Quantify or perish
Sir: It was interesting to see Professor Hurstfield (29 November) rehearsing anew in your columns the tired old arguments against academic reform, and when faced with such a ludicrous device as the time and motion diary it would have been amazing had he failed to do anything but tear it very ably apart. None the less he is surely missing the main issue. Universities are not, as he rightly maintains, 'a quantified branch of in- dustry' but no more so are the health and social services which your journal has recently been criticising for the guarded way . in which they conduct their affairs.
The universities must now have gone on long enough hiding behind the concepts of noble public service with which the article ended. It is simply not true. Money con- tinues to be poured into the universities from government sources and it is continually ill- used. It is given primarily that students may be taught, which is, in many cases, not being done. Far too often courses are based not on student needs but on what interests academics and all too frequently under- graduates are tolerated as necessary evils in order that research—the new god of the 'universities—may be effectively pursued. 'University College is a good deal better than most in this respect but if, as Professor Itirstfield requests, this is to be made 'a na- ti5nal issue' then the other side of the ques- tion must not be forgotten.
Colin Farthing Department of History, University College, London Sir: I was glad to read Professor Hurst- field's criticisms (29 November) of the in- quiry into the use of time by university academic staff. As a scientist, I was suf- ficiently interested in this experiment at least to try it, and accordingly filled in the details requested, three or four times daily and after much analysis. I finally could stand it no longer after three days. So on the day for Thursday, I pasted, into the book the following statement: 'On this day I decided to give up this absurd exercise. After three days of trying conscientiously to follow the rules it is clear that the game is unplayable.
'Some of my best thinking appears to be done during what has to be called "private and free time". And vice versa. Academic endeavour cannot be allocated in the way demanded. Acquiescing in the Survey now
seems to me to represent a denial of all that the intellectual life stands for.
Out of the hundreds of completed forms that will doubtless be returned for proces- sing, some statistical conclusions will doubt- less be drawn. Sometimes the errors of one will counterbalance those of another. But the compounding of meaninglessness is total absurdity. We shall know what to think of any "Report" or "Analysis" that appears in due course.
Parturient monies, nascitur ridicules mus.'
A rather dubious promise of 'secrecy' was contained in the instruction to seal one's completed Diary with sellotape before re- turning it. I ignored this instruction : my book remains open for anyone to see, and its serial number (if anyone is interested) was 977.
Bernard Towers Jesus College, Cambridge
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