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  3. The academics, at Miami University of Ohio, fill in questionnaires anonymous

The academics, at Miami University of Ohio, fill in questionnaires anonymous

游客2024-02-01  39
问题     The academics, at Miami University of Ohio, fill in questionnaires anonymously, evaluating their bosses’ effectiveness, with room to add more detailed remarks at the end. These comments are summarised and returned to all academic staff in the department, who agree whether the summary is fair, and the evaluation is then used not only to inform individual chairs about what sort of job they are doing, but also whether a pay rise or promotion should be in the offing.
This kind of evaluation is relatively common in American universities. But U. K. universities have always been much warier about the idea.
    Now union members at the University of Sussex want this to change, proposing that all academic staff should be given the chance to appraise their heads of school. They argue that with students increasingly asked to assess the effectiveness of the teaching they receive, academics should also be able to comment on the effectiveness of university management.
    A proposal to introduce upward appraisal was put to the university last term, but was rejected by managers. The union then conducted its own survey of academic and academic-related staff, but managers said this was unauthorized, flawed and represented a breach of trust and mutual confidence on the part of the union. The 300 responses had to be torn up.
    Upward appraisal is not entirely unknown in U. K. universities. In 1996, Gillian Evans and Kevin Moloney produced a report on the practice for the Council for Academic Freedom and Standards, which found that eight of the 41 U. K. institutions who replied to a survey used it in some form, although usually informally. The report urged more institutions to adopt it, arguing that staff were increasingly subject to appraisal from above and that equitable treatment of staff is important and can only result in efficiency gains.
    Little has changed since the report was published, with upward appraisal in U. K. universities remaining rare, although some institutions do use 360-degree feedback—feedback by selected peers, subordinates and seniors—as a management development tool. This is done at Warwick University, which strongly insists that it is "feedback", not "appraisal", and is voluntary, confidential and "not linked to appraisal or remuneration in any way".
    Daniel Kane, a teacher in English and American literature at Sussex says: "We’re expected to act on what students say. And we do. We are simply asking for the same rights and same respect that our students have. But we aren’t being given the basic dignity of being able to say what works and what doesn’t. What are they afraid of?"
    Evans says academics feel increasingly powerless—exposed both to what students think of them, through Facebook and other sites, and to the pressures on managers to reduce staff costs. "Appraisal has moved from being equal-to-equal to top-down," she says. "It has moved from being a friendly discussion about what one wants to do with one’s career to obligations to do something. There has also been a shift from relative job security to more short-term contracts. "
    Nick Holley, head of the human resources centre at Henley Business School, University of Reading, says it can be useful for managers to see how others see them, but warns that this kind of feedback has to be conducted carefully. Scoring managers for different qualities is not only inexact, as some people mark more highly than others, but could tempt people to see management capability in terms of numbers rather than taking account of its complexity. [br] What issue does the author mainly discuss in the passage?
选项 A、The academics in America can evaluate their bosses’ effectiveness.
B、Academics feel increasingly powerless.
C、Whether upward appraisal in universities should be done as the U. S. does.
D、Scoring managers for different qualities will lead to, false judgement of management capability.
答案 C
解析 概括大意题。根据题干，需要抓住作者主要讨论的问题，是英国是否需要像美国一样实行上行评价，因此选项C正确。A选项是事实，而非讨论的问题。选项B和D只是对文中具体细节问题的说明。
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