This post by Hannah Forsyth, on Crooked Timber, is a helpful articulation of some of the thoughts I have been having—with my St Andrews colleagues—as we reconsider the point of teaching and research, in the present context.
As a fellow survivor of the ravages of managerialism in Australian Universities from 1990 to 2021, I found the pointer to Pete Chalmer’s notion of the “thru-put” model of education, with all of its dessicating consequences for the long slow work of _learning_, really helpful.
In this coming academic year I’ll be encouraging my students—more wholeheartedly than ever—that if they’re showing up to learn with me (where that is so much more than producing an “academic output”), I’ll be there with them and doing everything I can to be present with them to help them along the way. This takes effort and engagement on all sides, and can’t be short-circuited by offloading the hard work to a robot.
https://crookedtimber.org/2026/08/04/if-you-cant-be-bothered-writing-it-i-cant-be-bothered-reading-it/
As a fellow survivor of the ravages of managerialism in Australian Universities from 1990 to 2021, I found the pointer to Pete Chalmer’s notion of the “thru-put” model of education, with all of its dessicating consequences for the long slow work of _learning_, really helpful.
In this coming academic year I’ll be encouraging my students—more wholeheartedly than ever—that if they’re showing up to learn with me (where that is so much more than producing an “academic output”), I’ll be there with them and doing everything I can to be present with them to help them along the way. This takes effort and engagement on all sides, and can’t be short-circuited by offloading the hard work to a robot.
https://crookedtimber.org/2026/08/04/if-you-cant-be-bothered-writing-it-i-cant-be-bothered-reading-it/