the angel with eight wings and no halo. you fly above sleepless cities at night and yearn for the glowing lights. you are the angel that wishes to live on earth and kiss all the mortal strangers with cherry lips, red like summer fruit.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
taurus
the angel who walks among people on earth. you have no wings but there is an otherworldly glow around you, deep and silent like half bitter coffee in the early morning. you sit in hidden libraries and dream of golden skies and flying fish.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
gemini
the angel with 20 blinking eyes. you are the angel that sends whispers of advice spinning down to earth in silver gusts of wind. you make the tides turn and the papaya flowers blossom in the early springtime.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
cancer
the guardian angel with a shining halo. the angel who washes the shells like love letters up on sandy beaches. you watch the follies of human beings from a pink cloud in the sky, and cry streams of starlight.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
leo
the angel with wings large as oceans. you float above sleeping people and laugh like sunlight. your fingers are the kiss of life as you brush the earth unthinkingly, lightly. you are the angel that sweeps the oceans with your wings, sending sea spray across the land.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
virgo
the angel who guards the gates to heaven. your golden skin glows like moonlight on water as you peer through the clouds at the earth below. you blink your eyes through golden eyelashes as you hold your golden notebook and write golden words in heaven’s ink.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
libra
the angel of loving. your dragonfly wings can barely support you but still you perch on windowsills and rooftops and gaze down at the passers-by at night. you kiss strangers and eat sugar cubes out of the moon’s palm.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
scorpio
the angel who came down from heaven and hides in a dark blue seaside town. the people whisper your name like a secret and dream of feathered wings. your lips taste like salt and red wine and you weep for the skies.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
sagittarius
the angel with flowers in her hair. you have the desert in your fingers and the forest in your feet. when you cry, you cry oceans. you are the angel who falls in love with everyone, and everyone falls back in love with you tenfold. summer’s rotten fruit juice flows through your veins.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
capricorn
the angel who sits by the window. your fingers stitch flowers onto the fields and clouds into the skies. heaven is your home, but earth but for all her sadness calls to you; tea in the morning, rain in the evening. your halo, gently gold, unspoiled.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
aquarius
the angel who smokes a cigarette outside a downtown bar. your feathered wings are nothing to the neon signs. you look like a painting as you dance under the flashing lights, brushing the hands of everyone as you spin circles.
*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*
pisces
the angel who lost his wings a hundred moons ago and now leaves footprints in white sands. in your dreams you float amongst the stars and kiss the fingertips of heaven’s angels, but when you awaken you are left only to the warm waters of the pacific ocean.
The university existed before capitalism, and has sometimes resisted obedience to the dictates of the capitalist market, pursuing not profit but truth and knowledge. But capitalism devours what it can, and as it extends its domination, it comes as little surprise that the modern university becomes increasingly subservient to what Ellen Meiksins Wood calls “the dictates of the capitalist market — its imperatives of competition, accumulation, profit-maximization, and increasing labour-productivity.”
In academia, that imperative manifests itself in visible ways: publish or perish, funding or famine.
Without public investment, universities are compelled to play by private sector rules, i.e., to operate like businesses. Businesses, of course, are all about the bottom line — and the health of the bottom line depends on profit maximization, which in turn depends on careful and constant evaluation of inputs and outputs. The result for academic science, according to researchers Marc A. Edwards and Siddhartha Roy in their paper“Academic Research in the 21st Century: Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hypercompetition,” has been the introduction of a new regime of quantitative performance metrics, which governs almost everything scientific researchers do and has observable impacts on their work practices.
These metrics and benchmarks include “publication count, citations, combined citation-publication counts (e.g., h-index), journal impact factors (JIF), total research dollars, and total patents.” Edwards and Roy observe that “these quantitative metrics now dominate decision-making in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure, awards, and funding.” As a result, academic scientists are increasingly driven by a frenzied desire to get their research funded, published and cited. “Scientific output as measured by cited work has doubled every 9 years since about World War II,” note Edwards and Roy.
But quantity does not translate to quality. On the contrary, Edwards and Roy track the effect of quantitative performance metrics on the quality of scientific research and find that it has a detrimental effect. As a result of rewards systems incentivizing publication volume, scientific papers have become shorter and less comprehensive, boasting “poor methods and increase in false discovery rates.” In response to the growing emphasis on work citations in professional evaluations, reference lists have become bloated to meet career needs, with an increasing number of peer reviewers requesting that their own work be cited as a condition of publication.
Meanwhile the system that rewards increased grant funding with more professional opportunities results in scientists spending an outsize amount of time writing grant proposals and overselling the positive results of their research to catch the attention of funders. Likewise, when universities reward departments for ranking highly, departments are incentivized to “reverse engineer, game, and cheat rankings,” eroding the integrity of scientific institutions themselves.
The systemic consequences of increased market pressure on academic science are potentially catastrophic. As Edwards and Roy write, “The combination of perverse incentives and decreased funding increases pressures that can lead to unethical behavior. If a critical mass of scientists become untrustworthy, a tipping point is possible in which the scientific enterprise itself becomes inherently corrupt and public trust is lost, risking a new dark age with devastating consequences to humanity.” In order to maintain credibility, scientists need to maintain integrity — and hypercompetition is eroding that integrity, potentially undermining the entire endeavor.
Furthermore, scientists who are preoccupied chasing grants and citations lose opportunities for careful contemplation and deep exploration, which are necessary to uncover complex truths. Peter Higgs, the British theoretical physicist who in 1964 predicted the existence of the Higgs boson particle, told the Guardian upon receiving the Nobel Prize in 2013 that he would never have been able to make his breakthrough in the current academic environment.
“It’s difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964,” Higgs said. “Today I wouldn’t get an academic job. It’s as simple as that. I don’t think I would be regarded as productive enough.”
