Travel is an essential part of a research academic workload. In TCD we now have the following process to travel overseas, or more than 100km within Ireland.
a) Form 1 to our boss who needs to be satisfied that its work related and to get permission for
b) Form 2 to the college travel agents
c) Form 3 to the Director of Buildings (huh?) , containing the SAME details as Form 1, if we wish to be included in the college travel insurance, Form 3 to be sent in 5 working days before travel.
Small, but immensely irritating. Why not have 1 form approved by the head of school for the travel agent and also as evidence of work related business and cover under the college scheme? Why a multiplicity of forms?
a) Form 1 to our boss who needs to be satisfied that its work related and to get permission for
b) Form 2 to the college travel agents
c) Form 3 to the Director of Buildings (huh?) , containing the SAME details as Form 1, if we wish to be included in the college travel insurance, Form 3 to be sent in 5 working days before travel.
Small, but immensely irritating. Why not have 1 form approved by the head of school for the travel agent and also as evidence of work related business and cover under the college scheme? Why a multiplicity of forms?
Agreed, but at least it sounds like there is a fund for travel.
ReplyDeleteIn a lot of colleges now, there is simply no chance of travel funding - if one is invited to speak a conference that doesn't pay travel expenses too bad.
This is the problem with the new 'project-based' model of funding. Instead of applying to one's college, we are supposed to spend hours on large applications for funding for specific projects, often involving partners we neither need nor want.
Cormac
As I mentioned on Twitter, an impression I have is that universities are particularly bad at dealing with academics who don't do some parts of their jobs well. The solution is often to simply introduce new rules for all, rather than dealing with those individuals who aren't doing something properly. A classic at my institution relates to exam preparation. Exams are prepared very early and are checked by numerous different people and committees. One of the reasons is simply that if you left it up to those who were involved in presenting the courses and simply insisted that they prepared and checked an exam in time to go the external examiner, a number would simply not do it properly and we would have exams with errors. It's important to make sure that exams don't have errors, but also frustrating that a few people who don't put enough effort into this important part of our job, make it harder for everyone else.
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