It was, predictably, yet another bureaucratic invasion, yet another assault designed to neutralise efficiency and to distract from the activities we'd been employed to undertake. This time, forms collecting information for HEMIS and the SA Survey of Research and Experimental Development.
The mail itself was framed in the exasperated tones of a Dean caught between a rock and a hard choice, uncomfortable as Beelzebub's messenger, but mindful of the subsidy implications of waving the finger of her choice back at Isengard. And so, dutifully, I opened the attachments and surveyed the damage.
Bad move.
Someone had decided that there needed to be two forms, one for The Colleagues, and one for the underclass. And that each of these should offer as choices only those activities deemed suitable for the relevant class. Academics, thus, were allowed to report participation in certain activities, and staff on other conditions of employment, others (see below). Given the recent reception of the proposed research policy for non-academic staff, one might have imagined it to have penetrated the consciousness of Someone that there are certain classes of staff not on academic conditions of employment who conduct research, or teach - sometimes exclusively. What they'll fill in on their forms to account for their time will be interesting. But clearly I was overly optimistic about the potential to learn of Someone.
Clearly it's an exercise in compliance, rather than some striving after positivist notions of "truth" or "reality" - but, given the resource implications of the exercise, one can't help wondering why Someone wants teaching and research activities underreported when those are - reputedly - our "core business" and surely the basis on which subsidy is bludgeoned. It's a mystery which defies me, perhaps happily. The day I understand the mind of Bremner is perhaps the day I ought to hand myself in for recycling.
Then, of course, there's the neat assumption that jobs all add up to 100%. If one interprets the 100% as being equivalent to our contracted 37.5 hours per week, clearly some people's percentages will be far higher than 100; some may be lower. If one interprets the 100% as being the total of all time actually spend on activities in service of the academic project, or the University - depending on one's orientation - it would be almost impossible to categorise and total this reliably. Does a debate accompanied by clinking ice which develops an idea into publishable output count as "work" if it takes place on a weekend? Does an email sent from an internet cafe? It all attests to a last-Century, Fordist notion of work - the kind of work Castells would term "generic labour" rather than the "knowledge work" that most of us here ought to be engaged in.
And then, of course, there are the voluntary additional activities, such as committee work, involvement in staff bodies or peer mentoring - the sorts of "institutional support" activities that oil the machine but don't show up on balance sheets. Does one declare these - and have some beancounter fretting that they're happening at the expense of one's day job (since the percentages add up to 100, any percentage allocated to this category is a percentage taken away from the tasks of one's day job) or does one leave these invisible? Or report them as additional percentages, since they occur above and beyond the contracted hours - and leave the beancounters to worry with the arithmetic?
Another problem with such forms is the assumption that each activity belongs to one, and only one, category. How one apportions activities among the various categories becomes very arbitrary - but, given the resource implications, it's a very political issue.
Of course, the _real_ outcome will be that everyone will simply take the easy way out and lie. The road of least resistance, make the numbers look pretty (or at least credible to the Someone who designed the form) and hope it goes away for another year. Meanwhile, Deans will sit with the fallout of having certain activities under (or over) reported at the expense of others, and will be beaten over the head with that in their budget slices. And will pass this beating on to Departments.
And, future users of HEMIS data (or the SA Survey of Reseach and Experimental Development) will sit with numbers which are largely meaningless, all relation to "reality" successfully destroyed by overzealous bureaucrats, and someone somewhere will pass judgment on the state of Higher Education in South Africa, blissfully unaware that the lying numbers are all due to Someone being too far removed from the real activities of the University to know what it is they should be asking, how, and from whom, to elicit the best and most accurate data, and how to present that to The System to derive the most beneficial resource allocation.
Permissible activities: "Academic" staff:
010 Instruction: Activities directly involved in the teaching of students, including preparation, marking, setting examinations, curriculum development, lectures, seminars, practicals, and supervision of research projects, theses
and dissertations.
020 Research: Activities which are designed to further human knowledge, either by the creation of new knowledge or the application of existing knowledge.
030 Public service: Activities which make available to the public the resources and skills of staff in order to meet a specific community need.
040 Academic support: Activities which support in direct ways the activities of instruction, research and public service, including library and museum services, educational media services, academic computing support, technical support, and academic administration at the course, departmental and faculty level.
050 Student services: Activities, other than instructional ones, which relate to student development, social and sporting clubs, counseling, career guidance and health services.
060 Institutional support: Centralised activities which are carried out to support the day-to-day as well as long term viability of the operations of the institution, including executive management, financial management and administration, human resources management, facilities management, financial aid, student admissions, records and examinations, administrative computing support, public relations and fund raising.
100 Hospital services: Activities which are related to the operations of a teaching hospital or clinic, and teaching health sciences centres.
Permissible activities: Staff on conditions other than "academic"
030 Public service: Activities which make available to the public the resources and skills of staff in order to meet a specific community need.
040 Academic support: Activities which support in direct ways the activities of instruction, research and public service, including library and museum services, educational media services, academic computing support, technical support, and academic administration at the course, departmental and faculty level.
050 Student services: Activities, other than instructional ones, which relate to student development, social and sporting clubs, counseling, career guidance and health services.
060 Institutional support: Centralised activities which are carried out to support the day-to-day as well as long term viability of the operations of the institution, including executive management, financial management and administration, human resources management, facilities management, financial aid, student admissions, records and examinations, administrative computing support, public relations and fund raising.
070 Operation and maintenance of plant: Activities which are associated with building and plant maintenance, building and plant renovations and alterations, landscaping, gardens and grounds, custodial and security services, parking, cleaning services, and the provision of utilities.
090 Auxiliary enterprises: Activities which are related to the provision of primary support and convenience services on campus for students and staff, including student housing, staff housing, food services, bookshops and childcare services.
100 Hospital services: Activities which are related to the operations of a teaching hospital or clinic, and teaching health sciences centers.