I’ve been too angry about the whole ‘rip-off degrees’ thing to put together coherent thoughts. But here’s something which seems unsayable.

Not everyone who goes to university WANTS to make a crapload of money. /1 For many of us, our life satisfaction will come from the work we choose rather than how much we get paid for it. Teaching, charity work, making art, building our communities, so many more. Fulfilling lives which may not lead to massive paychecks, but that’s not the point. /2

My contribution to REF discourse:

I’ve gotten more done in the last two weeks on my current research project at a small teaching-focused US university than I did in my last four years at a research-intensive UK university, simply by dint of having a reasonable workload. /1 REF is the problem and is structurally incapable of providing solutions to itself, precisely because of the labour it creates by existing, and because it distorts and perverts research through the very nature of having measurable criteria. /2