A few months ago during a trip back to San Diego, the author heard about an initiative ran by PhD students and postdocs at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). The initiative involves a weekly trip by a few science researchers to the nearby drinking holes, where they will mark themselves as people doing scientific research and take questions from other, normal customers. By taking the time to appeal to the laymen's curiosity about science, they are hoping to reduce the distance between scientists and normal people, and make more people understand the necessity of scientific research for their own daily lives.
The fact that such initiatives are so few and far in between, combined with the negative perception of academic research among people in academia, makes such an initiative especially valuable. Non-academic people generally see academics as a small, isolated circle, doing researches on obscure topics using obscure lingo that only people in their fields can understand. The outputs of the said research, to most laymen, just seem so irrelevant to their own lives. The obscurity of the researches then, make people wonder why exactly are they being conducted in the first place.
Naturally, questioning whether or not a piece of research is essential for the general public leads to the question of money. Research institutions are not exactly cheap to run, especially considering that academic experts tend to be paid fairly good amount of money, for lengthy careers. Especially in the field of science, equipments for conducting experiments, and field trips to research sites and conferences across the globe quickly add up in terms of financial expenses of research. For a country like Japan where public universities remain the most prestigious, such expenses can be a significant taxpayer burden over time.
Looked at this way, there is no doubt that there would be some nascent feeling among the general public that research institutions are not using their money to produce practical, socially useful research results, and thus ought to receive less public funding. And the downward pressure on funding is only exacerbated by projected decrease in demand for academic institutions as credible competitors emerge. MOOCs now provide credible alternative to putting students in physical classrooms, and major corporations devote large R&D budgets for cutting edge technologies. The role of universities and institutes are being reduced.
The public's skepticism toward usefulness of higher education is further increased by the reality of less kids and more universities. As schools fight over limited number of students, they are forced to make financially expensive decisions to attract students, whether it be better facilities or more financial aid. At the same time, some schools reduce the quality of their education by mass importing fee-paying foreign students or reducing course loads, further reducing the public's and the political establishment's appetite for funding schools that are showing declines in reputation.
Under such an environment, it becomes all the more important for higher education research institutions to prove their relevance to the general public, if just for the intent of securing enough funding. To do so, there needs to be more public knowledge of what researches are being conducted and how those researches are directly relevant for improvements in their daily lives. In any democratic society, if the electorate does not see benefits for themselves or the society-at-large, it will vote to remove funding for the activities. To appeal to civic society, universities must be more proactive in advertising the impacts of their various research.
Yet, looking at behaviors of today's academics, many undertake behaviors completely opposite of what is needed to gain the favors of the general public. To strengthen their own sense of authority and academic prestige, academics have been more and more inclined to dig into their own obscure research topics, enhancing their aura of intellectual superiority through endless discussions of abstract theories and concepts few outside their own immediate fields of study can possibly understand. That short-term pursuit of prestige through academic specificities will only serve to undermine the financial health of institutions in the long run.
Instead, the spirit of the scientists-at-a-bar exercise conducted by researchers at UCSD should be promoted much more widely, at much grander scale. Only through casual interactions with the general public, in casual environments like drinking, can academics dispel the notions that they are isolated in their own little bubbles, doing work that do not benefit anyone but themselves. And only when enough of the general public can come to the understanding that academic research is easily understandable and approachable will they be more willing to support and fund research. The future of academia, in essence, rests upon its ability to communicate with the laymen in layman's words.
The fact that such initiatives are so few and far in between, combined with the negative perception of academic research among people in academia, makes such an initiative especially valuable. Non-academic people generally see academics as a small, isolated circle, doing researches on obscure topics using obscure lingo that only people in their fields can understand. The outputs of the said research, to most laymen, just seem so irrelevant to their own lives. The obscurity of the researches then, make people wonder why exactly are they being conducted in the first place.
Naturally, questioning whether or not a piece of research is essential for the general public leads to the question of money. Research institutions are not exactly cheap to run, especially considering that academic experts tend to be paid fairly good amount of money, for lengthy careers. Especially in the field of science, equipments for conducting experiments, and field trips to research sites and conferences across the globe quickly add up in terms of financial expenses of research. For a country like Japan where public universities remain the most prestigious, such expenses can be a significant taxpayer burden over time.
Looked at this way, there is no doubt that there would be some nascent feeling among the general public that research institutions are not using their money to produce practical, socially useful research results, and thus ought to receive less public funding. And the downward pressure on funding is only exacerbated by projected decrease in demand for academic institutions as credible competitors emerge. MOOCs now provide credible alternative to putting students in physical classrooms, and major corporations devote large R&D budgets for cutting edge technologies. The role of universities and institutes are being reduced.
The public's skepticism toward usefulness of higher education is further increased by the reality of less kids and more universities. As schools fight over limited number of students, they are forced to make financially expensive decisions to attract students, whether it be better facilities or more financial aid. At the same time, some schools reduce the quality of their education by mass importing fee-paying foreign students or reducing course loads, further reducing the public's and the political establishment's appetite for funding schools that are showing declines in reputation.
Under such an environment, it becomes all the more important for higher education research institutions to prove their relevance to the general public, if just for the intent of securing enough funding. To do so, there needs to be more public knowledge of what researches are being conducted and how those researches are directly relevant for improvements in their daily lives. In any democratic society, if the electorate does not see benefits for themselves or the society-at-large, it will vote to remove funding for the activities. To appeal to civic society, universities must be more proactive in advertising the impacts of their various research.
Yet, looking at behaviors of today's academics, many undertake behaviors completely opposite of what is needed to gain the favors of the general public. To strengthen their own sense of authority and academic prestige, academics have been more and more inclined to dig into their own obscure research topics, enhancing their aura of intellectual superiority through endless discussions of abstract theories and concepts few outside their own immediate fields of study can possibly understand. That short-term pursuit of prestige through academic specificities will only serve to undermine the financial health of institutions in the long run.
Instead, the spirit of the scientists-at-a-bar exercise conducted by researchers at UCSD should be promoted much more widely, at much grander scale. Only through casual interactions with the general public, in casual environments like drinking, can academics dispel the notions that they are isolated in their own little bubbles, doing work that do not benefit anyone but themselves. And only when enough of the general public can come to the understanding that academic research is easily understandable and approachable will they be more willing to support and fund research. The future of academia, in essence, rests upon its ability to communicate with the laymen in layman's words.
Comments
Post a Comment