At this point it's pretty much impossible to read such articles and figure out whether there is an actual institutional problem.
You know that The Guardian will present anything they can as an issue that requires institutional change. That's just what they do these say. If you're willing to engage in willful confirmation bias, you can take any large institution and find enough disgruntled people to to build a "case".
I see nothing in this article about the authors trying to disprove their own hypothesis.
"The Guardian sent freedom of information requests to 135 universities. Responses revealed a total of 294 complaints against academics at 55 institutions. A further 30 universities reported 337 complaints against all staff – academic and non-academic. Across 105 universities, at least 184 staff have been disciplined and 32 dismissed for bullying since 2013."
Compared to the corporate world, that sounds incredibly low, actually.
Of course, these days any official statistic with inconveniently "good" numbers can be dismissed on the grounds that there are systematic attempts to cover things up and institutional pressure not to report incidents. But that in itself is often a form of confirmation bias.
You know that The Guardian will present anything they can as an issue that requires institutional change. That's just what they do these say. If you're willing to engage in willful confirmation bias, you can take any large institution and find enough disgruntled people to to build a "case".
I see nothing in this article about the authors trying to disprove their own hypothesis.
"The Guardian sent freedom of information requests to 135 universities. Responses revealed a total of 294 complaints against academics at 55 institutions. A further 30 universities reported 337 complaints against all staff – academic and non-academic. Across 105 universities, at least 184 staff have been disciplined and 32 dismissed for bullying since 2013."
Compared to the corporate world, that sounds incredibly low, actually.
Of course, these days any official statistic with inconveniently "good" numbers can be dismissed on the grounds that there are systematic attempts to cover things up and institutional pressure not to report incidents. But that in itself is often a form of confirmation bias.