World Poetry Day and Social Mobility

Today is UNESCO World Poetry Day, so here's a poem by Tony Harrison titled Social Mobility.

Ah, the proved advantages of scholarship!
Whereas his dad took cold tea for his snap,
he slaves at nuances, knows at just one sip
Chateau Lafitte from Chateau Neuf du Pape.

Two worlds, irony, scepticism and just a hint of self loathing, all in four lines: not bad going.

Alan Milburn and Loft Ladders

You couldn't make it up. If you go to what appears to be Alan Milburn's  personal website  the first thing you read is a piece of marketing guff for loft ladders. Is this a shrewd piece of product placement by a potential social mobility "Czar"? Or has someone just bought the domain name?

What is a good idea depends on what the feasible alternatives are

Kind of obvious really, but apparently not to Martin Taylor (Eton and Balliol) currently chairman of Syngenta and a former chief executive of Barclays. In his weekend FT op piece he makes a comparison between the current standoff in Euroland and the Treaty of Versailles. The strap line sums it up:

Reparations were essential to secure French support at Versailles in 1919. This did not make them a good idea.

Said with the unshakable confidence that Eton and Balliol selects for, but nonetheless balls. My point is not deep. In hindsight reparations after WW1  appear a bad idea, but at the time there was no serious support for the alternatives. Keynes lunched out on his (correct) prediction of some of the consequences but his was not a mainstream opinion. At the time no French support meant no Treaty and no Treaty was not a politically acceptable outcome. It's a strange mentality - maybe it's common among bankers (I wouldn't know) - that leads you to find fault in not choosing  an alternative that is not available to you. If you are on top of a hill and a clever (perhaps Eton and Balliol) banker exhorts you with Olympian detachment to reach the summit of a distant mountain  without descending into the valley, then feel free to take their advice with a pinch of salt.

Misguided Journal Editors

I and a coauthor have an article under consideration at a leading British sociology journal. To her surprise she received an email from the editor of the journal  asking her to take down the  copy of the paper hosted on  the work in progress section of my website before the journal would send the paper out to referees. There is nothing sinister about this and it is, no doubt, done with the best of intentions, but in my opinion it is quite obtuse. 

Research enters the public domain in all sorts of ways, as conference papers, press releases, working-papers and so forth. Grant awarders want early dissemination and the only way to do that -   given the length of time journals take to publish - is to write working papers and disseminate them as widely as possible, which usually means electronically. To try and enforce a double-blind refereeing procedure is to stand Canute like before the waves.

The only potential victim, if they choose  to reveal  their identity by putting a paper in the public domain, is the author themselves. If they, in effect, wave their right to anonymity what business is it of the journal to try and retrospectively impose it on them? This is doubly true when this 'policy' (along with others I've brought attention to in the past) is not mentioned in the journal's guidance to authors. Personally I'm willing to trade the scientific benefits of early dissemination against the small probability of a prejudiced reviewer - and I really believe that probability is small. Referees can be many things: careless, yes; ill informed, yes; incompetent, yes. But I've rarely read a referee's report that seems to be motivated by pure malice. 

I rarely referee an article nowadays without knowing who has written it. I don't need to Google. Academic niches are small. If you only referee work in your own field - as you should - then you know who the players are and what they are up to. You probably refereed their last grant application. You certainly saw their presentation at the last conference. If you can't recognize the author then you don't know what is going on and you aren't fit to referee. 

Some months ago I discussed this very issue with an economics colleague. He told me that nobody reads the articles in economics journals. By the time they are published they are old news. Publication is just the kite mark, but everybody has read the working paper and formed their own opinion long before that. That's how things are in a serious discipline.

Reaction to latest UCAS application figures

Here is my first take on the UCAS figures released today for the 2012 round of university applications. I've done some quick and dirty work on the numbers  supplied by the Guardian. This is nothing more than a first pass, it takes the data at face value and it says nothing whatsoever about whether increased fees have differentially put off different types of potential applicants. It also does nothing to control for the size of the 18 year old birth cohort - which is obviously important. If we look at applications to all universities, on the basis of the Guardian figures alone, it looks like the average change in the 2012 figures compared to the 2010 base is -0.72% ie a decline of less than 1%. It's important to use the 2010 base because in 2011 students obviously anticipated fee rises and were less likely to take a 'gap year'. Using the Guardian data we can also see if the magnitude of the percentage change across universities is related to average fee levels. Data on the latter are missing for quite a few cases so all the usual cautions apply. However, on the basis of what data there are, it looks like the answer, at the institutional level, is no and this is true whether or not you adjust for bursary provision and fee waivers. Here is a very rough and ready graph of the relationship. The regression slope is essentially flat and the slope coefficient is non significant (but actually positive!).

I've broken all the rules about making nice graphs, but I'm pushed for time at the moment. It will be interesting to see if a rather different story emerges when somebody is able to look at these data more carefully.

Forpseud!

I notice that several of our 'leading' departments now have slick advertising videos on their web pages. Nothing surprising about that. As I've observed before, once blowing one's own trumpet gets a foothold then the Devil take the hindmost. What is perhaps a bit more surprising is how easily sociologists adopt the locutions of management speak. For instance here is a gem from one of the promos:

"...students gain a wide variety of employability skills and one of these can be exampled by the research project..."

Excuse me, but since when has to use or make an example become a verb? I example, you example, she examples.... If we translate this into English it is obvious that the first part is banal while the second part (even if you add in what follows the ellipsis) is meaningless:

...students learn things that may be useful in the workplace (I would hope so); an example of this is the research project... (what about it? In what way is this an example of a skill that students have learned?).

OK, I'm being a tad pedantic, but this sort of thing is insidious. Consider, for example, how to make, create or state a theory became a verb in sociologyspeak. Now all you have to do to dismiss any inconevnient empirical fact is to utter the magical incantation: "Your article/paper/sentence (tick whichever is applicable) is undertheorized." This phrase absolves the utterer from ever clearly stating what the actual deficiency is. It is in most cases the equivalent of shouting bugaboo!

 

Forpseud!

Anyone care to have a go at translating this sociological gem into something resembling the English language?

"There is much to unpick here about how particular classed, racialised and gendered (young) bodies come to be (re)positioned and (re)inscribed within regenerated city-scapes. Urban ‘disadvantaged’ youth become objects of a particular luminosity, encoded as future-oriented, agentic subjects who stand for the city’s pride, hope, diversity and multiculturalism."

There is indeed much to unpick here... among the more minor, why the scare marks around 'disadvantaged'? Is this meant to be ironic? Is the author saying the youths are not disadvantaged?

I'll spare the author's blushes unless they insist on attribution.