Soaring sentiment - but rhetoric or reality?

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's address at Rice University in Texas when he said: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard."

It was a striking statement in a superbly crafted speech  which probably owed as much to JFK's Special Counsel Ted Sorensen as it did to the President. But one should never do down Kennedy's power as an orator. He had the charm, grace and gift for telling a good story that the likes of Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon could only dream of. And, at the height of Camelot's power, he had the nation in the palm of his hand.

But did JFK really have a deep passion for space? Was he quite as fully committed to the moon landing as his Rice oratory suggests? Was going to the moon even the right path to take?

Of course, it has been an area of huge debate and one I cover to some extent in my '240,000 mile cul de sac' paper.

Perhaps we remember Kennedy's speech because the moon landing happened. Perhaps the moon landing happened only because Johnson needed to deliver a legacy for Kennedy. Perhaps, if that fateful visit to Dallas in November 1963 hadn't happened, the US path to outer space would have taken a different course as tax bills, civil rights, Vietnam and the wider Cold War filled the Presidential agenda in the expected second term. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Speculation aside, this was one of the most powerful political speeches from the age of frontierism.

The 'great leap' is a slow crawl

If you've looked at this blog before, you'll notice a couple of changes - notably the title and indeed the web address. It's pretty clear to me that my research is tied into the 1950s not the '60s and therefore to call this occasional musing 'race to the moon' is rather disingenuous. This blog charts my part-time, mid-career PhD research project reassessing one aspect of Eisenhower's presidency that has so far been largely overlooked: his contribution to US space policy as rockets and satellites first broke out of the earth's atmosphere.

I'm slowly getting my thoughts together around Eisenhower's contribution to US outer space policy - and it strikes me more and more that had the US followed the Eisenhower (Killian/Kistiakwsky/Glennan et al) plan, there'd be more than a six wheel rover scooting round on Mars right now.

Indeed, my current work is looking at the impact of a dead dog - not quite the dead cat bounce, but Laika's flight on Sputnik 2 had a distinct impact on the western world's psyche - and it's not one that has been sufficiently explored in the past. Whether I'll hit my target of a 10,000 word chapter section by the end of September is moot - though it would also go a long way towards my next goal of another academic journal article so is well worth the push. Unfortunately, having to earn a living and the distraction of three children off on summer holidays is rather eating into my research time. After a couple of weeks away, I've yet to get back into a disciplined routine, but need to do so quickly.

One tiny step is to refocus this blog. If nothing else, it gets me thinking and writing about my subject again.

Fees conundrum

It seems to me that research students are the Cinderellas of the university system. In these days of increasingly transactional relationships between institutions and their students, the 'value' offered for my £ thousands paid out in each year is far easier to measure if you're a) full-time b) on campus and c) part of a taught degree course.

In my field, new full time undergrads and taught postgrads know they'll get, say 120 lectures a year; maybe 60 seminars and can take advantage of a fixed amount of staff office hours. They'll know they have to complete perhaps 10 assignments between October and May and then sit four or five exams. They'll also have access to the library and, more important today, to online library resources that universities pay thousands for each year.

Without doubt, the more the student puts in, the more they get out of their experience - and it's relatively easy to conduct a cost/benefit analysis.

But what about research students - and should universities be thinking about a different model for charging research student fees?

I'm exceedingly relieved that I started my PhD before the student fees hike. I'm self-funded and my fees come out of income while I work alongside my study.

What I get for those fees is access to a research office with a PC and a phone (UK calls only); library membership; invitations to attend/participate in departmental reseach seminars; an annual researcher presentation event and, most importantly, access to two supervisors who help guide my study. I also get a research allowance of £180 per year - though am very limited in what I can use this for.

As a mature student, living 30+ miles from campus, registered as part-time and working full time: I use the office rarely - I'm really only ever there on about 24 days when I'm teaching in the academic year - and I'm not actually doing much PhD stuff those days! Library membership is vital and valuable - though 95% of my use is online. Research seminars tend to happen on a weekday afternoon so it's rare I can attend and the research presentation event covers a wide scope from economics through political science to history so is interesting, but frustrating too. I don't pay a full fee, but nor do I pay half of what full timers shell out.

The key 'value' comes from the student/supervisor relationship - yet no matter how heavily or lightly I lean on my mentors, the price remains the same. However frequently or infrequently I use the campus facilities, the price remains the same - and however much or little I choose to engage with the department, the price I pay remains the same.

In these economically turbulent times, would it not make sense for institutions to be more flexible in their charging structures - not just for existing researchers, but to help attract those who will undoubtedly be put off from even applying in the future by stratospheric fees and the ever-increasing feel that institutions are being asked to do more with less?

If I was looking to attract student now, I'd have a menu of charges related to needs:

• A core fee would buy you access to the library and, say four supervisory meeting per year;
• An enhanced fee could secure office space.
• Departmental student events would be based on, and built around, student demand and charged on a per-event basis. They would also happen at a time convenient for students, not just departmental staff.
• Additional supervisorys could be purchased - £X per hour - book three get one free etc.
• A premium fee would offer presentation and critique opportunities, and perhaps support to attend external events and be part of a wider network.

These are just top of the head thoughts, but it's time institutions became more commercial and more savvy in responding to student needs rather than continually being driven by a 'one size fits all' process. Some of us only need/want or can afford the 'institution-lite' approach to a PhD, while others will want full immersion and a helping hand all along the way. Assuming we set a base level of support that is sufficient to get someone through this research apprenticeship, do universities have to apply the same cost structure to everyone?

No private business would operate in the way our universities do today. The current fee/value model, and indeed wider funding model seems less sustainable year by year.

Is it time for institutions to dare to do something different?

Time for a great leap forward

So I've been at this PhD thing for two years and nine months now - very part-time, and generally fitted in between work commitments, the demands of a full family life and, more recently, my own first forays into academic teaching. Even now, I'm updating this while waiting for someone to fulfil a request for information on a corporate intranet site I'm writing/editing copy for. Up until very recently I was motoring on at my own pace on the PhD, reading everything in sight, covering dusty second hand books in sticky book marks and highlighting searing insights across dozens of learned journal papers.

I would have been quite happy being locked in a dusty room for a few years while I pulled everything together into a satisfyingly heavy thesis with just the occasional surfacing to sit at the feet of my supervisor and make the necessary course corrections to ensure what emerged actually had some scholarly merit.

But my university doesn't work like that any more. There comes a point where all Brunel researchers have to be 'confirmed' in their study - what follows may be beatification or even canonisation for all I know, but what matters now is that I have a hurdle to get over before I can set my sights on writing up my core chapters and defending my view of the world - or at least Eisenhower's decision making around the policy issues of outer space.

This new step was rather dropped on us in May and probably caused more angst than it should - not least for those in the cohort whose draft theses were more or less complete and who had their sights set more on an external viva than an internal approval of their work. I'm not quite there yet, but I've set a target of having my thesis complete by the end of 2013. I just want to get on and spend my days writing up my two research trips and pinpointing the gaps that will probably lead to a third trip to the US next year before I can finalise my not-so-grand opus.

But now I find that I have to go through confirmation and quite soon - September 17 is D Day for a suite of documents ranging from my abstract, methodology and outline to a substantial piece of work that I'll have to defend internally. No doubt it will be good practice for the real thing, but coming on top of a Research Presentation event and Annual Review, it feels like a bureaucratic chore.

It also feels like a devaluing of the student/supervisor model that seems to work pretty well. I have two supervisors, meet with one regularly and get good arm's length feedback from the second. The last two years has been a little like peeling skin from an onion: I started with one idea which has been refined, nuanced and focused so that what I'm now working on bears some resemblance to the original research idea, but has a more workable scope, and goes deeper rather than wider into the subject.

I'm uncomfortable with the confirmation process. It appears to be, to some degree, arse covering for the university - a process where they can reassure themselves that research students are going to complete. But shouldn't that control, that accountability and that sense of whether a research project is worthy of a PhD come from research supervisors? This new process seems to imply a lack of trust that supervisors can judge the students they're supervising with sufficient objectivity. For me, 40-something, self-funded and with a passion for my subject, I will complete. However, I feel I'll do so in spite of the system, not because of it.

Fault line on the nexus of my 'day job' and my academic life

For the past 27 years, after leaving university first time round, I've worked in journalism and latterly, organisational communication. For the past five years I've been back in academia; collecting an MA and working towards a PhD. For the past two I've been teaching in a university history department - part-time and on a short contract basis. This year in particular, my module has proved popular. The feedback has been good and students have become very engaged in the subject.

I've been able to bring all my experience of corporate communications to bear on designing and delivering my lectures and seminars. There's a huge parallel with the kind of training I've done for years in industry and the facilitation work I've done with corporate and industry leaders over the last decade.

It helps too that I'm the father to teenagers not far short in age of the young adults I've been teaching. I'm beginning to understand their on-line linked up world where the old style of lecturing from my first university experience simply wouldn't cut it any more.

So, my lectures are bracketed with music chosen to have some relevance to the topic. I use You Tube and other video sources extensively to bring to life the people and events we're covering. Much of the seminar work is based around primary sources - and generally I prefer the students to find and introduce at least some of those sources.

It's a first year group, and as well as getting a good grounding in the subject, I want them to get enjoyment from our Thursday afternoons together and come out feeling they want to learn more - to scrape beneath the surface view. I don't claim that my sessions cover all the bases; I don't claim that they give more than a partial view - and at times I'll deliberately go out on an extreme to drive home a point. But I want the students to leave the lecture room sufficiently engaged with the subject to go and find out more: to read deeply and get the full story - if only to disprove the line I've taken.

In the UK system of little contact time and much space left for private study, it's all I can do. I'm not yet a great teacher and still have a huge amount to learn. But finally, I think I've found my metier. This student engagement in subjects I'm passionate about is what I do best.

My approach in attempting to connect the students to the subject matter through some side-on angles isn't revolutionary - indeed I'm aping the best of my experience through my Masters. Where I am perhaps hard wired slightly differently is in bringing my experience of the world beyond academia to bear from lecture one term one in making students think beyond their three or four years of academic study to the harsh working world that will be waiting for them in a couple of years' time.

I want them to immerse themselves in their subject: to begin to think as historians and to move beyond the narrative I can share with them to question why things turned out as they did. But equally, I want to help them develop good habits: to turn up on time; to participate in class; to be generous in sharing views; to accept and deal with constructive criticism; to organise their thoughts cogently and present them coherently, on time and within the expected standards. That may sound like a no-brainer, but it's not the case for a number of reasons.

On the student side, they've come through a school system designed to enable them to get the right grades in exams. That means spoon-fed learning, narrow-cast around fulfilling exam criteria. Having only 10 hours contact time with staff at university per week; being asked to research subjects without a feeding spoon; and simply being away from home for the first time is perhaps a bigger ask of students than ever before.

And on the staff side, frankly the system has become too lax and simply doesn't demand sufficient discipline from students. We don't make lectures and seminars compulsory and equally don't have enough support in place to help those sinking students learn to swim. The latter point comes in part from a lack of funding; the former is merely a hangover from more freewheeling liberal approaches that first permeated campuses a generation ago. Yes, we have to respect that our students are adults who choose to be on our course. But my view is that many don't arrive from school with sufficient structure in place to make the right decisions on their own. At first year level, I'd make contact time compulsory. It builds good practice that won't just carry through their study time, but will be invaluable in landing and keeping a job after graduation.

It's at this point that my 'day job' and academic life collides most. For over a year I've been working on Adecco's Unlocking Britain's Potential initiative. This is looking at why Britain's workforce isn't as effective as it could be - and one of the key findings is that young workers simply aren't ready for the world of work, whether they emerge from education at 16, 18 or in the early 20s. Of course, it's a huge generalisation, but the majority of the employers I spoke to during the research spoke about the issues they have both with managing young people's expectations (the 'entitled' generation was a recurring theme), and instilling the discipline and loyalty necessary for that young person to be a productive and contributing member of the organisation.

Industry blames the education system for not producing the 'finished work-ready goods', while the education sector bemoans the lack of industry support - from shaping curricula to offering the work placements through education that will open young people's eyes to the reality of work. They're both right, and I hope UBP will help cement some of the links that are clearly lacking.

For me though, one of the most disconcerting aspects of the past two years has been the disconnect in what academia is, and should be, about. For me, teaching the next generation and opening their minds so that they can make the bridge into a career is the vital aspect. I put everything of myself into that part of university life - yet it actually counts for nothing on my PhD.

While internal student satisfaction and, increasingly the National Student Survey play a part in grading the department and attracting students, our funding is based on the quality of published research - written by academics for academics and largely read by three old men and a dog. Teaching is secondary and lecturers are recruited into the department on the basis of the the funding their research will attract. There's a fundamental dichotomy here. True, some great researchers are also great teachers but it's by no means always the case. At the moment, great teaching doesn't attract funding and so there's little incentive for departments to recruit staff members who will make the student experience truly memorable. If it happens now, it's by luck not judgement.

The next generation is not attracted to study in our institutions by the scholarly articles we publish (ok, I've only published one...and a review) but will increasingly be attracted by the electronic word-of-mouth of social media - the views of current students - and by tracking where our graduates end up in their working lives. We are not an end in ourselves. For the next generation of students, employability will be far more a pressing reason to choose or reject a department than the research interests of the faculty.

So where am I heading with this? Well, I'm beginning to draw my conclusions. In brief, they are:

•  Providing funding to departments only on the basis of research devalues the teaching experience and is unsustainable in a new era of growing student choice
• Students want good teaching and more informed contact time - most don't give a toss about the department's reputation for scholarly research
• The university experience has to add another layer: subject specialist excellence has to remain at the forefront, but especially in non-vocational subjects, there needs to be a far greater emphasis on supporting students across the transition from school to university and then from university into work
• Industry/university partnerships are not a dirty concept - they will become ever-more essential and need to break out of the narrow confines of law firm - law department and 'big four' - business school and embrace all departments and all types of industrial and commercial organisation
• Teaching experience and skill should be a measured and rewarded aspect of PhD study for any researcher contemplating an academic career 
• We need to instill greater discipline in students at university level - not to do so is bad for everyone.

As liberal in thought and voting practice, my views surprise even me. Cripes, I'll be advocating 'Victorian Values' next....

Dear Diary - I'm back

So, I entirely failed to keep up my daily diary covering my later days in Abilene and the return to the UK....which all happened over a fortnight ago.

The main reason was, as has happened on previous research trips, the final couple of days assumed a new level of intensity. I had more specific information to find - and indeed found much of what I was looking for.

Suddenly seven hours in an archive wasn't enough, and my evenings were spent reading around my subject and trying to pull all my thoughts into order.

I headed home on a high - only to have my wings filled with flak at the Brunel Research Presentation event on my return.

My head was still filled with the connections from Bikini Atoll through the U2 and Corona to NASA - but I didn't articulate those linkages particularly well, and was rather forensically pulled apart by the great and good of my department.

I'm confident the hypothesis works and that I have the evidence to support it. The next few months will be a matter of unpicking all that evidence from the documents i collected and beginning to develop a coherent narrative.

Up against time

Three days down and one and a half to go and I'm feeling up against time in the research. I've been through 18 boxes - some excellent, others a lot less so in terms of providing what I need, and I've yet to touch the Killian papers here or tie down Ike's reaction to the Bikini Atoll H bomb tests, or cement the link between Killian and Bissell. Tomorrow will be a crucial day: I've identified most of what I want to go through, but will be looking for archival advice. So, really for the first time on this trip I'll be testing the system!

One real  positive of today was being taken to lunch by Dave Nichols - a fascinating man and one who has a rare insight into Ike's Presidency. It was a very enjoyable meal.