FEC

At Whither the U of A, Jeremy brings out one of his favourite hobby-horses, the annual Faculty Evaluation Committee process.  (Apparently, the Science FEC is meeting this week.)  Jeremy has complained about this in the past, and this comment near the end of his post nicely captures his thinking:

"The bottom line is that the current FEC system works really well from the point of view of deans and senior administrators, because it creates a self-applied whip on faculty to work harder and harder, and to produce more and more."

I have engaged in dialogue in the comments of his earlier posts on this subject, and it was clear then that the best we could hope for was to agree to disagree. I won't engage again, but I do need to commend the three commenters who have so far responded. In particular, the implication that FEC is what is required for academics to be motivated to achieve is insulting and (I believe) erroneous for the vast majority. We work hard because we want to excel, and FEC offers a reasonable reward system for those years in which we are successful.