This week's edition of Times Higher Education contains a nice cartoon piece, from Laurie Taylor, on why Karl Marx would not be appointed to a post in an economics department at a university today. Whilst clearing the accumulated paperwork of many years in my room I recently came across a similar piece entitled 'Why God would not be given tenure.' It originates, I believe, in Canada and, like the piece on Karl Marx, provides a comment on the expectations made of academics today - to produce short articles rather than long books, to be able to cite immediate impacts, to produce replicable research findings and so on. Perhaps the big picture analysis from a great thinker, distilled over many years of scholarship and reflection, is no longer compatible with the modern university. Here are some of the elements relating to God's failed application for a permanent position in a university (with no offence intended to anyone with strong religious beliefs):
- he has only produced 1 major publication to date.
- Published in Hebrew rather than a major world language (preferably English)
- Inadequate provision of source references
- Not published in a refereed journal subject to peer review - appears to be some sort of self-publishing
- Questions are often asked over authorship
- The scientific community cannot replicate the results
- Did not get permission from an ethics committee to use human subjects
- Killed off some of his human subjects when experiments failed
- Expelled his first two students
- Did not post regular office hours or locations for personal advice: sometimes met in deserts or on mountaintops
- Set only 10 learning outcomes, yet these proved almost impossible to achieve
