Universities are special places. Not only do they form our young people in the skills and perspectives needed for critical, thoughtful citizenship, but they are the main site of scholarship — an important part of how our society understands itself and the world around us.
Set a little apart from the daily pressures of commercial life (though not nearly as insulated as many in the commercial world suppose), they exist “in the world, but not of it”, a place somewhat apart to reflect upon, and work for the benefit of the world at large.
In this respect, they have something of the character of a monastery — an impression strengthened every time one witnesses the solemn liturgies of academic life, like professorial inaugurations and graduation processions.
As someone who serves in both university and religious worlds, I deeply love the sense of community, purpose, and serving a higher calling that runs through both worlds. Indeed for many of us who live in both, there is no final distinction between these two ways we seek the spirit of truth. This sense of purpose is what ennobled the time I spent as an undergraduate research assistant cleaning up cane rat dung, and what makes it a pleasure to iron altar linen (and anyone who knows me probably realises that ironing is not my strength!)
But in recent decades, something has changed. In both the academy and the cathedral, an alarming number of people, even in my small circles, are suffering from mental health problems, feeling unwanted or unable to live up to expectations, and even abandoning their vocations. The range of temperaments and personalities that succeed and thrive is becoming ever narrower, and the space of the kind of eccentricity that once so enlivened both college and cloister has disappeared.
At some point in the past 40 years or so, we have been persuaded that it is inevitable and natural to be measured and evaluated based on various metrics of productivity and efficiency.
So university lecturers have to teach more students with fewer contact hours (and frequently with no job security of their own), researchers have to keep churning out publications, avoiding anything that might risk the flow of citations, and institutions churn out vastly more PhDs than could possibly find work doing what they are trained to do. Meanwhile across the road, the church minister is being assessed and measured not by the holiness and compassion she inspires in her community, but by the number of committees she sits on, and the number of people who turn up for the Easter service.
The consequence of targeting ever-higher productivity and efficiency is inevitable. The few who excel at what is measured seem at first to thrive. Others struggle, stagnate and leave. The intangible contributions they make to the life and health of a community go unmeasured and unrewarded, and so the life and health of the community suffers. Soon, even those who ‘make the grade’ find themselves feeling isolated, frustrated, burned out. And the real goals of the institution — humanism in the academy, holiness in the church — suffer because of their intangible, unmeasurable, ’non-SMART’ character.
The words of the veteran Zen master come back to me again and again: “It is what it is. What are you going to do about it?”
I suggest that two approaches are necessary:
- If you inhabit one of these institutions, you have to find a way to help yourself survive and thrive. There is so very much to love and appreciate; such an immense privilege in giving your life to the purpose of scholarship (or of holiness) that I still think it is worth it, but you will need to find ways to support yourself and those around you.
- Remember why you are there. Be thankful for the opportunity to work where you do, tackling the questions that are in front of you. Embrace and remind yourself of your purpose here (not your KPI metrics!)
- Appreciate and give love to the people around you. The institution is not going to provide human, compassionate support; that is for us to do.
- Use the resources that are available to you to care for yourself. Take enough vacation. Learn to practice mindfulness. Attend group meditation sessions. Find the spiritual tool that best enables you to feel whole and connected.
- Strategy 1 above is often as far as it goes — indeed many employers encourage all of those tools, because they make the crisis in mental health your problem, not theirs. But of course it is not enough and there is always a limit. I propose that activism should form part of your spiritual practise in response to this crisis:
- Publicly frame the real animating goal of your institution and demand that your leadership pursue that first.
- Place people and the community at the centre of your framing in every strategy consultation, faculty meeting, feedback session.
- Emphasise the intangibles and the strength of having diverse temperaments and personalities in your community.
- Push back against the overextension of the doctrine of ‘efficiency’ which can become the enemy of humanist values.
It is what it is. What are you going to do about it?