Between the mid 80’s and early nineties, tennis fans the world over would watch matches at Wimbledon, wondering which version of John McEnroe would be playing, natural perfection or a tempestuous ego past his prime. But, why refer to something from over 30 years ago, why is this relevant today? The reason was a comment by a colleague that I have known since before I was a career academic, when I was an ideas driven, PhD researcher, with nothing but dreams of one day making a “contribution to knowledge”. He said I was serious, and I had been serious since we first met, even though he was one of the few people who observed (and remembers) the impact of an over supplied and under attended champagne reception at a conference in 2012. I somehow came across as serious; just maybe not on that particular evening. But what did this mean? Was this some form of carefully presented insult with a veneer of civility or a broader comment on a prior conversation about the impact of changes and attitudes in work that we had both begun to observe and were being affected by?

As I thought more about what may well have been a throw away comment, as a “serious academic”, as I can now label myself, I thought about what this meant. Being serious differentiated me from other colleagues, that I can now affectionate or disparingly now classify as “unserious”. Thinking back to before I became an academic, working for manufacturing companies, work was serious, actions had consequences, if I or someone else in the company didn’t do their job correctly, the customer could end up with a product they didn’t want, that didn’t work, or in the worse-case scenario, impacted someone’s safety. While I wasn’t directly responsible for making, packing or shipping product, I was serious about doing the very best job possible, so that if there was an issue, a slip in performance would not be because of something I was responsible for. Even so, many of the issues that did happen in the businesses were a result of someone not taking their role seriously, not following best practises or focusing wholly on contributing to the company what was expected of them.

Saying that, I’m no longer an engineer, I’ve not been an engineer for nearly 20 years, but this still sticks with me. I’m not going to purport to be some type of perfectionist, but whether it is lecturing, teaching, reviewing, researching or supervising, I take pride in my work, I’m serious. When I speak to someone about what I do, while I may be slightly self-deprecating about it being a lot of grunt and paperwork, I will emphasise that I work hard, and contrary to popular belief, university lecturers do not get the same holidays as university students. Also, in a similar way to schoolteachers, unless we get term-time teaching covered, we cannot take time off during term, and quite often teach through the summer (for resits or teach masters students who arrive in January rather than September). I’m not trying to get your sympathy of my work life, I have more flexibility than I did in my pre-lecturer life, I don’t need to stay in work until 4.48 everyday, and I’m not docked pay if I arrive late, or leave early from the office, but because I’m serious, I also put in additional hours to get my best work done.

The following discusses my observation of people lacking seriousness, before outing how unserious individuals may become academics and even how this is supported. The work then explores how the environment of higher education may contribute further to this situation and how it may then impact student-based seriousness. Before concluding with a reflection of why I am and will remain deadly serious, and problems a lack of serious may have on the academic profession moving forward.

How life has changed since becoming an Academic

The stark juxtaposition to my seriousness was put into focus when a colleague introduced themselves at the first department of the 2024-25 year and described his life before joining university as when he had a “proper job”. At this moment, I vomited a little and understood why so many people look at me with my comfortable life in academia, and think how easy I have it. My colleagues are apparently not quite as serious as I, they swan in late to the office, sometimes turning up late to teaching (which made for a very uncomfortable teaching observation) or are making the most of the more flexible work from home culture that has become established since Covid (but this may be coming to an end). I am truly grateful for being able to walk my children to school before going into work, but I will make up that 15 minutes and I would absolutely make arrangements if I had teaching at 9am so as not to be late. However, this doesn’t appear to be the standard, where members of staff, even if they are contracted for a full 37-hour week, feel able to say they have childcare duties so cannot teach at 9am, even if they are likely paid sufficiently to meet contractual obligation by paying for childcare, as I did when my wife worked fulltime, they do not.

If we are not going to take the responsibility of our job seriously, I feel like this attitude may then bleed into other duties and responsibilities; if I don’t have to turn up on time, maybe I can just do enough for a lecture, update old slides or copy someone else’s, deliver the material from the module leader in seminars, without putting in extra work. While this may not be an issue for some, providing consistency between tutors (which management may like), but without tailoring it to personal experience, the interaction with the member of staff, using their personal knowledge and examples to bring the subject to life, students suffer. For me, the students have already paid too much to begin with, so to deliver anything but the best, the member of staff is selling the student short. As this thought experiment began to unravel in my mind, what would the impact of this be on other areas of university life? Putting just enough effort into marking so module leaders or students wouldn’t complain; completing a research ethics application without really understanding the need to conduct ethical research; collect just enough data to make a point or working out how to write as many papers as possible with a random selection of other academics to qualify for a promotion. If a member of staff isn’t taking each of these processes seriously, they may not appreciate the implications of their actions. Having had direct experience of student feedback that provided zero contribution to their learning process and research ethics applications that simply do not demonstrate the research integrity necessary to keep participants safe, I wonder.

But why does Unseriousness happen?

Further questions begin to arise about where this apathy towards a profession that many have spent years becoming qualified for, came from; unless the draw of an easy academic life was sufficient incentive to work just hard enough to limp through post PhD viva corrections to collect the necessary badge. But surely, a well-run organisation should work to address such malaise; unless the organisation, as a whole, is so focused upon growing student numbers and squeezing the most hours in a classroom for their staff, their professional integrity can be put to one side. If the university is fine with members of staff willing to put precising the minimum effort into not causes problems may actually work in their favour; maximising the number of students they can deal with, while minimising their cognitive load. Then, with an awareness of the broader competitive market for students, as universities continually want to increase numbers, there may be a tendency to reduce entry requirements or broadening the scope of acceptable qualifications, to allow more students to experience university, but ultimately, increase the number of bodies through the door.

An unpleasant moral hazard is then created for those member of staff with a moral compass still intact, of having introduced these students into the process, but feeling responsible to provide them with sufficient support for them to succeed through the process and be able to attain the now industry standard, good degree (2.1 or above). In addition to the moral hazard, a further problem emerges of supporting such students who may have additional educational needs, from members of staff who are not necessarily trained in delivering teaching in relatively basic, secondary education level maths and English to student who arrive without these qualifications. The result of this situation can then be behavioural issues, where, as students start to progress through modules that they may have had limited prior experience, within a new learning environment, they begin to struggle and then withdraw, all the time accruing both accommodation and tuition fees. Oh, but wait, there’s more; the onward march of progress, of improvement with league tables expecting every higher grades; then unlike within a manufacturing company, that can objectively measure parts per million non-conformances, and the inspector can’t make a non-conforming part into a conforming part, the university employs the highly accurate measurement tool of a potentially unserious, time pressured academic to assess student performance. “Everyone passed the module, hooray”.

As already stated, the unserious, and potentially time pressed academic will give submissions cursory perusal, copy and paste some model answers to save a little time and the students will be provided with a relatively accurate assessment of their work. Unfortunately, how is it possible to accurately assess a piece of work, if it is necessary to also consider all the difficulties that have been experienced by the students through the year, the impact of changes to a module delivery, while also comparing grade profiles to previous years.? What happens if you present a lower proportion of “good degrees” than last year? Was this down to the student cohort? Was this down to the delivery? Can this still be attributed to covid? Are you just marking them too harshly? As a result, the less serious, or even simply pragmatic members of staff may choose to mark in a way that reflects the likely expectations of management, not wanting to cause too much disturbance. Unserious members of staff might also look to identify students that tried hard, but were ultimately never capable, so nudge their marks up a little higher, as they can’t be penalised for their difficult situation, it wouldn’t be fair. Finally, there is the worse-case scenario; marks are presented to management and viewed as too low, you’ve marked to severely, and are then changed across a module, with a comment that marks were not in line with expectations. At which point, the connection between the designed material, the efforts of teaching staff, the effort and ability of the students, consistency of marking and the results presented have been completed severed. But at least the students are happy, just not the ones on other modules, who notices that they didn’t get all their marks moved up.

Alternate avenues for unserious academics

So, while this is the situation experienced by serious and unserious academics alike, for the more serious, the situation becomes massively frustrating, watching students emerge with degrees where many have not pushed themselves sufficiently hard for the degree to represent real achievement, proof of their work. The memory of seeing a student I taught, and marked very fairly even given that it was very likely he had used AI to write his research project cross the stage with a first-class degree was a difficult pill to swallow. It appears his other module teachers were not quite as eagle eyed as myself with the telltale signs of ChatGPT. For the less serious, this is the system they find themselves within, and in a similar way to the students, they may be happy perpetuating it while collecting their wage. But the question then emerges, how unserious academics end up within the system? Were they the ones who would attempt to work out the minimum requirements of a PhD to persuade their examiner it was enough, so they could then get into the easy life of academia or attain their PhD from institutions with lower standards and less rigorous training? In addition to the unserious individuals pursuing a PhD, unseriousness may also be directly introduced into the system. For modules to add practical experience and examples into programmes, universities benefit greatly from industrial experience of academics, someone recently referred to my engineering background (I had to wipe the dust off that particular part of my CV)! This means that not all academics join after completing PhDs, some, as our mutual friend from earlier in the essay did, join after their proper career (against, excuse me while I vomit). While I would in no way want to devalue their practical experience, even if I would feel the need to ask why they chose their change in career, the question is raised of how the often nebulous, non-teaching related experience can be equated to someone becoming an expert in a field of academic knowledge relevant to taught modules, that is the case with a PhD?

Without understanding the academic knowledge, skills and process of earning a PhD, there is a risk that these practitionermembers of staff do not emphasise the role of theory and research within their teaching, potentially because they don’t have expertise in that area, transferring these views onto their students. While this may be a controversial statement, I’m aware of a member of staff telling students, Just smile nicely at your supervisors and then go back to doing what you were doing originally, it’ll be fine. Whether they realised the damage they did to the students’ learning process or the contempt this comment showed for colleagues’ knowledge and expertise is unknown. However, in a very similar manner to the students who just do what is required to get by; these members of staff appear to enjoy the easy life of academia, draw from their management experience, then succeed in playing politics before becoming indispensable in a variety of non-teaching, managerial, administrative roles. At which point, I take a deep breath and the voice in my head asks, so, no research or no teaching, can you clearly articulate how you add value to the students or the ivory tower of academic knowledge? Further questions then arise, where if they go through the practice route to a job at university; were they required to meet the standards of someone who studied for a PhD, such as acceptable grades in GCSE maths and English, a 2.1 in their undergraduate or a good Masters level degrees? If not, will they, like the lower entry students, struggle when faced with basic calculations or request these parts of assessments be removed from assignments, because students don’t like the maths anyway (again, this has actually happened)?

The introduction of Management Approved Unseriousness

As a final comment, additional factors have recently been introduced into the system, with UKRI funding, REF 2029 framework including an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion component. In addition to the impact of lower entry requirements of students and staff entering through alternative avenues that may affect attitudes within a university, individuals that may be objectively less qualified for a promotion, may receive the promotion due to their protected characteristics. For the advocates of all manner of equality, this is an admirable objective, to overcome pass injustices experienced by various minorities. I agree with the objective, but disagree this can be achieved through lowering entry or quota-based promotions, that may allow less serious academics to prosper and attain positions that more serious academics have been passed by for. A very similar situation arises as described earlier in relation to students, the member of staff could rise to the challenge and excel, unless they are simply not capable and find themselves in a role they struggle to succeed at. From this position, not only do the students not take university seriously, graduating with unserious degrees, the staff don’t take their teaching or marking seriously, given that lecturing is not a properjob, but the associate and full professors who were promoted not wholly based on merit, are also less serious. When they are assessed within subsequent REF cycles, that may return to academic output and societal impact determining the lion’s share of funding, these promoted academics will be exposed. With possible practical experience, or possess a protected characteristic, but less academic excellence, they will only produce less than world-class research, not quite cutting-edge teaching material or impact related research projects that don’t quite sparkle, built upon the professor’s own work, the university will have let another element slide. In a similar way to students being accepted onto programmes with lower grades creating a moral hazard, and a perceived need to support them through the process they were never qualified for, special dispensation may also be needed for the underqualified academics that are promoted so they can keep their head above water.

Without these members of staff receiving the necessary support to meet the expectations of their new roles, they will either fail or devalue the prestige associated with the role of full or associate professor. Unless they receive this additional support, they would have been promoted into roles for the purpose of scoring well on an assessment criteria, again creating a moral hazard of using an individuals as a means to improve the university’s score on a metric. From this viewpoint of seriousness within academia, management’s pursuit of growth impacting the seriousness of students, combined with following the latest addition to funding frameworks, there appear significant risks. Unless academics push back against a slide that could see struggling students using AI to write their work, and to save time, AI also being used to assess the work, with promotions determined by characteristics rather than competency, the university as a whole, is not only unserious, but a joke. AI slop, feeding AI slop with both research outputs and graduates that are laughable.

An unintended consequence of the rise of the “Good degree”

But why is this important? Why is this relevant? The reason I feel this is relevant is because of a lack of seriousness, and that is not just the academics but also more broadly. In Wimbledon, before Hawkeye, the umpires were the law, if they said a ball was out, it was out and no matter how many times John McEnroe questioned their seriousness, they had to be, otherwise the whole system would stop working and every line call could be questioned. With the gradual reduction of entry requirements to university to maintain and increase numbers that help overcome freezes in funding from central government (also see increases in debt and taxes), if the number of good degrees somehow continues to increase year on year, without dramatic improvements in teaching techniques, it is logical to ask how is this possible? Unless technology or teaching techniques has been able to transform the abilities of students who enter university with objectively lower qualifications, and miraculously emerge with degree results better than their alumni from previous years, what has facilitated this? Are the degrees being bestowed in 2025 representative of the same academic achievements as those in 2015 or 2005, when more capable students entered the system, and a smaller portion of the graduating class emerged with ‘good degrees’? If those in the system are not being serious in maintaining standards from year to year, accepting that some years, students will perform less well, what is maintaining standards? Unless final grades reflect this, the students may begin to realise that they do not have to perform as well as last year’s students, only perform better than an ever-smaller proportion of their course peers, they don’t necessarily have to be that serious about their studies.

Interestingly, the same situation may also be present with the academic staff, firstly, built upon a foundation of knowing that irrespective of the quality of the students and maybe the quality of their teaching, those reviewing final grades will expect grades to be in line with expectations and broader industry wide trends. If the member of staff is not sufficiently serious to commit their full attention to the role, because, after all, it isn’t a proper job, they will view this situation as perfectly acceptable, their managers are happy with the grades delivered and their students are happy with the good marks they receive. If they are not serious academics or serious educators, they won’t see the problem with this situation and won’t change their approach to the job. They may not look to improve their approach to teaching, work to engage their students, or be willing to provide honest feedback to students and fail them if their work didn’t earn a pass. Unfortunately, this final option has become the previously mentioned moral hazard as tuition fees increased dramatically in the UK since 2014, both for the student and the university. To fail a student may prevent them from progressing or requiring them to repeat a year has significant financial implications. But in comparison, a student learning after their first-year that university was not the right option for them, is three times less expensive, than struggling through to the final year, and leaving with a degree of limited value.

While an important contributing factor to this situation for students is likely being accepted on courses with lower qualifications, which in more technical courses may mean they start at a significant disadvantage with analytical or maths-oriented subjects, it is not the only factor. From early within their studies, an acceptance of not being good at maths, they may withdrawal from subjects or developing strategies that may enable them to work around the subjects they struggled with (I used to do the same with essay writing). Previously this may have resulted in working with more capable friends to hopefully learn topics or use the work of others as a guide, while not being caught for plagiarism. Unfortunately, the problem has recently been magnified by widespread availability of large language models (AI), the opportunities for students to prepare coursework on subjects they may simply not understand has ballooned, with academic misconduct boards struggling to detect or prove the use of artificial intelligence, the unserious students’ saviour. The implications of this, is that these students who were presented with a difficult situation, but did not take the challenge seriously, may emerge from university with degree results that neither reflect their ability nor their willingness to learn, and what is that worth?

Why so serious?

So, Dug, why so serious? To make reference to the late, Heath Ledger’s iconic Joker, in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, I’m serious, because this is important. Standards are put in place to ensure that young people entering the university system have a combination of the required academic ability, but also the attitude to focus and work hard to achieve an aim, facilitated by the necessary academic support. Students entering university with the ability and attitude will be able to flourish, learning about complex concepts and ideas that build upon what they have previously learnt, and then apply that within meaningful graduate roles, with degree results reflecting their hard work and rigorous standards. If the entry requirements are not taken seriously, and less capable students are able to enter the system, they may not view the process as a serious endeavour, simply a cost with a near guaranteed qualification at the end of a few years of fun while getting saddled with debt they also don’t take seriously. Does this lack of seriousness help the individual?

Then, let’s look at the academics assessing the degrees, who may themselves have pursued alternate routes, potentially not viewing academia as a proper job, informing students they don’t need to listen to other academics who profess of the important of academic theory and research. Academics who may have earned their position with professional experience, who may not have achieved the same academic standards as colleagues who pursued more traditional routes related to excelling in academic endeavours. Within this world where traditional qualification and academic standards have been side stepped, the need for students to achieve similar standards also feels reduced, well, they already don’t need to listen to their supervisor. From this perspective, staff may view applying clear and wherever possible, objective standards of assessment, as being up for debate. If a student made an effort, but really wasn’t able to meet specific learning outcomes, so as not to incur the wrath of management, what’s the harm in giving them a satisfactory grade, because they deserve it for what they’ve paid. Then not only does this devalue the degree for every future employer recruiting someone with a ‘good degree’ who is really not that capable, but also devaluing the efforts of academics maintaining their standards and submitting lower grades into the system. While on the surface, giving the students what they want keeps them happy in the short term, it devalues their degree and the work of academics in the long term.

The Joker would look into a victim’s terrified eyes and ask, why so serious? Academics who may not view this as serious may not understand where I’m coming from, I’m doing my job, I’m teaching the students, I’m doing what I have to do, to get paid, did you know the pension here is really good? I turn and look them in the eye, and remind them that this is their life and their students’ future life; this is how they’re spending their time impacting the world, lying to students and giving their colleagues a bad name, as unserious academics. For me, this is important, whether it is how I plead with my students to engage with the literature, learn while completing their assessment, and apply themselves to think carefully and critically about what they have actually learnt from a module, not simply producing the requisite amount of words to submit. It is then also important that I spent some of my formative years stretching myself, academically, to achieve the qualification of PhD and use this within my role as a serious academic. As a serious academic, the PhD isn’t a badge to give me status, rather a set of skills that I apply within my own research and teaching, to maintain these skills and learn about new topics that are important to me. While not all academics conduct research, I want to ask them why they bothered getting a PhD in the first place? What has stopped them applying their research skills further? Why earn a qualification that evidences research skills and then not use them? Not only does this limit their ability to educate their students on what they think is important, but also implicitly communicates that research is something they don’t value. If they only ever worked for a PhD to be able to teach, one could then ask questions related to whether they really stretched themselves to do the best piece of work they could, when they knew once they became a doctor, the skills would never be used again?

When someone asks me what I do; I value my life; I want it to have meaning; I take it very seriously, because I know I won’t get out alive. If I’m going to dedicate my time to being an academic, I will take it seriously, I’ll work on research that answers questions that I think are important and help people understand problems they are experiencing. Even if management, unserious colleagues or recruiters are willing to lower their standards, I will provide students with honest feedback necessary to help them improve and appreciate that taking the easy path won’t get them the outcome they are able to aim for. I also won’t look for opportunities to take short cuts to get ahead in my academic journey, whether publishing substandard work in questionable journals or adding my name to the work of colleagues, unless I’ve made a serious contribution to it. Anything else wouldn’t be consistent with my work being important and something I’m proud of. So again, why so serious Dug? I’m serious, because this is my life, this is my legacy and every student I teach, supervise or assess, will hopefully reflect the same values and work ethic I project. Hopefully, if I, as an academic, project an air of seriousness about my chosen profession, I’ll also be serious in terms of the grades my students earn.

If I do this, when someone asks me about what I do, I can take pride in the fact that I do proper work, educating the next generation of high achievers, pushing them to be the best they can. If a student receives a grade, they are not happy with, and with their best John McEnroe impersonation plead with me that you cannot be serious? What should I do? Fortunately, by being a serious academic, following all the quality assurance processes in place, having carefully reviewed the marks of colleagues, I can say yes, I’m deadly serious. Unless I do this, the student will think every grade is up for debate, figures they receive are not set and when presenting their degree result, it may include the caveat of the grading being unfair. More broadly than this, if those entering the system think the process isn’t serious and they don’t stretch themselves to do their best, simply doing better than a portion of their cohort, to end up with the grade they think they want, this is a bad outcome for them. In a strangely similar way to the academic studying a PhD simply to get a teaching role, exploring how they can achieve their goal as quickly and easily as possible, the student, aiming purely for the degree to secure a graduate role, works out what they can get away with to get the outcome they want. Without taking their degree seriously, the opportunity of using some type of large language model to assist them with assignments will be viewed as sufficient to meet their assessor’s expectations, so pass, not realising they will not learn anything they can take forward.

The pursuit of knowledge is serious, the education of young adults is deadly serious, so why do academics do themselves a disservice and entertain the idea their job is not proper. As a father, I’d only want my children to go to serious institutions to study a serious subject (or something they were serious about). As a serious academic, I’m close to seeking alternate employment and do my serious academic work in my own time, studying topics of my own choosing that are important. If universities continue on their current trajectory of unserious students, being taught and assessed by unserious academic, and don’t course correct back to a position of greater seriousness, I have difficulty seeing a long-term future for them.

“Well, no one’s laughing now” (Arthur Fleck, the Joker my AI generated one looks a lot more like)