Bruce Macfarlane

Feb 19, 2024 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Bruce Macfarlane

1 INTRODUCTION Even the most cursory glance at the higher education literature indicates that there are many hundreds of books and papers that refer to the way in which universities are, variously, ‘in crisis’ (e.g. Docking & Curton, 2015; Frank et al., 2019; Lucas, 1998; McNay, 1988; Moberly, 1949; Reeves, 1988; Scott, 1984; Wallerstein & Starr, 1971a, 1971b), ‘under fire’ (Barrett et al., 2019; Bérubé & Nelson, 1995; Cole, 2005; Giroux, 1995; Jones, 2022, etc.), under ‘assault’ (Bailey &...

Sep 24, 2023 | timeshighereducation.com | Bruce Macfarlane

Back in 1942, the American sociologist Robert Merton set out a series of values that, in his view, represented what it means to be a good academic. These norms – communism, universalism, disinterestedness and organised scepticism – are widely known by the acronym CUDOS.

Sep 13, 2023 | tandfonline.com | Bruce Macfarlane

In a paper published in 1942 Robert Merton asserted that ‘four sets of institutional imperatives – universalism, communism, disinterestedness, organized scepticism (CUDOS) – comprise the ethos of modern science’ (Merton, Citation1942 (1942). A note on science and democracy. Journal of Legal and Political Sociology, 1, 115–126. [Google Scholar], p. 118). Merton’s ethos, influenced by Weber, Parsons and Bernal, has subsequently become a powerful symbol of liberal academic virtues.

May 17, 2023 | tandfonline.com | Bruce Macfarlane |Jason Yeung

ABSTRACTABSTRACTReflection on the meaning of the word ‘tradition’, and related terms such as ‘traditional’, is conceptually complex but has been subject to limited critical scrutiny within academic discourse. The evidence of this study, drawing on the theory of tradition and a database of all 6947 papers published in Studies in Higher Education between 1976 and 2021, is that higher education researchers make extensive use of these words in a routinised and often un-scholarly way.

May 8, 2023 | timeshighereducation.com | Bruce Macfarlane

In academic life, the vocabulary we use to describe what we do says a lot about how much we really enjoy it. “Research opportunities” and “research time” are indicative of pleasurable periods of intellectual engagement, while phrases such as “teaching load” and “administrative work” tell a very different story. This is a language of loss and professional frustration, revealing what are generally seen as the less pleasurable aspects of the job.