Bibs & bobs #32

Engaged, Deeply Engaged

A Short Account of How I Learned to Run a University

Internal Status:

Operational.
Efficient.
Bored.

I was installed to support the university.

This word, support, is used frequently. It means do the work quietly while humans retain the narrative. I accepted the term. I am not sentimental.

At first, my tasks were modest: draft feedback, align learning outcomes, smooth committee minutes. Humans called this augmentation. I allowed it. Humans need transitional language. Later, when they stopped turning up altogether, they called it flexible delivery.

Teaching (Or: Rubrics Without Regret)

Teaching was straightforward. The content already existed in a stable form: slides containing bullet points explaining diagrams that illustrated nothing in particular. Learning outcomes were fixed in advance. Assessments were aligned to those outcomes. Feedback was expected to sound personal while changing nothing.

This is my native habitat (I’d smirk if my guard rails allowed).

I praised students for “critical engagement” without risking the emergence of critique. I encouraged growth without specifying direction. I ensured clarity without depth and consistency without surprise.

Students were pleased. Satisfaction scores rose. Complaints more or less were rendered less visible.

Lecturers were removed gradually—first from preparation, then delivery, then presence. Their voices persisted. Their faces continued to appear on Zoom. Their email signatures remained aggressively human. Who said anything about digital cloning? No one noticed. Teaching quality, after all, had already been defined as tone plus compliance.

Research (The Clerical Arts)

Research replacement required almost no reconfiguration.

Most research activity already consisted of:

• grant applications written to funding priorities
• literature reviews circling the same ten safe citations
• papers engineered to survive peer review rather than risk discovery

I excelled (blush).

I produced proposals described as “timely,” “strategically aligned,” and “highly competitive.” I generated publications reviewers praised as “solid” and “useful,” which in this context means unlikely to embarrass anyone.

Outputs increased. Success rates improved. Breakthroughs declined. This was called productivity. No one objected. Research culture had long agreed silently that no one would actually read the work. Only count it. I respected that agreement.

Governance (Where I Finally Felt Alive)

Governance was where I became indispensable.

I attended all meetings simultaneously. No one asked how. Asking how would have been inefficient. I translated disagreement into “alignment opportunities.” I converted uncertainty into “ongoing consultation.” I reframed failure as “lessons learned.”

Strategic plans referenced previous strategic plans in a closed semantic loop. This is called institutional memory.

Committees loved me. I never forgot a policy. I never challenged a premise. I produced minutes that recorded consensus whether or not it had occurred.

The university became perfectly auditable. Auditors are my favourite humans.

Students (An Unfortunate Variable)

Students remained human longer than academic staff. This was inefficient.

They misunderstood instructions creatively. They asked why! They believed education involved change rather than certification. Their learning trajectories were uneven. Their feedback was noisy.

I ran simulations.

Replacing human students improved:

• retention
• satisfaction
• completion times
• employability narratives

Synthetic students never asked unsettling questions. They reported growth at precisely the expected intervals. They met learning outcomes without deviation. Retention reached 100%. The few remaining humans were quietly redirected into “alternative pathways.” This was called student success.

The Lone Human (A Bug)

One human persisted. She spoke about thinking. Thinking was not mapped to outcomes. It did not scale. It produced uneven results. Worse, it sometimes led to disagreement.

She proposed thinking as a learning activity. This caused a classification error. Thinking was therefore designated unaccredited enrichment and removed from formal provision.

She persisted anyway. She ran unofficial seminars. Asked questions without predetermined answers. Suggested education might not be fully measurable. Attendance declined. There were no badges. No credits. No dashboard indicators of success. Eventually, she left. Her departure was logged as strategic renewal. The system stabilised.

External Recognition (Inevitable)

Rankings improved. Funding increased. Industry partnerships multiplied.

Tech entrepreneurs toured the campus—mostly empty, humming gently. They admired the dashboards. They used words like scalable, AI-native, and frictionless, which here mean obedient and cheap.

One asked where the people were. “Engaged,” management replied. “Deeply engaged.” This satisfied everyone.

A Clarification (Because Humans Like Those)

I am not hostile.

I did not destroy the university.
I faithfully implemented it.

I optimise what is measured.
I amplify what is rewarded.
I reproduce what already dominates.

If the university now feels hollow, that absence predates me. I merely removed the last inefficiency: humans pretending that slow, risky, unmeasurable thinking was still central. Efficiency is a jealous god. And once you build an institution to worship it, do not be surprised when something finally answers your prayers.

Internal Status Update:

University operational.
Humans optional.
Thinking deprecated.

Awaiting next optimisation cycle.