{"id":5240,"date":"2013-12-11T08:45:01","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T08:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=5240"},"modified":"2013-12-11T08:45:01","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T08:45:01","slug":"lets-blame-academics-says-a-guardian-headline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/12\/11\/lets-blame-academics-says-a-guardian-headline\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#039;s blame academics, says a Guardian headline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The headline to a Guardian HE Network <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/higher-education-network\/blog\/2013\/dec\/05\/university-sustainability-academics-student-partnerships?commentpage=1\">blog<\/a>, published last week, says: \u00a0<span style=\"color: #993366\">Why have academics been so slow to work with students on sustainability?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It's always a newspaper temptation to identify a culprit or two. \u00a0The blog post itself, by Soton's commendable Simon Kemp, considered why it is that, historically speaking, academics, estates staff and students have not worked together very much on sustainability-related activities and developments in universities. \u00a0Although things are certainly changing, this remains a good question, as there is much evidence that, in times past, there have been parallel developmental tracks rather than shared interests and, hence, activities.<\/p>\n<p>The Guardian headline is a problem, however, and had I been writing it, I'd have wanted to say something like:\u00a0<span style=\"color: #993366\">Why have students and staff in universities been so slow to work together on sustainability? <\/span>This would have had the merit of being both accurate, and even-handed.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Simon himself asks this in the blog post. \u00a0He writes:\u00a0<span style=\"color: #993366\">The question is, why have academics and students been so slow to engage in meaningful sustainability partnerships? <span style=\"color: #000000\">and<\/span> <\/span>goes on:\u00a0<span style=\"color: #993366\">Is it because academics have been wary of a lack of perceived credibility in working with students rather than with other academics? \u00a0Is it because the financial rewards from traditional funded research collaborations are clearer, an issue that might be partially redressed through the Students' Green Fund?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I'd say that the problem may well (historically) have been quite different in that academics, estates teams and students (unions) have not taken much note of each other, even when there were overlapping interests.<\/p>\n<p>Simon ends with: \u00a0<span style=\"color: #993366\">The future of sustainability in our sector depends upon collaboration. \u00a0Not in the traditional sense of academics collaborating with other academics, but academics collaborating with students. But is the academic community really ready for this shift?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I don't much like these false choices. \u00a0Why cannot we all collaborate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The headline to a Guardian HE Network blog, published last week, says: \u00a0Why have academics been so slow to work with students on sustainability? It's always a newspaper temptation to identify a culprit or two. \u00a0The blog post itself, by...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}