Now, it's a bit different when I'm helping students. So if I'm, if I'm supporting students with their assignment, then you know, we go online and look it up. I mean, most of the time, I'd ask a student like, so what does this theory or what does this thing mean? And if they can't tell me, then we look it up. But I just googled it and find a definition that resonates and then just kind of interpret and run with that.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah. Well, how many times have we been in meetings, where people have just thrown out these complex terms? And everyone in the meeting has sat there nodding away and not actually understood what they were on about?
Tracy Dix
Most of the meetings if most of them happens way too much. It happens way too much. And I think people do need to be courageous and ask the question, someone needs to step up. And you know, surprisingly, it's a very difficult thing to do is just saying, What do you mean by X. What do you mean?
Alexandra Patel
Well, you have the courage you have to put yourself out there. But actually, it's a very simple question say, What do you mean by x?
Tracy Dix
Well, Alex, you are the master or mistress? Oh, yes. But
Alexandra Patel
I had to learn how to do. Didn't do that previously.
Tracy Dix
So you are acknowledging that it is a difficult thing to do
Alexandra Patel
Yes, yes. But now I have learned that actually, it's very simple. And it's, you know, it doesn't indicate my lack of intelligence, if anything. It might be no more intelligent. Because I've said, Hang on a minute. Can you explain that? I don't quite get what you mean.
Tracy Dix
I think so. Well, especially when you realize that the person who was using the term needs to think quite hard.
I don't know what it was. Yeah.
Well I think,
I think perhaps not that they don't know what it means. But they haven't reflected on it enough to explain it. You know, for example, like when you're saying about surfacing, you probably had to pause for a moment to think, oh, what does surfacing mean? Because, yeah, do you use something a lot? Perhaps you don't, you don't break it down to think about how to explain it. It's almost like, you know, with with terms or concepts that we take for granted. And say a four year old ask the question, like, what is can you explain it to a four year old? It's kind of in a different league? Isn't it? That how would you break down something that we know on a day to day basis, to, to a little one who has no conception of all that.
Alexandra Patel
If you can do that, that means you truly understand the definition. That's the ultimate challenge, if you can. So, allegedly, there's a quote about Einstein that says, you know, if you can explain the subject to your grandmother, then it shows you understand it. That may not be from Einstein, really, I don't know, you know about misquotation of quotes. Anyway, shall we get back to academic tribes and territories.
Tracy Dix
Yes, I can't remember now, where we left off before I interrupted you.
Alexandra Patel
Sorry,
my question, which I will answer myself obviously, is, you know, why should anyone care about this idea?
Well, it helps you
understand how a discipline and a subject at a university works. And if you understand the nuances of almost political power, hierarchy, the difference knowledge that's prioritize the different methodologies that are preferred, then it means you can adapt to that culture, better you can become part of it, you can become a member of that culture, that community,
Tracy Dix
Perhaps you can also challenge it. Yes, yes. And bring in perspectives from the outside to broaden, you know, the research field?
Alexandra Patel
Yes,
yes. Okay. So can we get into the research the theory of this, what I'm showing Tracy at the moment, and we may upload this as a separate photo is a map of Staffordshire. Now, that's where I grew up. So I lived in Stafford little village just outside of. So the idea is that the territory is the territory of academic knowledge is the discipline. So if we're thinking about biological sciences, it might be evolution. It might be biochemistry, DNA, proteins, all sorts of different areas, anatomy, physiology, and all of those different areas within this territory. Now, the strange thing is, we also have groups of people living within this territory. So if you will, these are research groups or lab groups that are focusing on specific topic areas within this wider discipline. So it might be a group over here is looking at genetics group over here is looking at photosynthesis, those types of things. And if we were to use this metaphor a bit further, you know, so let's think about the different areas of Staffordshire and what that tells us. So in Stoke on Trent, we have a group of people who focus very much on an industry around pottery. So they have certain knowledge around how to do that pottery, creates its certain methods. There'll be people who are like key players really awesome. Won't be the word for that Potter says.
Tracy Dix
Getting that thread, pottering around comes from, it could be
Alexandra Patel
could be and those
people, you know, depending on the point in history will attract funding or not. They'll have importance in society or not, etc. And then if we skip down to somewhere like Kanak. So Kanak, a known kind of like coal mining town, obviously, they had a very different focus. They have different methodologies. They had different hierarchies, different people in charge different things that were important to them. And the languages probably varied between the two. So in Stoke, they'd be using lots of terms around like pottering around, for example. Whereas in a coal mining industry, it would probably be quite different. I'm not well, what's but
Tracy Dix
I've got two comments to make here. I think we do need to upload your map actually, just so that our listeners can see what, you know, the areas that we're referring to the question, I'm just being annoying here, but I wonder what kind of language people in stone would have used. But also Okay, so on a slightly more intellectual level, I'm not being completely frivolous, since you're talking about pottery isn't Stafford known for the wider kind of stuff?
Alexandra Patel
It's particularly snow contracts. areas around Darby.
Tracy Dix
Okay. What about leak?
Alexandra Patel
not sure about leak. And I'm not that good with geography, I should probably tell you that at this point.
Tracy Dix
I've gone off on one now, I would also like to know whether there was a kind of history of roller coasters in Alton, or whether someone just decided that Alton would be a good place for a theme park and put one there.
Alexandra Patel
I think I have a vague idea. I think it was a big stately home with large estates around it. And it fell into disrepair. And a company bought it's maybe even a community company with the idea of making it into a leisure attraction. So they started off with small numbers of rides. And that progressed, and it became, you know, an enormous place and then part of the Merlin group, and yeah, quite fancy.
Tracy Dix
So was any of the stately home kind of integrated into Alton Towers?
Alexandra Patel
It is yeah, yeah. Still Exactly. There. Alton Towers, literally, that's what it's called,
oh,
there's a ride within Alton Towers. Our listeners may know of this. And it's well or it used to be and it was called hex. And so you went in. And, you know, you had all this horror story kind of thing setting you up an oak tree that was chained up. Because each time a branch fell off the oak tree, a member of the towers family passed away. And so then you go into this room and you sit on this. It's called a Newton's cradle. So a bunch of seats at one side, bunch of seats, the other
it rocks. But whilst it's rocking the room around you rotates.
Tracy Dix
Oh, that sounds very disorienting.
Alexandra Patel
So that confusing. disorientation makes it feel like you're actually going upside down and the swing is taking you all the way around. It is very disorientating. It's very cool.
Tracy Dix
Incidentally, just in case anyone doesn't follow us on social media. You probably if you do. You've probably realized by now th at Alex is quite into your horror. You like your horror, don't you?
Alexandra Patel
I do just watched a film called invitation. That was very good.
Tracy Dix
I won't ask you about it. Now. I really do not like horror.
Fair enough. Don't go anywhere near it. But yeah, enough.
Alexandra Patel
Let me tell you a story. Okay. Not really. ghost story.
Tracy Dix
I don't want a ghost story.
Alexandra Patel
Now let's go into the story of academic tribes. So again, we're using this as a metaphor for
kind of almost research
communities that are focusing on different areas of knowledge. And so you know, how the world, the earth, we've got tectonic plate movements, things change over time. Yeah, the geographical positions of things move and you get, you know, landslides and canyons, forming all sorts of things. So we also see changes like that happening within academic subjects areas. So we have boundaries of disciplinary knowledge changing. So some areas become more important, some areas become less important, and we stopped caring. And we think of an example,
Tracy Dix
I can think of an example you're on. So at the time, I was working on my PhD, which was on the banquet course in Renaissance drama. I know it's pretty obscure. The whole idea of kind of the history of food was, you know, particularly as relating to Renaissance drama was still a relatively new area. This was I mean, like in 2008, I think so it was quite a long time ago now. And since then, there has been a lot more that's been published. started. But I think when it actually came to the kind of studies of banquets in Renaissance theatre, there was one published book on it. When I started my research, and before then I think, you know, in so far as people were interested in the kind of more everyday practices that went on in history, you know, they kind of looked at, say, family life, and that's about as far as it went. And it all kind of started with, I suppose, the male dominated arena, you know, of politics and economics. And yeah, and like, particularly within Shakespeare, all, it's all about the kind of great political speeches and how power is construed and created, say, and there was much less interest, you know, I guess the references to food were just sort of brushed off and considered very mundane, which, you know, it isn't to, to us with our lens, because culturally, we're very different, you know, and what would have been considered kind of easily available ingredients, for example, and what was exotic has changed a lot over time. So that, you know, potatoes are very, you know, we just take them for granted now.
It's a staple. Yeah. Yeah. But
it wasn't back then the staple was bread.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah. What about oysters?
Tracy Dix
I, I studied all this a very long time ago. So there have been periods in history where oysters have were very cheap and very popular, I think, right up to the Victorian time. So fairly recently, and I don't know what's caused it to, you know, become a bit more of a rarity. I think also, just from, I think, on a trip to Cornwall once, you know, they were talking about Welch, welch harvesting? I don't know. Yeah, welch harvesting, and apparently a lot of it. But so perhaps it could be due to globalization, because I think most of the welchs that are harvested in the waters around the British Isles are exported to Korea. Really? Yeah. And you know, presumably because there's money in it, they export it rather than sell it cheap within Britain, because people don't really value welchs here that much. A bit of a kind of seaside novelty. Yeah.
Alexandra Patel
About oysters is of course, that those are a priced item. You know, you talked about two quid and oyster. Yeah, but it's
Tracy Dix
not as Are they as priced in the UK as theirs?
Alexandra Patel
But only limitedly you know, so I was talking valentine's day and similar events like that, because you Most people nowadays don't know what to do with the oyster.
Tracy Dix
You just eat it raw, you slip it out.
Alexandra Patel
I cooked mine. I'm not. I don't want to die.
Tracy Dix
So I wonder, I wonder whether oysters are perhaps exported? So here's another example. Welsh lamb is well renowned, isn't it? Like Wales is really famous for its lamb. And so this is purely by personal observation don't quote me on it. But when we've been to Wales think you know any kind of you go to a nice restaurant or pub, anyone a Welsh lamb. I didn't actually think it was that great. And I sort of feel like now I'm going to have people kind of hunting me down for saying that.
Alexandra Patel
Possibly. We might have to edit this out. But
Tracy Dix
I mean, it's it's a matter of personal taste, isn't it? Okay, is perhaps I'm just a fool for not enjoying Welsh lamb, but it just made me think that you know, if, Welsh lamb is incredibly popular, and there's money in it, perhaps the best cuts or the you know, the best quality is exported, and so you don't actually find that much of it in Wales. Yeah,
Alexandra Patel
they say that about France and wine, not that the best stuff is exported, but the rubbish stuff is exported to the UK.
Tracy Dix
Well that's very interesting, because that's almost like the opposite.
Alexandra Patel
But it's that kind of, you know, preferential division of trade, I guess. Anyway, let's get back to let's get back to what I was saying.
Tracy Dix
Well, the other thing actually just one more thing. Yeah, well, the thing is the French do spend a lot more money on food, don't they? Than the British?
Alexandra Patel
Yeah, I think food in France and Spain is generally more expensive. That's my experience.
Tracy Dix
More kind of price. Like you know, people really care about their food and the quality of it and they're willing to spend more money on it. Whereas I think, I think that was that was some news articles and comparisons. You know, the average Britain they don't they don't spend a lot of money on food.
Alexandra Patel
No, no, hence the factory farming of chicken and similar,
Tracy Dix
that kind of thing. So we are now dietary tribes? Oh that's diet tribe.
Alexandra Patel
too late for this kind of joke. Sorry. Okay. Okay. So we have established that the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge change like tectonic plates and changes in the, the territory that we're within. One of the important ideas that comes from academic tribes and territories, is that whatever's going on within our subjects area. So the stuff that I'm learning at university is within a socio economic and political context. Now, that sounds particularly complex and fancy, and for many years, understand what that meant. But all we're saying is that you have to think about what's going on in society at the time, what's going on in politics in that area. At the time, you know, is the government investing in this? Are there like different funding objectives going on? You know, what are the economics around this at the same time? How will universities making their money? How are different disciplines making their money is money being invested into that? So it really makes things a lot more complex than you know what you would read in a textbook, we have to start to appreciate that society has a big influence on knowledge, and our disciplinary areas.
Tracy Dix
I think money also has a big influence.
Alexandra Patel
Influence, yes.
Money Talks. Yes, yes. Yeah. So butcher and
troller was suggesting that these two issues, so the change in the boundaries of knowledge, and the socio economic political context, that's, you know, teaching takes place and actually causes a change in the practices of disciplines. So how people are doing research how people are teaching, that knowledge is changed by what's going on around it. Now, that's not crazy. You know, we're seeing strikes at the moments, university lectures, people being pushed out of certain subjects areas, because management don't think that's an appropriate thing for the university to be studying.
Tracy Dix
Didn't you say that? So at the university where we worked, and you say that research into locusts was being defunded was,
Alexandra Patel
yeah, so one example is neurobiology. So that's using examples within different animal systems. So using things like owls, locusts, scales, I think we're one bats and thinking about, you know, what do these animals do really, really well, that we should look into, and then perhaps get a better understanding of how that sensory system works? So in bats, it's like location and hours, it's also much more psycho location, something similar?
Tracy Dix
So I have to admit that when you told me that at first, my initial reaction was a bit. Okay. You know, I said, Well, I don't really sound nice. No, I mean, I initially I didn't really see what research into, you know, locusts had to do with, how does it improve health outcomes for humanity? See, okay, but once you explain to me that because, you know, locust, would you call them them moto systems or something? Basically, how the brain connects to different parts of the locust and how the brain moves? The biomechanics of Yeah, it's a lot simpler. And so it helps us to eliminate in you know, inflammation, I suppose. So it helps us to understand how the biomechanics of humans works.
Alexandra Patel
So I guess one thing everyone should be aware of, is that all the research on how neurons work, and how therefore how the nervous system works, pretty much originated from experiments by Hodgkin and Huxley on the I know, it's awesome. I remember this now didn't when I was doing my degree, I have to be honest on neurons, axons from the giant squid. Wow. And that's how they worked out how impulses electrical activity passed along a neuron and how you know, synapses kind of worked and ion channels worked and that was the, the initial work.
Tracy Dix
Alex is such an interesting friend to have around. A hive of information.
Alexandra Patel
The awful thing is I did not remember this during my degree.
But you know, you've obviously kind of synthesized that it was made it but you've made it really relatable because with the way you've explained it.
Tracy Dix
If I read your textbook, I would probably glaze over and just
Alexandra Patel
I don't I don't see why that matters. But, you know, I guess the point is that in biology, we use model animals to work out how things work. And then we think well, okay, how does this apply to humans?
Tracy Dix
What do you mean by model animals?
Alexandra Patel
So like I was saying about owls and bats. So they are really awesome with their hearing, they use things like echolocation and stuff. So we can say, well, they are really good at this. So if we can work out how they do this, maybe we can translate that to what's going on in humans.
Tracy Dix
So is that like, how, you know maybe hearing aids are designed after the like
biomechanics of owl hearing or something? Probably not? No. Okay, nevermind. I'll just just go back. Just
Alexandra Patel
I will hearing is really quite interesting. They have one ear that's higher than the other. Yep, just fractionally and the feathers around it help guide sound in but asymmetrically, and because of that they can work
out exactly the height and the
horizontal location of a mouse, for example, and just eat it.
Tracy Dix
So maybe we need to have a symmetrical? Because also, you know, I've always wondered why, why do headsets have like the spongy bit? There's always like, some kind of buffer, isn't there? Why is that? Is that based on an animal that's got a buffer in their ears or something?
Alexandra Patel
If you know the answer to this, please write in and tell us. Okay, okay. Can we go back to my wonderful slide, which will be shared?
Okay. Right. So we were saying that
things change a lot in how we understand subject areas of knowledge. So one of the huge changes has been to higher education since the war. So yeah, Second World War long time ago. So we started to see a lot more students going to university, it increased, you know, exponentially. Initially, we're talking about groups of, you know, 20 students, that kind of thing. And then it was increasing to, you know, 50 100. And now we're in 1000s,
of course, yep. We also saw
more globalization. So we're starting to see universities, taking students from other countries, and then being able to charge them extortionate international student rates. But anyway, but also the sharing of research globally. So that changed things in terms of you know, labs were both in competition, but they're also sharing information, you know, from different nations. We also started to see something called massification, which I touched on before, which is, you know, the huge increase in numbers of students. So that has many benefits, that also has disadvantages. So benefits are that it makes university education more available and economically accessible for students in different areas, you know, poor students, for example,
Tracy Dix
the disadvantages, we'll probably just about
Alexandra Patel
I was, but disadvantages are, of course, that universities were keen to keep a single lecture on for this huge increase in student numbers. So you're not getting that kind of interaction between a lecturer and 10 students, 20 students, where they can, you know, just have a chat about the subject area, pick up on minor mistakes give like direct feedback. Instead, courses have to become incredibly structured, and interaction is very much regulated. It's through formal feedback, and through personal tutor systems, perhaps.
Tracy Dix
Yes, and I think sometimes the university curriculum is too guided by student feedback, you know, and sometimes, because the NSS carries so much weight, I feel like universities are kind of, well, maybe giving in to students in some ways where they shouldn't necessarily, you know, for example, if students kind of say, Oh, I don't like this, I don't like this module or whatever, then it gets taken away.
Alexandra Patel
Module is really difficult. I don't like it.
Tracy Dix
Well, yeah. So a colleague was recently telling me about, you know, who studied archaeology and why like, I think the data module had been removed from the curriculum, and it happened quite Some time ago to the point where now there probably isn't even a lecturer who can teach it. And the thing with data is it is something that students tend to panic about. You know, I did once upon a time, I thought data analysts was a very impressive kind of job role. And then I started getting students asking me about, you know, what kind of data they needed to collect for their dissertation. And I thought, well, I better find out what all this is about, you know, being an art student. And now well, interested in data. So I just did a bit of hunting around and realize, it just means information. Pretty much. You know, but obviously, you're kind of shaping, you know, thinking about the kind of information that you're collecting or looking for. And making sure that it's relevant to your to your project. But somehow, you know,
it's this. I don't know, like, Yeti like figure in the university experience.
Alexandra Patel
Statistics and trend, it's not there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, you're seeing how, you know, the student body experience, and perception of subjects might influence how they're taught and the direction teaching goes. And that may have a knock on effects in terms of research, because, like you said, you know, if people then the lecturers then don't know how to do that kind of data analysis, it's going to affect the type of research that's done. Okay, so I have yet two more points. One is a focus on I have coined a term here, vocationlisation. I think it's gonna take off.
Tracy Dix
Not Yeah. I think next time, you're allowed to talk about something on the podcast, if you can pronounce it,
Alexandra Patel
I think I pronounce it. I think
Tracy Dix
I'm joking. Actually, I feel I think there should be a rule in life in general, in order to talk about something we can't pronounce it.
Alexandra Patel
Well, if you pronounce it slowly.
Tracy Dix
Okay. Well, yeah, I guess
Alexandra Patel
Oh, you're not convinced. Okay. Anyway, anyway, what I mean about it. So that's the idea that as we're seeing more of the population of young people going to university that was starting to cost the government more money. Yep. Because originally, they were providing grants. So therefore, there's now more interest in what they're doing in University. And so obviously, the, you know, the reigning powers, the government's are thinking, well, it has to benefit society. So we want people not to go to study a knowledge, or to develop themselves intellectually. They need to come out and do something useful for society, they need to have a vocation, they need to be going into a job. So therefore, we start seeing more focus on courses like that. So things like pharmacy, medicine, law, things that directly lead into something that is going to potentially benefit society. I might argue that lawyers don't necessarily. Well,
Tracy Dix
so I mean, business degrees are very popular, aren't they?
Alexandra Patel
They are the benefits of some society, though?
Tracy Dix
Well, I don't know. Because it depends on who is teaching in the business school, doesn't it? Because and why do you want to acquire a business degree? Is it because you want to eventually go on to run a business? And is the person who's teaching you on your business degree? successful business person? or are they teaching textbook stuff.
Alexandra Patel
Exactly. Yes. Yes. Which is interesting. Yeah, so
at some institutions, there was a very strong area of critique of different styles of business approach. So you know, how staff are treating work, sorry, how managers are treating workers, how managers are controlling change, how they're focused on productivity, and all sorts of things like that. But really asking, you know, are they doing it in a way that is beneficial to both the company and the workers, the employees, but what we're seeing more recently is that universities, leadership teams at universities are preferring not to offer this kind of critique, this kind of, you know, questioning course, which again, is interesting because that is a choice. It's like we don't want to challenge Is this belief about a managerial system that works?
Tracy Dix
Is that would you say that something that's happening across the board that you know, managers or like, basically managers don't want to be challenged?
Alexandra Patel
I don't know. I don't know. I do know that. The butcher and trowel the research back in 2001, was already talking about because of this whole financial shift around universities, they were getting it in managerial teams for senior management, who were pulling choices away from academics and saying, No, this is the direction the university needs to go. And,
Tracy Dix
yeah, that's a shame, I think, to have your research field basically invalidated by your institution.
Alexandra Patel
That must hurt that.
Tracy Dix
Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking I was thinking that Ouch. Ouch. Yeah. So you were talking about vocationalisation Yes. So localization,
Alexandra Patel
no vocaltionalisation
Tracy Dix
but also vocalization. Because talking about that? Well, I've decided that you were because you were talking about whether people are able or not to vocalize.
Alexandra Patel
Okay, okay. I feel like an academic paper coming out of this.
Tracy Dix
Oh, no,
Alexandra Patel
we've got the headline.
Tracy Dix
I am past it. I know, you'll probably try and work on me with this. But I am past the stage of wanting to write academic papers, I just like to tell people how to do this. See,
Alexandra Patel
now we know how it's a piece of cake. Okay, the next slide, we have a bit of a collage going on here. So the one picture talks about a bundle of cogs. And we've got regulations, rules, compliance standards policies. So as soon as the government gets involved in mass education, they start to ask the question of, well, how do we know all universities are marking students fairly? How do we establish that, that quality control? So previously, that had been down to academics? And the system was that you'd get different academics from another university come in, look at your course and say, okay, yeah, you know, you're testing people properly, properly, you're not just giving them degrees for nothing. But once you get so many more students going to university, and the government is funding that as they were in the 90s, then you have to start to have kind of evidence and checking on whether standards are fair. And then, of course, the next diagram, we have somebody saying, Do you remember when all we have to worry about was client care? So this is the idea about managerialism developing in universities. So this points, universities are starting to have to think about, well, we need to get students, we need to start bringing in funding, because you know, government funding for universities was decreasing. Yep. So it's all starting to become slowly more and more business like, so when your businesses, you have managers, when you have managers, you have to have things like key performance indicators, and evaluations, and audits. And there's a whole lot of bureaucracy that comes into it. Whereas in the past, it used to simply be more of a one to one interaction. So you're seeing this kind of change. Next slide, please. Tracy, the main kind of arguments here is that, you know, universities and degrees don't exist, just as a subject thing. You're not actually just there studying the pure subjects,
Tracy Dix
For curiosity's sake as well. Yeah, it's not, you know, it's just not, it's not for the love of knowledge, or for the love of learning. It just makes the stakes are high for students, aren't they nowadays, because hugely, they come and they want to know the right way to get a first for the assessment or get to one or whatever it is that they're aiming for. And, you know, you can't really just say, try this and tell them to go, you know, they want the what is going to guarantee me that result.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah, yeah. The thing is, and the very, very, very sad thing is that
a bit like a levels may be students are being expected to reproduce what they've been taught. And maybe that's only part of the knowledge. Because the discipline has decided, you know, we're being forced to decide that. Actually, we can't look at this stuff, because that's a bit controversial. No one will pay us to do that. We have to focus on this stuff, which is, you know, equal ground in the middle, you know, It's all
Tracy Dix
orders a small research funding in that area. Exactly, exactly how to put it cynically? Yeah, yeah. But also, you know, I think universities in some ways are becoming risk averse when it comes to knowledge. And how do you create new knowledge if you don't take risks?
Alexandra Patel
Yep, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, what?
It kind of feels like the danger is that we will, universities will just end up repeating whatever the government feels is the appropriate knowledge, whichever government that is at the time. You know, that that doesn't progress anything?
Tracy Dix
Well, do you think it's just the government that has a say in what universities teach? Because I think students play a pay a large part and you know, the NSS survey? Yeah. As a large part of it playing that,
Alexandra Patel
that relationship between marketing and what courses students find attractive.
It's all a lie.
I see. Rain? No, no, no, no, I think the message is, it's all actually really messy and really complicated. Yes, it pays to be aware that you know, your subject area, you know, it might be maths, which mathematicians often claim is a pure, hard subject that is not influenced by politics and other stuff. In reality, it is influenced by all those things, it's messy, and it comes from the society that it's set within. So stuff going on, like funding cuts to certain areas, interests in other areas, business, what's going to promote wealth, stuff like that, that is all going to impact how the discipline, how maths develops.
So we should do that,
Tracy Dix
we should know that I do have aspirations to well actually get some of my colleagues, we call Math advisors to teach me Maths their way. Because, you know, it's not something that's ever really resonated for me. But I do believe that with the right approach, you know, anyone can appreciate math
Alexandra Patel
that you worry. When the kids get
to learn maths at school, they'll be dragging you in for lessons. And then you'll sit there and go, Oh, dear God, what on earth does this mean? I never did maths like this.
Tracy Dix
But well, I look at some of the primary school maths that my son is doing at the moment. And I don't understand the methods right. Now. I don't know. It seems logical to me. I'm not here anyway.
Alexandra Patel
Things change over time.
Tracy Dix
They do. Well, yeah. So how you how you do division can change over time? Because I learn long division, but that's not what he's doing at the moment in school.
Alexandra Patel
No, I do all sorts. So you know, what was weird? So I was looking for some nice images to create this slide purely for you, Tracy, because we have to talk through this stuff a little bit. And I think I looked for
staff
working conditions. And I ended up with a picture of, you know, the university I work for with me. I OMG. That's me!
Tracy Dix
a very high profile there with your protests.
Alexandra Patel
No, really. I was there. I was very surprised that it came up that was in the top 10.
Yeah. Yeah.
Tracy Dix
Very cozy.
And of course, one of the other consequences, as many of our listeners will be aware of, is that they now pay enormous tuition fees.
Yeah, so I mean, this was way before my time, but it wasn't the case. Once upon a time. Yeah. And you hear people who are like serial students, they just do degree after degree. I really believe that. I've heard of that. I don't know if it's true, but I assume it is.
Alexandra Patel
So 1997, People got grants, their degrees. 1998 I went to university, I think I got part grants and parts tuition fees that I had to cover. And the tuition fees were 1000 pounds. Yeah. And when I heard that, I freaked out. I was like, Oh, I can't afford this. You know, I need to take a gap year or something and think about what my choices are.
Tracy Dix
Well, I did you take a gap year? Because you did. I think it wasn't that when the tuition fees that increased the 3000 balance very quickly. Yes. So you did not want to take that gap. You know, the degree would forever have been out of your reach.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah, yeah.
I'm saying is there now, you know, 9000 pounds, and then accommodation on top of that, you know, 50,000 pounds.
Tracy Dix
I think that's what I paid as an international student. Yeah, that was It's not that No, I think it's not that now
Alexandra Patel
probably no sympathy.
Tracy Dix
I have no, no, it's not that I have no sympathy. You know, I could have, I could have stayed at home, I could have gone back where I came from. Now I'm joking. Actually, we shouldn't joke about things like that. I could have stayed at home and you
Alexandra Patel
can joke about it because you're
Tracy Dix
okay. But
Alexandra Patel
now mean, you know the whole thing about like, you can make jokes about immigration. If you're immigrant
Tracy Dix
I see.
Alexandra Patel
We'll delete that.
Tracy Dix
We don't have to. I think we should we should be real. We should keep it real. Okay. I do I have no sympathy. No, it's not that. But yeah, I could have stayed at home and done a degree for a lot less. But I didn't. There you go. And the interesting thing about this whole immigrant thing is quite often I forget that I am one. Just because you know, everyone around me is sort of white. Well, not everyone's white and English. But I don't. You know, like, to my mind, I don't see myself as any difference. It's a very strange thing to say. I know. But I justdon't.
Alexandra Patel
Well, in many ways, you're not any different.
Tracy Dix
No, I guess. Yeah. Well adjusted.
Because everyone has their unique backgrounds where they come from, indeed. And sometimes it's good to acknowledge that and sometimes it isn't it? Maybe,
no, yeah, sometimes we just want to get on with things, don't we? Yeah.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah. Yeah, complex.
The world is that is my answer to everything at moments.
Tracy Dix
Well, I will agree. It is complex, because you know, even when it comes to issues of like background and things, some people will say they want to be seen, and some people don't. But not everyone is the same. You know, and that regard in terms of their perspective, so all this, like, EDI- equality, diversity and inclusion, stuff that's going on, that's why there isn't there. There aren't any kind of hard and fast rules as to what we should do. Because you're still going to, you know, you're going to please some people and offend some people.
Yeah, that's just life, isn't it? Yeah.
Alexandra Patel
So have you got a takeaway from that? Once people do if they offend people,
Tracy Dix
I will just apologize and move on.
Alexandra Patel
stop them?
Tracy Dix
also, and I think if they persist in being offended, then I think it's kind of on them, you know, they need to think about why they feel so confronted about whatever happened. Yeah. Because it's not intentional.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah, yeah,
I think I agree. Yeah, you know, if you've tried as a person to include people, and okay, you get it wrong. And so you try and learn from that mistake, because somebody's pointed this out. But
you know, if people keep being offended, maybe we do show you're doing the best you can.
Tracy Dix
Yeah, and this might be a social media thing. But I feel as if we are entering an era where people love to be offended. You know, they're just offended by everything these days. And I'm like, so I don't set out to offend anyone. And I try to be as empathetic as I can. And sometimes I'm just like, don't you have better things to worry about than to be offended by whatever it was?
Alexandra Patel
Nothing. At the end of the day, that's what matters. It's your own opinion of your own behaviors? Because I know you would, you know, like you said, you know, you don't want to offend people.
I don't want to offend people.
It's a, it's a really difficult one. But, ya know, I tell myself, I do not want to feel guilty about things I will be the best person I can be. If I make mistakes, fine, apologize, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it.
Tracy Dix
Well, and actually, okay, so we're digressing somewhat, but the whole guilt thing.
Sometimes it's used as a means of control by other people isn't it?
Alexandra Patel
very much specially on women.
Tracy Dix
Yeah, and it might not be that you've actually offended them, but somehow they want to make you feel obliged to them for whatever reason. Yeah. And I think it is very much a means of control and sometimes like a form of gaslighting, but anyway, we've digressed too far.
Alexandra Patel
Okay, okay. So we said about obviously, the political impact on students around tuition fees. So you know, you guys are aware that the society you're living in the context of what's going on, is affecting your education. Veteran traveler are talking about The idea of higher education becoming more of a market. So universities are investing in advertising. They're trying to get lots of sales, a tuition fees, whilst minimizing how much they spend, you know, big profit.
That's what we're after. Yeah. So what this cause
is that we start to see a reduction in power of universities. So in the past, they control their own little area in the UK.
Tracy Dix
So is that relating to territories? So coming back to the original, so
Alexandra Patel
literal territories? In a sense, I guess, yeah. And we start to see new universities, independent universities being set up, which are able to try and compete. So then we're seeing this kind of rivalry between competitors, because they're having to try and attract customers. And of course, this gives customers or students more power. And so then we get this weird kind of relationship between universities and the power they hold the state who are regulating things and providing a tiny bit of funding. But they're also authorizing or saying, you know, this university is good, or this university isn't, and the whole kind of markets. So this whole kind of advertising, and this university is better than this one. But this one cost less.
Tracy Dix
league tables.
Alexandra Patel
Exactly, exactly.
So it becomes a very complicated mess. Really,
Tracy Dix
it is a complicated mess.
Alexandra Patel
So another way of looking at it is to say that I think this is called the the three helix concept, innovation model or something, rather. And so the idea is that there's an interaction between universities and the government. So we've already seen that, but also industry. So universities and industry are sharing ideas and innovations. Whereas the university and the government are sharing funding and strategic demands. So the government might say, Okay, we, we don't think you should be looking at Arts, we think you should be looking at science stem, which I believe they do say quite a lot.
Tracy Dix
But also, when you say that industry does provide funding, in formal research grants,
Alexandra Patel
it's a little I'm not sure on the breakdown that yeah,
I believe a lot of our grants used to come from the EU. So Brexit really
Tracy Dix
cool. But then they come in some key, you know, industry, they come from, like, companies, don't they?
Alexandra Patel
Sometimes? Yeah, yeah. And then you've got the relationship between industry in the government's. So you know, government taking taxes, but industry applying pressure saying, you know, we want graduates in this area.
Tracy Dix
So do they apply pressure on the government for that or on universities?
Alexandra Patel
Both? Well, I would say government's already. Okay. I'm
guessing at this point. I'm not an expert in this.
Tracy Dix
Because Because some university departments have quite strong relationships with industry. Yeah. You know, where they get people to come in and do talks, like employability, presentations and stuff like that. Yeah.
Alexandra Patel
But whether they're funding the,
you know, the infrastructure.
It's another question. But the takeaway from all of this is that when you study your degree, your subject area, it is fully embedded within whatever's going on in society at that time. And, you know, historically what's gone on in society and in itself, so I really wanted to focus on this at some point, but this may have to be another podcast. That actually, when you look at a department or a discipline, it is like a micro society. It's a small culture. So you have certain methodologies that people think great. So you know, maybe Bob's lab down the road down the corridor is doing some really awesome stuff but Mohammed's lab over there, just you know, we're not so sure about that technique. It's bit new. Love to see how it goes. And then you got to have certain resources, you know, university can afford this, but they can't afford this. Yeah, you're going to have certain knowledge, canons of knowledge, I believe that are more powerful than others that you know, the community believes in and upholds. Whereas there'll be other maybe slightly more controversial ideas that are just starting to break ground. And again, with the hierarchies in departments, you've got some people who are respected some people who are less respected, not necessarily based on their research, maybe it's based on their personal skills. I don't know.
Tracy Dix
It could be I think EQ has a lot to say, you know?
Alexandra Patel
Yeah. Or it could be on funding, or it could be on all sorts of things, how long they've been in the department. Yeah. And then language, I think, is another big one. So it's the terminology that different groups of people use. So if you have the trauma of being a joint honours students, you probably are well aware that terminology is used in one discipline in a very different way as it is used in another one. And so you have to understand that and, you know, work out your own routes through all of this, which can be quite confusing. So yeah,
Tracy Dix
especially because the two departments often don't talk to each other. And so I've certainly heard from students doing joint honours that, you know, sometimes they have timetable clashes, because they're given a timetable for one subject and another timetable for the other and nobody's communicated. Yeah. So it's a logistical nightmare to have to work things. He has a lot of pressure on the student actually quite unfair. And because this go on, if I was just going to say that the offering the combination as an option, they should look after the students who choose the combination.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah, yeah.
But one subject will have a different way of writing essays compared to the other subjects,
Tracy Dix
and sometimes different referencing styles. So the student has to learn to, whereas, you know, single honor student only need to learn one.
Alexandra Patel
Yeah, yep. Yeah.
So the conclusion of this is really that, you know, you have to be aware that wider society, culture has an impact on your subject area, but also, within your discipline. It is its own many culture. So you need to pay attention to all the features of a culture in order to be able to kind of fit in and succeed.
Tracy Dix
It's very deep. This has been a very deep conversation. And I wonder if recording a podcast episode at 10 o'clock in the evening on a Friday night has anything to do with it?
Alexandra Patel
No, no, this is a very deep subject areas. You know, this is fundamental to understanding study skills. They're different in different departments.
Tracy Dix
Well, that's true, although I would just have said that rather than
Alexandra Patel
an hour and a half about this.
Tracy Dix
No, it has been very interesting. And I think it was good to kind of use, you know, some of the ideas as a kind of framework for this discussion. Okay. But yeah, you've made it very intellectual.
Alexandra Patel
we will blow your minds carry on listening. We will have another podcast out in a couple of weeks time. We will. So make sure to follow us on social media, subscribe to our mailing list, and we will give you updates on any of our offers and courses that we're developing
Tracy Dix
and new episodes when we release them.
Alexandra Patel
Yep, we look forward to working with you. Thank you and good night.
Take care
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
