Professor for one year (week 17): The magic 6 years

For several years now, Germany has some rules concerning fixed-term contracts in academia.  Roughly speaking, you can be employed for 6 years after you got your degree in order to work towards your PhD.  And then, after obtaining your PhD, you can be employed for another 6 years.  In this second part, you should work on your "Habilitation" or, more generally speaking, towards a professorship.  Most of the time, people get fixed-term contracts for two or three years (Maybe that's not even true: according to the union GEW, most of the fixed-term contractors in academia are employed for only a few months at a time) and then maybe these contracts will be extended until the 6 years are completed.  If you go to another university after having worked towards your (still uncompleted) PhD, let's say for 4 years, you can only work another 2 years at any other university in Germany to complete your PhD.  Of course, there are some possibilities to extend these periods when you have kids or when you have to look after your parents and the like.

On the one hand, these rules (especially concerning the first 6 years) could be seen as in favor of PhD students: supervisors know that the PhD student has only 6 year's time and they should support their students to finish their theses within this period.  Before this rule applied, some (or most?) PhD students weren't able to finish their theses within a reasonable period; they had so many tasks at the institute that there was almost no time left for their own research.  Surprisingly, this habit of exploiting assistants hasn't changed much.  The only consequence:  PhD students finish their theses while being unemployed, because their 6-years period has finished -- or they emigrate to Switzerland.  One could of course argue that this is intended and part of getting a PhD ("Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre" -- you have to pay your dues); young researchers thus face the fact that staying in academia is not easy and they should think carefully about how to proceed their career.  You are in your early 30s and there are still many options to get a good job in "the real world," so you benefit from your studies and from having a PhD. 

It's worse with the second 6-year period.  Maybe you even could extend this time because you have the average 1.39 kids and you even could acquire a grant for yourself, so you stayed 9 or 10 years at university after your PhD -- of course, you had contracts at two or three different universities.  But after this?  You may be qualified for professorship and maybe you could interview for some positions, but you haven't gotten one yet -- only a very small percentage of all students get a professorship, there still is no tenure system.  You cannot stay at your institute, but now being far in your 40s, never having worked outside the Ivory Tower, who will offer you a "real" job in the "real" world?  And you face a de facto professional ban in academia -- unless you find one of the rare unlimited positions or you emigrate to Switzerland.

Germany has no real tenure track system, but some years ago, they invented "Junior Professors."  You can be a professor without a habilitation, and you can get this professorship after only a very few years after having completed your PhD.  Sounds good, right?  But the magic 6 years are involved as well.  

To acknowledge that people have different educational paths and maybe decided to study after having completed an occupational training and may have worked even some years in their profession, we now have a certain age (i.e., your real age) and an academic age -- the years after a certain degree.  So two PhDs can be in their second postdoc year, but one is 29 and the other 39 -- there shouldn't be any discrimination.  Usually, with the academic age, you refer to the most recent degree.  

But that's not how the rules for Junior Professors work:  You can get a junior professorship only within 6 years after you finished your studies and you have to have a PhD and a good publication record, be recognized as researcher in your community, etc.  So for me, the moment I finished my PhD, I was too old -- after my studies, I worked for 6 years (yeah! 6!) as e-learning consultant, I got my PhD 10 years after I got my M.A.  In Switzerland, the MA is considered the regular degree -- every BA student has the right to enter a MA program, parents are obliged to support their kids until they finish their MA.  In Germany, the BA is considered the regular degree -- if you have Abitur, you can enter (almost) every BA program, but to enter a MA program, you have to meet strict criteria.  This is obviously a different understanding of the Bologna process, but that's not my point here.

Up to now, the rule "6 years after you finished your studies" refers to the MA degree -- that's what you find as explanation.  But when the BA is the "regular degree," this would actually mean that you only can apply for a junior professorship within 6 years after your BA.  Which is rather unlikely -- you need two more years for your MA, which you need to be qualified for doing a PhD, for which you need another three years.  And when you are a "real" humanities scholar, you probably haven't published anything until then and it will take you three more years to even have your dissertation published in a series of a "recognized" publishing house your supervisor happens to be an editor for.

On the other hand, universities increasingly see this junior professorship as another form of a "senior assistant" -- the position for a postdoc working towards their Habilitation or professorship.  And if you look at the salary, that's true.  The only difference is that for a regular postdoc position, you have 6 years after your PhD, whereas for the junior professorship, you can apply within 6 years after your first degree.

Brave new world.

Professor for one year (week 16): What is excellence?

After one semester of teaching at the University of Konstanz, it's time for some retrospection.  Konstanz is one of those "excellent" German universities -- which also means they have a bit more money than non-excellent universities.  (By the way, how are these universities labeled: "ordinary", "miserable", "amateurish"?)

So far, I spent several years at the University of Zurich (UZH), at the University of Basel (I taught at both), and at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (although I didn't teach there).  As researcher and lecturer, I had contact to departments concerned with study affairs and teaching in the broadest sense (e.g., teaching evaluation, examination authorities, e-learning consultants), to people concerned with facilitating research activities (e.g., publication database managers, third-party funding offices), and to the general administration (e.g., human resources, secretaries, and the "Abwart" or "Hausmeister" [caretaker] -- nowadays called "facility manager" in German).

For general issues like getting keys and a badge, German bureaucracy meets all the known prejudices perfectly.  You have to go from pillar to post just to realize that today nothing will happen, you will not even get the form you have to fill before being eligible to get a key.  The scene where Asterix and Obelix have to get permit A38 is a perfect match.  You have to find out by yourself about all the things you might need.  I was told, I even had to fill a form and get the signature of the department confirming that they would pay the costs for a -- trash bin!  I didn't even try to get a pencil, yet -- I rather bought one myself.  Whereas at Swiss institutions (not only in higher education) everything is prepared beforehand and you will get an invitation when to come where and collect your keys and your badge.  You are taken care of.  You just go and grab a new pencil.

At all Swiss institutions I worked at, offices were cleaned twice a week, restrooms were cleaned twice a day (around noon and in the evening, so when you come the next day, everything is clean).  In Konstanz, offices are cleaned twice a month, restrooms once a day (around 16:00; of course, people use them after this, so when you come the next day, everything looks messy again).

Swiss offices and lecture halls are equipped with high-value furniture from USM or Vitra, and desks and chairs are renewed regularly.  There is a design concept defining which furniture goes in which kind of working space (there are different chairs for offices, lecture halls, cafeterias, and waiting areas).  It gives a good atmosphere, you feel valued.  Someone invested in getting you a great office to create a positive and creative working ambiance.  Chairs meet ergonomic standards.  Oh, and you just order a new shelf, another chair for visitors, or a desk lamp by e-mail or online -- some days later you find it in your office.  In Konstanz, desks and chairs look very used and accidentally assembled.

I was lucky that someone wanted to get rid of an old orange desk lamp with a proper light bulb and I could use it; I don't like neon light coming from the ceiling.  And yes, this red chair is a victim of the ravages of time.

The only design furniture I am aware of are original Eames Side Chairs on stretchers in front of some professors' offices (a kind of waiting area for consulting hours). 

But this is probably due to the time the university was build: In the 1960s, the Eames furniture served -- as intended -- as mass produced chairs; you can still find the fiber chairs in older stadiums, concert halls, or universities.  Today's Eames chairs are rather expensive (at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, several dozens of original Eames DSS had been stolen this Spring) -- but still very nice for large seating in cafeterias or concert halls.

What I do like in Konstanz are some rather "facilitating" aspects:  As lecturer you get a link to configure evaluation questionnaires for your lectures, then you receive the printed copies to use them in your class.  Only two hours after submitting the filled-in questionnaires, I got an elaborate analysis via e-mail.  That's great!  At the UZH I had to evaluate the questionnaires myself manually.  Part of getting the excellence label for Konstanz meant  investing in support for students -- for example, they have a very active writing center -- and for researchers.  They provide a regular newsletter pointing to open calls for grants and awards sorted by topics -- i.e., calls for linguists, for chemists, etc. -- and by career level.  That's very convenient!

And then there are some simple things when you realize that this excellence label means something else than the word "excellence" -- Swiss universities don't label themselves as "excellent", but they offer more convenience for scientists.  For example, let's consider getting reimbursed for expenses related with attending conferences.  As researcher you go to conferences and workshops to present and discuss recent findings and to do networking.  In some areas like computer science or computational linguistics, where publications are mainly conference proceedings, authors have to attend the conference and give a talk to get their articles published.  Depending on the location and the duration of a conference, this can get rather expensive.  Since the university has an interest in publications, they should pay for it.  At UZH and in Basel, researchers could get reimbursement up to CHF 1000 per year.  Swiss researchers can also get funding from academies.  So maybe going to two European conferences per year is possible.  If there is additional money at the general budget of the institute or as part of third-party funded projects, you can even publish more.  In Konstanz, the amount of money available is very limited -- less than 2000 € per year to be split between all junior researchers (i.e., non-professors) of one rather large department.  Oh, and don't forget the messy forms you have to fill in before and after the conference!  And of course you have to submit two copies of the form, both signed and filled manually (as always, the forms cannot be filled properly by using a PDF viewer).  If you don't have third-party money, you will have to pay everything yourself -- which is feasible with a professor's salary, but not with the usual 50% or less assistant salary.  In the end, this contributes to statements like "in engineering, regular money is less than 20% of the general budget" (see here) -- everything else researchers acquire themselves.  The time you spend writing grant proposals is time you cannot spend to do research, to publish, or to teach. 

Comparing just single elements (reimbursement of conference travels, furniture) at Swiss and German universities shows that indeed Swiss universities are much more attractive without labeling themselves as "excellent" -- of course not to do so is part of the Swiss culture, but then: what does this say about German culture and the German self-perception? But of course these conclusions are based on a very small sample.  

Professor for one year (week 13): Teaching since 19 weeks and it goes on and on

Last week was my 19th week of teaching without a break and I have two more weeks to go.  How is that possible, as terms in Europe are 14 or 15 weeks?

In February, I started teaching at the University of Basel.  Spring term in Switzerland starts mid-February and ends in early June (week 8 to 22).  Fall term starts in September and ends the week before Christmas (week 38 to 51).  After lectures end there is a three-week period for exams (for Fall term this period starts in the first week of January).  This schedule has been in place since 2005.  Before that, we had Winter and Summer terms, starting and ending ca. 5 weeks later than today's Fall term and Spring term.

Why did Switzerland change term schedules?  Well, that's easy, the Swiss wanted to be "compliant with the European term schedules."  And rumor goes that the then Rektor of the University of Zurich (UZH) was the main figure causing this change -- he simply stated that UZH would switch to this schedule anyway, so all the other members of the CRUS (Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities) had to follow.

The idea was to have similar times for starting and ending terms, to make it easier for students in Europe to switch universities.  Sounds reasonable, right?  Except: The surrounding countries still stick to their original term schedules of Summer and Winter terms.  

For a lecturer like me, one effect is extreme long teaching periods.  When teaching in Basel ended, I had 7 more weeks in Konstanz.  And I already feel exhausted, but I still have two more weeks.

For students it means extremely short breaks when coming from a non-Swiss university to a Swiss university, or extremely long breaks when going from a Swiss university to a non-Swiss university  -- OK, there are far more worse things than long breaks.

For the scientific community and the role of Swiss universities as conference organizers, the impact is worse: A perfect month for conferences in Europe is September -- everybody had their summer vacation and the next term will start mid October.  However, Swiss universities start teaching mid September, making it impossible to find a reasonable large room for a whole day (or even a week!) that is not needed as lecture hall.

In general, I like the concept of Spring and Fall terms better than the Summer and Winter terms -- which is what was in place when I studied.  In June and July it can be pretty hot in Europe (and also in Switzerland), so everybody would prefer to be at the lake -- and most of the students (except when forced to attend a lecture) will simply go there.  The most annoying term, however, is the Winter term.  You have to start teaching (or learning) again after the Christmas/New Year break.  It is OK to have exams after New Year, or as lecturer it is OK to assess exams and seminar papers in January.  But motivation to teach another 4 weeks after the Christmas/New Year break is really low.

If there is a proper place to call for changing German term schedules, please let me know.

Professor for one year (week 11): What does University contribute to Society?

Last week, I participated in the Global Perspectives Programme, a joint program from University of Basel and Virginia Tech to foster academic exchange about Higher Education.  This year, the topic of the program was "University and Society: Meeting Expectations?"  We explored various aspects of "Society," "University," and "Expectations."  There are so many definitions and views of these broad concepts, that one could discuss hours and hours.  One aspect, however, is what university is expected to contribute to society.  Is it about providing solutions to current or future problems?  Is it about foreseeing future problems?  Is it about developing resources to be used for society's needs?  Is university urged to serve society and provide what society explicitly wants or to provide what society unconsciously needs?  So far, we wondered, what kind of solution universities would produce.

Most of the time, faculty and administration talked just about the questions we were exploring.  During our one-week trip in the US, the Basel group also visited Virginia Tech and had a vivid conversation with faculty of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI).  Christopher Barrett, Scientific Director of the VBI, argued that universities would provide methods and tools to be used by society, i.e., policy-makers, to solve problems.  He emphasized that universities do not contribute solutions for current or future problems.

This statement made me wonder: At the one hand, with an attitude like this -- universities provide resources and tools to be used by others -- there is much room for basic research, i.e., research with no urgent application but that could be useful in the future.  Researchers are freed from the pressure to explicitly show usefulness in today's society.  And it makes clear that society is responsible for solving problems and for making use of the provided resources and tools.  A very comfortable statement for research, I think.

On the other hand, it reminded me a bit of the drama "Die Physiker" (The Physicists) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt from 1961 and the Manhattan Project (Einstein later regretted having signed the letter to Roosevelt in 1939 recommending that atom bombs be made).  And more so as Barrett told us that he had worked at Los Alamos before coming to VBI.  When universities -- or more precisely: researchers -- say that they only provide tools to be used by whomever, researchers implicitly say that they are not responsible for any outcome.  A researcher invents something, hands it over to the public and then doesn't care about how and by whom it is used. 

Although I appreciate the attitude to provide resources and tools rather than tailored solutions, I think universities should carefully state how to make use of their tools and emphasize the intended use.   Researchers should always take into account possible use of their findings -- the affordances -- and how to prevent criminal, inhuman, or warlike use.

Plagiarism

Probably all students try to solve assignments with as little effort as possible -- they collaborate, they look for avialable solutions in the Web, they ask others for help.  If it comes to larger tasks like writing a semester paper, a thesis, or a dissertation, some students sometimes even copy text from other publications without giving credits to these authors.  This is called plagiarism. 

In Germany, there had been some major issues discussed in public over the last couple of years:  The former minister of defense had to resign, because his doctoral dissertation was found to be full of texts not written by him.  The former minister responsible for education at schools and universities had to resign, because she forgot to correctly mention the sources she used.  And there had been other cases as well, all following the same pattern: someone reads a dissertation or thesis of a politician, raises some questions, the politician denies, the public starts looking for evidence, and in the end the politician has to resign and loses the academic degree or title associated with this thesis.

Now, one of the candidates for the election to the city government of Zurich is accused to have plagiarized in a Master's thesis.

Two things are really anoying with these issues. 

First: When submitting a seminar paper, a thesis, or a dissertation, you have to sign a statement saying that you followed good academic practice (OK, you might not be fully aware of what that means in every detail) and that you did all of the work on your own.  The first part refers to "I did not copy-paste text from other authors without stating the sources, i.e., I did cite everything following the citation rules of my research area."  And the second part refers to "I did not involve ghost writers and if someone helped me with some minor parts of the work (e.g., transcription or annotation of large amounts of empirical data or plotting fancy diagrams), I gave credit to those persons."  So, someone proven guilty for not giving credit where credit is due committed perjury.  This might be a legal issue and could be fined.

Second: No person accused for plagiarism and later proven guilty did show some backbone and stick to what he/she did and say something like "The accusation is probably right, I didn't know then, but I know now that I did something wrong.  I appologize."  They all try to make excuses and argue that it's not of interest to the public, and so on.  It might be true that the paper in question is not of interest to the public, but the fact that someone made a false statement and when proven guilty tries to deny, supports the general perception of "All politicians lie." and "You can trust nobody."

The person accused to have plagiarized her Master's thesis at the ETH, argues that "I did not plagiarize, but maybe not every word in this paper has been written by me."  Does that mean someone else wrote part of her thesis?  In my opinion, this would violate the statement of academic integrity she most probably signed.

But the most annoying argument is: "Anyway, it's not a big deal, it was only a postgraduate (German: 'Nachdiplom') master."  There is no factor of importance when it comes to plagiarism!  You simply are not allowed to use other people's work without permission and without giving credit.  Statements like this one support the misconception that sometimes plagiarism is acceptable.