The University of Texas at Austin this week became one of the most prestigious research institutions to join a faculty rebellion against Academic Analytics, a data company that promises to identify low-performing professors.
UT-Austin’s Faculty Council voted on Monday to approve a resolution recommending that the university make no use of Academic Analytics, especially concerning promotions, tenure, salaries, curriculum, and other faculty issues.
As with previous faculty protests of the company at Georgetown and Rutgers Universities, UT-Austin faculty members cited concerns about the accuracy of Academic Analytics’ data, the lack of opportunities for professors to correct errors, and the inappropriateness of numerical rankings for making complex decisions about people and education.
Such gauges of scholarly productivity ‘are likely to skew, redirect, narrow, and otherwise have an outsized influence on the type and quality of scholarship.’
Academic Analytics’ definitions of scholarly productivity “are likely to skew, redirect, narrow, and otherwise have an outsized influence on the type and quality of scholarship produced by UT-Austin faculty,” the resolution said.
A spokesman for UT-Austin said the administration had made no decisions yet about if and how it would use the company. “Concerns from faculty about new data tools, like Academic Analytics, are the reason UT-Austin has taken a very cautious and intentional approach,” the spokesman, Joe E. Williams, said in a written statement.
Yet faculty members cast doubt on that statement by citing a 2014 document, issued by the 15-campus UT system, that described the flagship, in Austin, as having already begun using Academic Analytics data for “examining faculty productivity compared to peers in the field by program,” and for “assessing program quality via the placement and productivity of Ph.D. graduates.”
And a senior information-management analyst at UT-Austin, J. Lincoln Holmes, said he was not “currently” conducting work with Academic Analytics, despite listing that among his chief duties on his LinkedIn profile. Soon after being asked about that work, he removed that reference from the profile.
The professor who drafted this week’s faculty resolution, Brian L. Evans, said he and other professors had learned about that 2014 activity only this past fall, and began an investigation into it.
That use on the Austin campus, said Mr. Evans, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, came despite a 2013 resolution by the faculty advisory council representing the entire UT system. The resolution expressed concern over Academic Analytics and asked that any future use of its data be subject to consultation with and review by the faculty.
Mr. Williams, however, described the 2014 report by the UT system as mistaken, reflecting what UT-Austin was considering doing with Academic Analytics and not what it had actually done. “Obviously, this was lost in translation in the report,” he said.
Correcting Mistakes
Either way, the depth of faculty opposition on the Austin campus to any form of Academic Analytics data remained unclear. The faculty resolution was approved on Monday by a voice vote that occurred without any audible dissent, though at least one faculty member expressed opposition during the preceding debate.
And Mr. Evans made clear that one of his chief concerns centered on the inability of faculty members to check and correct whatever data Academic Analytics provides on them. The data represent an attempt to go beyond single-dimensional statistics such as publication records, to take account of other measures of productivity and success, including research funding by federal agencies and professional honors and awards.
Another backer of the resolution, Alan W. Friedman, a professor of English and comparative literature who serves as secretary of the Faculty Council, also said he considered the opportunity for faculty members to correct mistakes in Academic Analytics a critical part of any viable plan for working with the company.
Mr. Evans said faculty members are also concerned about how much weight might be applied to Academic Analytics data in developing job-performance assessments, though he didn’t rule out some room for compromise on that matter.
While such services promise ‘objective’ data about faculty productivity, some of the firm’s metrics lack any qualitative dimension.
Although such overt debates on campuses have been limited, the American Association of University Professors issued a statement in March 2016 urging caution toward Academic Analytics. “While such services promise ‘objective’ data about faculty productivity,” the AAUP said, “some of the firm’s metrics lack any qualitative dimension.”
The chairman of the Faculty Council, Steven D. Hoelscher, a professor of American studies and geography, said he was interested in working with the administration to find common ground as the UT system moves through a $6.5-million contract with Academic Analytics, running from 2012 to 2020. He noted that the current provost, Maurie D. McInnis, arrived at Austin in 2016, well after any work in 2014 that may have occurred with Academic Analytics, and said he was not interested in revisiting what may have been done in the past.
“How it’s being used now — that’s the question,” he said. “I’m in the position of wanting to work with our administration, and I feel that I can trust them.”
Paul Basken covers university research and its intersection with government policy. He can be found on Twitter @pbasken, or reached by email at paul.basken@chronicle.com.
