Research with your feet on the ground
TODAY, local and international universities covet high ratings conjured up by global marketing companies in their periodic world rankings. For them, good ratings translate to being on the cusp of glory in the world of education. The currency needed to afford this stake is research productivity.
Somehow, this explains the frenzy of publicity about universities being a research hub that is lavished with funds, oozing with research talents and internationally connected with other schools. This manufactured image rings as the perfect logical framework that rhymes with success.
Such a frame of mind immediately puts the research agenda in line with the key result areas of a university; hence, the push for faculty members to embark on their research journey. Unfortunately, the push varies from the most honorable of reasons to the most misguided ones, such as giving incentives of promotion to researchers and security for those whose tenureship hangs in uncertainty. All this makes doing research harder.
Doing research is not about a fantasy production where one has to flawlessly deliver the script to please a paying audience. Such speculation about research needs to be dispelled so as to arrive at its ultimate goal, that is, to expand the horizon of knowledge in order to address the questions and problems of society, as well as to improve lives. As the Harvard’s academic chair Abraham Loeb said, “It is important for research’s discovery of truth [ to be] not encumbered by political or ideological forces.”
An honest approach to research should create more space for motivation and innovation. Loeb has insights about a researcher, who is in the right direction in the undertaking of research. According to him, researchers continuously need spaces — physically, socially, financially, including a huge space for understanding, allotted for them by their research heads and directors. These are essential because a research is a product of a tedious effort of finding order out of chaos.
“Scholarly books and journals often give the impression that the truth is revealed through a neat, orderly and logical process. But research is far from being a pristine landscape; in fact, it resembles a battlefield, littered with miscalculations, failed experiments and discarded assumptions,” Loeb said. “The path to truth is often convoluted, and those who travel along it often must navigate fierce competition and professional intrigue.”
However, while research center heads give ample room for their
must also understand that transparency and accountability are crucial parts of their agenda. Researchers must communicate the results of their work in a way that supports accountability. Their research should be a testament to positive outcomes, borne out of a donation, a university fund,
a researcher during the conduct of his work.
“The duty to communicate findings also ensures that the
- ings or discoveries are educated about, not only the topic itself, but also the way research actually works,” Loeb suggests. To be true, researchers beget researchers. The search for new knowledge is supposed to be contagious and continuous. “[ Researchers] should approach their job as mentors of future leaders in science, technology, the arts, and humanities, rather than attempting to mold students in their own intellectual image.”
Peeling off the mask of our own making about research in the university should lead us to think that there is no ivory tower of research. Research is not a manipulated tool for selfish gains. Neither is it for glamorizing a university image.
Research, after all, is for the progress of humankind.