Geoscience funding has been under threat recently, with some institutions dismantling entire departments to cut corners and save money. Researchers looking for funding, which is already immensely difficult, now face even more competitive, toxic, and time-consuming challenges to secure financial backing. The geosciences encompass a diverse range of research areas, from understanding how to more efficiently mine, mitigate against natural hazards, combat climate change, and improve our understanding of our planet. We will rely on geoscientist expertise heavily if we are to overcome many of the crises we face as a species, so these cuts have come at the worst possible time. Such timing seems a common theme, as the COVID-19 pandemic taught us so tragically. If not for delayed responses, poor leadership, rampant corruption, and the continued dismantling of public institutions, the impact would have been much less devastating. Unfortunately, universities are willing to gut the chances of progress to save money.
Progress in science is often born out of multidisciplinary research, which raises further questions to explore or find ways of being applied in a new field, having a cascading positive impact on science. Science is a constant, evolving process of hypothesis, experiment, and discovery, so it is so disheartening to see such a valuable discipline be scaled back rather than helping push us towards a better understanding of the natural world. Politics and greed, as is often the case, act as a barrier to this process that has enriched us with many benefits.
Last year Macquarie University in Australia severed ties with its entire geoscience department in a baffling decision, justified as a response to declining student numbers. To translate this from PR speak, this is just simply a matter of greed and a willingness to ignore the importance of ensuring that departments are allowed to thrive.
It’s easy for a business person, tasked with cutting as many corners as possible, to run down costs and make these decisions based on a balance sheet. However, universities should not function as businesses. Much like healthcare in the UK and most developed countries, universities should be detached from this incentive structure as much as possible to enable growth. From the perspective of the Australian government, which cut funding for Geoscience courses by 29% in 2020, it makes no sense from a financial standpoint. A failure to recognize the role of geoscience in combating costly disasters, which helps save money in the long term serves as a reminder that the people making these decisions are either uninformed or value short-term profits over the long-term consequences of inaction.
Greed in academia is nothing new. Many journals are allowed to continuously exploit workers, price gouge, and then refuse to pay reviewers, despite astronomical profit margins. We've also seen the response of certain journals to Scihub, which aims to make peer-reviewed research available to everyone free of cost. They value their profits over the accessibility of valuable research - I recently came across the Encyclopedia of Geology being sold for $2,900 while being marketed at a 50% discount! This problem is as entrenched in academic spaces as any other space run like a business that probably shouldn't be. And, unfortunately, we see no progress, only stagnation and continued overworking and underpaying of researchers, more exploitation of Ph.D. students and early career researchers, the continued gutting of pensions, and, obviously, record profits.
Viral meme that perfectly encapsulates the predatory role of research journals as barriers to education and science communication.
Continuing to put up barriers against such a valuable research field is 100% going to backfire, and there needs to be a louder movement against the greed that restricts progress. The inexcusably high prices students shell out to secure a good education should be spent on upgrading and improving their resources and research, not moving in the opposite direction. Nothing I have mentioned here is controversial, yet, action has been limited so far. I would argue that more striking is the only way to ensure that science continues to move on the right path. The majority of these cutbacks have been in the US, UK, and Australia, which also happen to be the countries that owe the most debt to the planet in combating climate change, and this is a clear step backward.
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