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Il successo di un progetto di ricerca è considerato come un indicatore obiettivo di qualità accademica in tutto il sistema universitario europeo. Premiando solo l’1,3% delle domande viene modellata una realtà assurda: quasi il 99% degli accademici nella UE fallisce, e solo l’1,3% soddisfa questo criterio. Ora, sappiamo che i “perdenti” (98,7%) devono ancora competere per dimostrare che sono abbastanza buoni; ma quando un collo di bottiglia di selezione è troppo stretto, lo sforzo e le risorse investite per superarlo, sono in effetti semplicemente sprecate. Si riporta di seguito la conclusione dell’articolo di Jan Blommaert su questo argomento (Rationalizing the unreasonable: there are no good academics in the EU) tratta da Roars 20-04-16:
To sum up: If the number of grants to be awarded is established before the peer-review process, this kind of “competitive” benchmark funding is not competitive at all, and a benchmark for nothing at all – least of all for academic quality. If, however, results in this weird game are maintained as serious and consequential criteria for assessing academic quality, then the conclusion is that there are no good academics in Europe – 99% of them will fail to get ratified as good enough. And these 99% will have to spend significant amounts of taxpayers’ money to eventually prove – what?
The entire thing really, seriously, begins to look and feel like buying lottery tickets or betting on horses: one spends money hoping to win some – and at moments of lucidity, one is aware of the fact that the net outcome will be loss, not gain. In the meantime, beautiful arias are sung about the extreme importance of research and innovation by the EU, by its member states, and by its universities. The question, of course, is how such a great cause is served by the present system of benchmark external funding acquisition. The money spent on it, I would say, would be better spent on … research and innovation proper.
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