This morning, I read just about the most frightening story a young PhD student/aspiring academician could read. In case you didn’t know, Stefan Grimm, a toxicology professor at Imperial College London, ended his life in September, 2014 at the age of 51. What drove this prodigious professor to kill himself? Apparently, his department informed him that if he didn’t land a grant of at least £200,000 in 12 months, he would be fired. The thought of losing his hard-earned position because he didn’t land huge grants seems to be enough for Grimm to kill himself.
If his tale is true, which it appears to be, it made me think: Is a failure to land huge grants enough to end a career for an archaeology professor?
A post today in Times Higher Education explained that Grimm was facing severe pressure to land prestigious grants. His supervisor Martin Wilkins, head of the division of experimental medicine at Imperial sent Grimm an email stating that:
“I [Wilkins] am of the opinion that you are struggling to fulfil the metrics of a Professorial post at Imperial College which include maintaining established funding in a programme of research with an attributable share of research spend of £200k [per annum] and must now start to give serious consideration as to whether you are performing at the expected level of a Professor at Imperial College.”
Wilkins continued by stating that he was willing to help Grimm meet this fiscal goal and said he knew Grimm was looking for work elsewhere, but also stated that if Grimm should, “…fail to meet the objective outlined, I [Wilkins] will need to consider your performance in accordance with the formal College procedure for managing issues of poor performance”.
Basically, Grimm wasn’t bringing in big enough chunks of money which, somehow, made him a less successful professor. The blogosphere has provided additional coverage of the situation. One of Grimm’s peers, David Colquhoun, author of “Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm”, explains that Grimm had a good publishing record (73 peer-reviewed publications by the age of 51) and was landing grants, including a recent £135,000 score. It seems like this wasn’t big enough to be considered noteworthy.
@plashingvole has also written about the Stefan Grimm story. The author describes the immense pressure to land grants AND publish, which appears to overshadow every aspect of being a professor including teaching, public service, and doing good research. The author explains that to many universities; “’We’ [professors] are just a workforce to be exploited and ‘they’ are the equivalent of commodities traders, ramping up the share price and being rewarded for short-termism.” I recently wrote about the Adjunct Crisis and Archaeology and described how many universities are turning into workhouses for aspiring professors. Overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated, the thousands of adjuncts that teach most of our undergraduates aspire to make it to the promise land of the tenure track.
You can follow the story on Twitter using the hashtag #Grimmdeath
The Grimm story should make us second guess that assumption. In fact, it should make us second guess the whole job of being a professor. As universities transform into education corporations, stories like the adjunct crisis and grant writing pressure experienced by Grimm send shivers down the spine of any aspiring professor.
- Why would universities want to create working conditions so severe that it creates widespread anxiety among professors, causing some to contemplate suicide?
- How well are we teaching students if the professors are either on welfare or simply good hustlers that know how to bring home the bacon?
- What does this mean for academic archaeologists who already need to balance writing, teaching, service, AND landing grants? Is this a fulfilling career path?
I don’t have any answers to these questions, but I want to hear from you guys. Does academic archaeology have the same pressure that caused Stefan Grimm to commit suicide? If so, why do so many professors continue pushing PhD students toward academia? Finally, what is the solution to this problem?
The death of Professor Grimm is a tragedy that didn’t have to happen. Please, write a comment below or send me an email.
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