Transparency

Transparency is a beautiful word. It appears in strategic plans, in mission statements, in evaluation forms. But in practice? It's often the first thing to disappear when it comes to matters that truly matter.

When I was asked to become vice-dean for research, it seemed like a great opportunity. The dean's assistant told me I would receive teaching relief, an attractive allowance, and — the icing on the cake — a sabbatical at the end of my term. I agreed, was elected. What turned out? No sabbatical at all. It had existed only in that one conversation. The teaching relief had to be arranged separately by the incumbent dean, who did so with a cc to the entire dean's office, writing that he was doing this "albeit with considerable reluctance" — as if I had asked him for a personal favour. Meanwhile the incumbent vice-dean, the dean, and the vice-dean for teaching all received teaching relief as a matter of course.

The problem was never the teaching relief itself. The problem was that no one could tell me in advance what I could expect, because there was no clear, publicly available regulation. Everything was subject to interpretation, goodwill, and — so it seemed — who you knew. What is self-evident for one person is a favour for another. You either demand it, or you hope it's granted.

A year after my term ended, I discovered that my successor in exactly the same position received twice as much teaching relief as I had. No one could explain why. At a later point, a colleague putting themselves forward for the role tried to find out what the allowance was, how much teaching relief came with it, and what the tasks actually involved. The tasks were more or less clear. The allowance was not: the vice-dean at the time couldn't remember the amount, the dean mentioned a figure considerably lower than what I had received, and no one seemed certain whether the teaching relief was even automatic. How could anyone make an informed decision about a position when its basic conditions weren't written down anywhere?

That same opacity shows up in smaller, sharper ways too. When we once had too few people to teach, I asked the secretary how to bring in someone from outside the department. She told me to apply to the professors' council for a visiting professor. I did; it was approved. But when the vice-rector went to release the budget, there was no money. What I learned later: she hadn't scheduled the visiting professor for the course we actually needed to fill. Instead, she'd added an extra course to the programme — one she knew had no budget behind it — while quietly scheduling her own preferred candidate for the course that did need filling. She withheld the information I needed and sent me down a route bound to fail, so that her choice, not mine, would be the one appointed.

And it shows up in who gets to shape decisions at all. Appointment committees include representatives from the professors' council and from the non-professorial academic staff. For professors, the procedure is clear: an email goes out, interest is registered, a vote follows if needed. But when I asked non-professorial colleagues whether they wanted to serve on such a committee, none of them knew how that worked — not one person, but several, with no idea whom to contact or how. When HR's notification of the final committee arrived, it included exactly the people one particular colleague had wanted on it. He, it turned out, knew the procedure. I still don't, years later. This isn't a minor organisational gap — it quietly decides who gets to influence outcomes and who doesn't.

None of this is incidental. It adds up to a culture in which you're constantly guessing, judged on knowledge you were never given, and where your mistakes read not as learning but as proof you don't belong.

Transparency isn't just a moral principle — it's also simply more efficient. Clear conditions save time, prevent wasted effort, and stop backstage manoeuvring from quietly deciding outcomes that should be argued on their merits.

But transparency isn't equally attractive to everyone, because it makes visible what otherwise stays hidden: who gets which benefits, who holds which power, and who gets left out.

Academia prides itself on rationality and objectivity. But as long as the rules that matter most aren't written down, as long as decisions are made in grey zones, and as long as information functions as a commodity rather than a public good, the university stays a place where it isn't the best ideas that win — it's whoever has cracked the code.

That's a pity. Not just for me, but for academia itself.