h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I wasn't going to add another journal entry until after the end of term, but I thought I'd note this while it's fresh in my mind. Apparently the University's review committee has decided that the Philosophy Dept. is overteaching us -- that we get too many tutorials compared to other arts & humanities students, and that staff ought to spend less time on tutorials and more on profitable research.

Of course, we understand the financial reasoning (given that we're taught at a loss, so with its research gains the University just breaks even), but the committee seems to have overlooked the fact that tutorials -- unlike lectures -- can be stimulating for tutors as well as us tutees. The department, better aware than the committee of the role of discussion in Philosophy, isn't at all happy, but expects to be leant on pretty heavily. Even now, first years have fewer tutorials than I had. (Good job I didn't take a gap year.)

The irony of the thing (besides the fact that I am now entitled to tell people in the year below mine how hard we worked in the old days) is that teaching has always been Durham's strength; it's one of the U.K.'s top teaching universities, but can't get into the Russell Group because it hasn't the research clout. But mere teaching doesn't produce those lucrative corporate partnerships.

And the latest from the Philosophy Dept. is that there's going to be a brand new 3rd Year module on Ontology. Just the thing to solve the overteaching problem, obviously.

The rationale is that ontology is a major growth area for research grants; apparently applied ontology turns up in law and I.T., and so research ontologists are in demand. But the timing is still... eyebrow-raising.