The School of Medicine and Dentistry restructuring again makes headlines in the Times Higher Education magazine. Referring also to the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences it focuses on the absurdity of using research “metrics” to sack staff, noting “Academics within both schools have been quick to criticise the use of research metrics to designate those ‘at risk'”. You can read the full story here. There are also three letters attacking the restructuring, one pointing out that metrics never predicted a single Nobel prize winner, another questioning how a School ostensibly committed to gender equality has managed to put so many of its very small proportion of female staff “at risk”, and another highlighting SBCS’s strengths in zoological research which will be badly damaged by the restructuring.
As the world outside the campus has learned of what is happening at QM, it reacts with uniform disgust – from our 2,000+ petition with signatures from around the world, to the editor of the Lancet, to academics cited in the Times Higher. QM managers are inflicting major reputational damage on the institution, in addition to treating staff horribly and putting students’ education in peril. We continue to urge them to engage with our alternative proposals to improve SBCS and SMD.
qmucu.org 