Sobre l’avaluació del professorat

Dimarts va acabar el termini per demanar els anomenats trams de recerca i també els de transferència, nous d’aquest any, per part del professorat universitari. És a dir, cada sis anys el professorat és avaluat i, si l’avaluació resulta positiva, hi ha un augment de sou. Però també tenir tram de recerca “viu”, és a dir, que en els darrers sis anys s’ha rebut una valoració positiva, és indispensable o molt convenient per formar part de grups de recerca, tenir finançament, reconeixement i dirigir tesis doctorals. Cada universitat sol tenir la seva pròpia política, i la normativa va canviant, però en tot cas els investigadors són avaluats i, en el cas del camp de la química i de les ciències en general, amb indicadors clars: publicacions, impacte esperat, impacte real.

En alguns llocs com la Gran Bretanya això es fa servir per finançar els departaments i universitats, i arriben a tancar-se’n si no s’assoleixen fites determinades. Però veig que a Holanda s’hi estan repensant, i intenten fer una cosa diferent: Stepping Out of the Rat Race, de l’Inside Higher Education, tracta de com la Universitat de Gant es vol allunyar de fer rànkings de persones:

[U Ghent] again become a place where talent feels valued and nurtured

Segons aquesta universitat,

“It is a common complaint among academic staff that the mountain of paperwork, the cumbersome procedures and the administrative burden have grown to proportions that are barely controllable. Furthermore, the academic staff is increasingly put under pressure to count publications, citations and doctorates, on the basis of which funds are being allocated. The intense competition for funding often prevails over any possible collaboration across the boundaries of research groups, faculties and — why not — universities. With a new evaluation policy, Ghent University wants to address these concerns and at the same time breathe new life into its career guidance policy. Thus, the university can again become a place where talent feels valued and nurtured.”

Amb tres grans canvis:

It has moved from conducting evaluations of faculty every two to four years, depending on their rank, to every five years, to create an “evaluation break. At the beginning of the five-year period, faculty will have to explain what their goals are, Van de Walle explained, “but we don’t tell them which type of ambition they should go forth with. It’s up to the professors themselves to let us know what they want to do not for the next year but for the next five years. That’s the first major change.”

Segon:

Every professor gets five people around him or her, we call this an HR committee, but it’s not an administrative committee, it’s five people” — including the professor’s department head, a senior professor from a related field and a human resources administrator — “who are coaching, who are guiding the professor through their careers.”

Tercer:

The third thing we changed — in the past our evaluations were based very, very strongly on outputs metrics, while now the evaluation will be based on a feedback report coming from professors. So, the professors will have to write down at the end of the five-year period what they are proud of, what they believed they realized during the last five years, and we will not force them to report the number of publications or the number of Ph.Ds. [they supervise] or so on. Just like they had at the beginning, once again they will have the freedom to explain, to tell us what they believe are their major contributions they came up with during the last five years, so it’s really what you could call professor-driven, so to speak. It’s the ambition of the professor that is put on paper at the beginning of the five-year period and it’s the view of the professor at the end of that period on what happened in the last five years that will drive the evaluation at the end.”

No està pas malament, però porta feina. I en tot cas, demana que la selecció inicial del professorat sigui ben feta. I que la comissió avaluadora faci bé la feina… i que la universitat i el departament tinguin ben clar els seus objectius estratègics.

Ho veig complicat de fer, aquí.

Hi ha un problema, però: això està bé per continuar a la Univ. Ghent. Però i si es vol canviar, i a una altra institució o centre de recerca els criteris són uns altres? Es valorarà haver participat d’aquesta forma de ser avaluat?

Per rumiar-hi, és clar. És una idea atractiva.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash