Where are the academic super-stars?

The Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University is reported to be recruiting Nobel Prizewinners to join his team of academics. In fact he has already signed up the economist Joseph Stiglitz, from the USA, to work part-time. He is only the first of a series of promised “iconic appointments”. It is all part and parcel of nudging Manchester up the super-league of world-wide academic institutions.

I have no idea on what terms Stiglitz has been attracted to Manchester. But the usual deal in the international race for university super-stars is to offer them a lot of money, no ”coal-face” administrative responsibilities and a teaching load that is made up of a few chosen seminars with clever graduates – none of the basic undergraduate teaching or the standard stint on the catering committee that the rest of us undertake.

Vice-Chancellors tend to love this kind of head-hunting (for Manchester University read Manchester United?). It adds lustre to their University, and kudos to their own cv. Stiglitz is, I guess, the Beckham of Economics.  But the truth is that the brightest lustre ought to go  to  those institutions that actually produce the Nobel Prize winners, not those that just buy them in.

It is  not all that difficult for a University to entice the high-fliers to join them – it’s a question of making the terms attractive enough (and those terms  tend to  include a large salary and a delicate embargo on seeing too much of the undergraduates). But what happens to the rest of us when “Professor Whizzo” wings in for his couple of graduate classes a year, leaving the rank and file to run the show? According to the Manchester University website, Stiglitz has been hired just to chair their new “World Poverty Institute”. I wonder what they say to clever first year undergraduates who would like to be taught be the great man.

In fact, in most subjects, great and world-changing academics are made not born. There may be a few enfant-sauvage mathematicians who revolutionize their subject simply by solitary scribbling. In Arts subjects  there are no natural geniuses (or so few as not to be worth chasing, and generally only recognized post-mortem anyway).  The difference between the clever person and the clever person who makes a difference to their subject is a combination of luck, community, back-up and local stimulation. The best thing a University can be proud of is providing a context in which little zany ideas can turn into big important ones, or young maverick academics  can turn into influential ones. If I have made any difference in my field, the credit goes to my institution as much as to me.

That means taking a view of the intellectual community as a whole. And it means constructing an environment in which no professor is too grand to teach first year undergraduates (in many ways they are the most important). Or, because they are off back to the USA as soon as the meeting or seminar is over, doesn’t have time to talk through the anxieties of junior colleagues, or to debate with the student representatives the rights and wrongs of the syllabus.

The sooner Universities pay as much attention to retaining and fostering home-grown talent as attracting Nobel Laureates and assorted  divas from elsewhere, the better. Perhaps this is not so much unlike the message of Man U and English football. The home-grown has a longer shelf-life, and in the end may score more goals.

Comments

[Dorothy King]

a) I do not have that big an ego and would never put myself in the same league as the people you discuss, but b) at the other end of the scale I think part-time works well for smaller colleges too. I do a bit of teaching here and there, as there are colleges that need either a special course taught, or do not need a full-time archaeologist. The undergrad students I've taught seem happy with the arrangement, and can reach me by email any time. It seems to work well for everybody.

[Alex Drace-Francis]

As a Liverpudlian I maybe shouldn't comment on the state of Mancunian learning for fear of being labelled Orientalist, but I do like 'the only downside is the whether'. Is this a comment on the conditionality of mercantilist approaches to education, or an orthographic manifestation of their outcome?

[Rachael Walsh]

As a student at Manchester University and a native of the city, I find this very offensive. Manchester is currently in the process of recruiting world leaders in their fields, together with massive investments in the campus, accomodation and at the same time withdrawing its shares in arms traders. A university that is ethical and promising? The investment in the campus and in the intellect these world leaders will bring is in common with the city's vibrancy following the bomb in 1996. Vast investment from the North West Devolpment agency other Quangos as well as business have made Manchester a wonderful place to live. I am not suprised that Stiglitz would like to come and work here. The students are fantastic, the city is amazing and possibly the only downside is the whether. Perhaps the writer is just a little resentful that Stiglitz (and I'm sure many more of his calibre,) are choosing to work at other institutions instead of ones resting on their laurels.

[Alex Drace-Francis]

But surely if this Stiglitz guy is 'the Beckham of economics', this must mean he has been fired already? Maybe he could be replaced by the real David Beckham, who, let us not forget, has 95 publications to his name...

[John Moore]

I am trying to imagine the quality of academic life at Abramovich College, Cambridge under Provost Jose Mourinho.

I should imagine that once the College is beginning to establish its reputation, the dons who have done so much to advance it will be kicked out for not having made the best seller lists, to be replaced by sociopathic academic has-beens, some of them no longer living. Look out Mary, Socrates is on his way, and not the bloke who played for Brazil.

[Michael P.]

Isn't it strange to see academics care about 'superstar' status when many of us, if we had wanted to do so, could easily have commanded a much higher salary than the 'academic superstars' and greater prestige, if we had gone into, say, business or law?

It's a very inefficient way to become wealthy or powerful.

Ambition in academia from a certain point of view looks as foolish as ambition in ecclesiastical preferments.

[Anna]

I agree with your views. Too often undergraduates are treated with condescension or ignored altogether when they are just the ones who might benefit from exposure to an academic 'star' even if only through open lectures or seminars. Ideas need to percolate through an academic community, not just remain the preserve of a chosen few.

[Carol A]

Yes, much praise to our lecturer in Ancient Greek who has managed to drag us all into the wonderful world of Greek Literature. She may not be a household name but she certainly can work miracles!
I can't imagine one of the "superstar" academics taking the trouble to clear up the muddier points of Greek verbs.

[don]

Surely it's part of the awful effect of the Research Assessment Exercise -- which makes it financially beneficial to buy in a "research professor" at almost any price (so long as they go on producing the books). So much for an academic community.

[robert]

My UK University department bought one of these stars a year ago. but there was a twist in his case. he was asked to teach some undergraduates as well as his do own work. after a year of near total inaccessibility to even his postgraduate students, he found the place not to his taste and is now back in the USA. Who gained from that expensive little gambit I wonder?

[Helen Morales]

I think you're spot-on (if a tad modest)

and yet....

a bit like football, it's a strikingly gendered phenomenon. I can think of many male 'iconic appointments', far fewer female ones. It could be that they don't get the same publicity, or that women are offered the posts but family responsibilities and precisely the kind of sense of duty towards their students and colleagues that you were describing prevents them from accepting them. But it's also likely that women are kept out of the super-star league by the same conspiracy of circumstances that makes the percentages of women in professorships grim reading. So maybe modesty is misplaced. More ego and less angst might be called for. And we should be alerting the Vice Chancellor of Manchester University that the world will be watching the diversity of his icons very closely...