Teaching was not the only criterion of assessment<\/a>. Research was another and, from the point of view of getting promotion, more important. Teaching being increasingly dreadful, research was both an escape ladder away from the coal face<\/a> and a means of securing a raise. The mandarins in charge of education<\/a> decreed that research was to be assessed, and that meant counting things. Quite what things and how wasn’t too clear, but the general answer was that the more you wrote, the better you were. So lecturers<\/a> began scribbling with the frenetic intensity of battery hens<\/a> on overtime, producing paper after paper, challenging increasingly harassed librarians<\/a> to find the space for them. New journals and conferences blossomed and conference hopping became a means to self-promotion. Little matter if your effort was read only by you and your mates. It was there and it counted.
\nvia Why I am Not a Professor<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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