Getting that Chair is Not Enough

My friends Bert and Michelle left these shores about seven years ago, before the current housing boom. They sold up their place in Harlow (this proved to be a mistake) and moved with their three children to an academic institution on the left side of the pond. Bert is a very bright and promising academic, although he does have something of a minor personality disorder, of the sort often found in academics and computer programmers.

Today, he could come back, he'd probably like to come back, but the three kids has become four and his wife is a full time "Home Maker".

If they came back to the UK and lets suppose he got a Chair somewhere. His 50K salary would just about buy them a one bedroomed flat. i.e. it would be a pointless waste of time. They could live under such conditions in India and never have to work again.

Isn't it about time the British Government got with the beat? British GPs now earn around £100K. With a sensible borrowing of 2.5 times their salary British GPs can now just about afford three bedroomed semi-detached houses in most parts of the country. If we can afford to hoick GP salaries up to £100K what not our best academics?

The View from the Sofa

All this talk about Myang Lee, and not a little repentance, got me thinking about the fact that it really is possible that Myang Lee could be a genuine university professor. In the last thirty years or so the character of Britain's universities has changed and now, provided you have the X-Factor you, dear reader, or anyone else can become a university professor.

In my day you needed brains and a good right hand (provided you are right handed that is). The Thatcher-Years were taking their toll, tenure was under threat and it was only possible to get a Chair if you were moderately bright and could produce a plethora of research papers each year, or at least persuade a small army of bright and highly underpaid graduate workers to write the papers for you. The system was vary neat, if you became sufficiently good at the game then the best graduates wanted to work with you and you were able to put your name on everything they wrote, which, provided you checked it carefully, made you (and your department) look good.

Today things have changed. All you need now is The X Factor and the X Factor is either funding, great contacts in industry (aka funding) or both. It really is possible that Myang Lee could be professor of Floating Fruit in some biology department provided she bought in the bacon, so to speak.

There is that repentant enough for you?

The Problem with Britain's Universities

It started when I ventured the opinion the Brainiac's Professor Myang Lee might not actually be a real bone fide university professor.

My wife, who knows for certain that there is no "Glass Ceiling" and that under the right conditions any woman can achieve anything (or to be a little fairer, some woman somewhere can achieve it), immediately challenged me on this point. "What are you saying about Myang Lee?" she asked, "Are you saying that a good looking woman couldn't be a university professor?"

I just had to rise to the bait. "No its just that A) I don't believe that a real university professor would bother experimenting on whether a particular fruit floats, B) You never hear her speak and C) I think that she looks like a Total Bimbo".

And that's why I'm sleeping on the sofa.