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MARGARET GELLER IS describing how, as part of her work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, she studies how binary stars occasionally leave the galaxy. “That seems rude,” interrupts a professional comedian seated nearby.
This intriguing scenario did not happen at a dinner party, or on a train whose passengers are eavesdropping on one another. It featured in a new comedy show gaining popularity across the US which attempts to communicate complex academic research to a broader audience, live and through podcasts.
The idea came to Chris Duffy, the show’s creator and host, while he was commuting on a bus between the campuses of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. “I thought, someone on this bus is going to win a Nobel prize, but I’ll never get to talk to them about it, or even understand it,” Duffy says. “I wish there was a way for me to get to meet them.”
Using comedy to do that was the next epiphany. As a comedian, Duffy says “it always felt like I would have people listening to me, and I would make them laugh. But what did they leave with? It seemed like a wasted opportunity.” The result is You’re the Expert, which makes celebrities of good-natured scholars who trade barbs with comedians and engage in games and sketches to explain what they do, and how.
Although it’s meant to be funny — Duffy asked Dr. Geller, for example, whether the five honorary doctorates she has received make her regret having worked so hard for the real one, and whether some people ask her for make-up advice when they learn she is a cosmologist — the show is part of an international trend to help make complex academic concepts more accessible to lay people. “People don’t actually know what is going on in science, and as a result of that they don’t understand science as being necessary, and they don’t really trust (it),” explains Duffy. “You’re the Expert”, he adds, “is satisfying comedy, but on the kind of intellectually stimulating topics that people actually learn something from. It’s probably the oldest comedy dynamic in the book: the straight man and the comedian.”
Academics are clearly happy to take part. “It’s fun, it’s good-spirited, there’s nothing low-minded or mean about it,” says Richard Weissbourd, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who was also a guest. “There’s too much of a history of academics talking only to each other,” he added.
Erica Reisman, an audience member who has attended the show several times, says it has helped her understand what scientists do “in an unintimidating way, so you don’t feel stupid”. “In the end, you realise it’s not so hard to understand,” she says.
Bonus bonanzas
BY MANY MEASURES, Michael Crow is one of America’s most successful university presidents. The high-profile head of Arizona State University has tripled the public university’s research income, constructed several new buildings on its sprawling campus outside Phoenix, established more than a dozen new divisions and centres, and elevated the varsity’s standing in annual rankings. And he’s richer for it.
Crow is among a growing number of US university presidents whose pay is being tied to performance — in his case, with a $40,000 (Rs.24.4 lakh) bonus given to him last year, plus the promise of another $40,000 bonus this year and up to $180,000 (Rs.1.1 crore) more next year, if he can meet specific goals such as increasing the number of applicants and graduates. All of this on top of the nearly $750,000 (Rs.4.66 crore) that Crow already receives in salary and other benefits. “There is clearly a trend in public higher education to tie compensation to outcomes,” says Thomas Flannery, a partner in the international human resources consulting firm Mercer. “It is also quite prevalent in the larger private institutions.”
Still, incentive bonuses for already well-compensated university presidents, including Crow, have provoked anger at a time of scarce resources and salary freezes for other campus workers. There are questions about whether boards of trustees — which often shower lavish bonuses on chief executives without a careful accounting of achievements — are using them to best effect. About a third of private US universities offer pay for performance to their presidents, according to a Yaffe & Company survey. Of those, more than two-thirds last year received the maximum possible bonuses: a median of $34,000 (Rs.21 lakh) each.
Bonuses are increasingly being given to other key executives, the survey found, including almost a fifth of provosts and chief financial officers. The numbers are rising quickly particularly at public universities. Crow’s counterparts at the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University, for instance, each got $40,000 bonuses last year and are eligible for up to a total of $220,000 apiece this year and next.
“In higher education in the past, people were hired because of their academic acumen and their presence in the field,” Flannery says. “You’re seeing a trend towards more professional higher education administrators. It’s no longer about how much they’ve published, but how they’ve transformed the institution.”
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)