It’s a perfect storm of neo-university non-sense.
My university recently instituted a new budget model that places cash value on the heads of students. The more students in a class, the greater the cash return to the department offering the class. The new model is not that new. It was referred to as Bums-On-Seats when it first appeared in the UK. In the USA, it’s Butts-In-Seats (BiS). The more B’s a professor can put in the seats of any class they teach, the greater the financial rewards.
I wrote an essay about how I and my colleagues have been overly passive in our resistance to the BiS model, despite its downsides having been well documented [1]. To lighten the introspective tone, I added some tongue-in-cheek thoughts. An exert follows.
“Imagine the campus of the future where every department is fighting to increase butts-in-seats metrics (increased BiS = increased rewards). All departments will want to entice students into their classes. The number of flashy fliers advertising this or that class will grow. Students will not be able to walk across campus without seeing some form of advertising. They will continually get invitations to visit various departments for free samples of what’s on offer, with free pizza. Some departments will team with others to sell linked products. How long before a clever department takes its BiS budget bump and hires an advertising firm to sell students on their product. Walking the campus will be like a stroll through the mall – 40% off at the department of biology, two-for-one offer at physics, going out of business sale at philosophy.”
I thought the above was satire, but I now realize that, in the brave new world of the corporatized university, satire is dead. The absurd is reality. The clarity of that hit me when I read a press release from my university about the purported discovery of life on a planet beyond our own [2]. The planet is called K2-18b [3]. The evidence of life is highly dubious [4,5]. The press release offered breathless insights into the importance of the discovery (dubious evidence be damned). The insights came from scholars deemed well suited to disseminating the new knowledge to the public and the university community, students included. As it turns out, they are also offering a new course, about life on other worlds, that “debuts” in fall. This was stated in the second paragraph of the press release and discussed over the last three paragraphs, along with a proclamation of how many students had already signed up for the class and links “for more information about the course”.
A press release to provide insights into a purported scientific discovery mixed with advertising for a new class, that gains popularity from the ‘discovery’, coming from a university where student numbers (i.e., popularity) equates to cash – what could go wrong? It’s not like some advertising could harm science by overselling a claim or presenting misinformation to the public, students included. That’d be absurd, right?
Within the press release, the following appears: “The discovery of chemicals only known to be associated with living things on a planet in another solar system is incredibly exciting” [2]. That’s incorrect. The chemicals in question can be and are produced abiotically [5]. Stating otherwise sends misinformation to the public, students included [6]. That university press releases are a source of misinformation is not a new insight [7]. When universities adopted business models of operation, they upped their efforts to gain attention, a commodity for the corporatized university [8]. The drive for attention comes with hype and overselling. What’s new is how a BiS budget bump can crank up the hype potential. Educators are now put into a system that encourages hype, salespersonship, and the potential of sending misinformation, to advertise and promote courses they offer. This can lead to well-intentioned individuals doing things within a particular system that they would not do outside of the system [9].
There is a logic to be learned in the BiS system. You are offering a class about life beyond Earth. You want students in the class (B’s in S = $). A recent paper claims to have detected life beyond Earth. Why go into fuddy duddy skeptical scientist mode about the actual evidence. That’s boring and won’t fill seats. Better to go into cheerleader mode about the big discovery and tell the world, students included, how it fits into your exciting new course [10]. Hype the claim to hype the class to put B’s in seats. Makes sense in a BiS world.
Outside the BiS world, hype doesn’t put the public in the seats that support science or scholarship. Hyped claims that don’t pan out damage the public perception of science [11,12,13]. The astrobiology community has become aware that hyped claims about life beyond Earth are damaging the reputation of astrobiology [14,15]. One could imagine a press release that acknowledges this; that tones down the cheerleading in favor of a nuanced view that doesn’t oversell. But that, in the BiS world, would be absurd.
Nuance doesn’t make for an entertaining press release to advertise a new course. To get the B’s in seats, you gotta entertain them. Entertainment and advertising go hand in hand. In BiS logic, there’s no collateral damage to the public value of science and higher education. It is a strategic logic of personal gains. The personal is not confined to a person. It’s a university competing against other universities, a department competing against other departments, a course, and professors who teach it, competing against other courses.
Competition is the name of the game at the corporatized university [16]. Every university striving to rise in the rankings above others. The competitive drive is passed down to faculty and staff who are asked to brag about their accomplishments to help gain attention for the university [17]. It’s passed down to job evaluations as media contact becomes a necessary skill for scholars.
The result, so the story goes, is a win-win as the best way to help the public good of higher education is to increase your rewards within higher education. All rise with you. It’s the neoliberal dream. The market determines value.
With BiS the market is internal. Educators compete against each other to get the B’s in their class seats. Students are the market to advertise to. They are the customers who determine what is of value. Professors do what’s needed to compete for them. If that leads to hype, overselling and misinformation, then so it is. Competition has its winners and its losers.
AL2025-0527
Adrian Lenardic, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA. ajns@rice.edu
Cover graphic courtesy Cambridge (UK) Radio
Notes and References
[1] Lenardic, A., (2024), A “Wrong ‘Em Boyo” Faculty Meeting Moment, Future U, Nov 19, https://futureu.education/uncategorized/commentary-by-adrian-lenardic-a-wrong-em-boyo-faculty-meeting-moment/
[2] Smith, B., (2025), Rice Scholars Offer Insight on Life Signature Discovery from Planet K2-18b, Rice News, April 18, https://news.rice.edu/news/2025/rice-scholars-offer-insight-life-signature-discovery-planet-k2-18b
[3] Madhusudhan, N., Constantinou, S., Holmberg, M., Sarkar, S., Piette, A., and Moses, J.I. (2025), New Constraints on DMS and DMDS in the Atmosphere of K2-18b from JWST MIRI, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 983(2), https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8
[4] Taylor, J. (2025), Are there Spectral Features in the MIRI/LRS Transmission Spectrum of K2-18b?, arXiv:2504.15916 [astro-ph.EP], https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15916
[5] Siegel, E. (2025), The Evidence for Biosignatures on K2-18b is Flimsy at Best, Big Think: Starts with a Bang, Aprill 22, https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/evidence-biosignatures-k2-18b-flimsy/
[6] I realize that misinformation about life beyond Earth is less harmful to society than other types of misinformation. That doesn’t mean it’s harmless as related to trust. Public trust in universities has been declining (e.g., https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/07/09/americans-confidence-in-higher-education-drops-again-finds-gallup/ ). University press releases that have experts presenting dubious claims mixed with self-promotional advertising can enhance distrust and certainly don’t contribute to building back trust. The other trust issue is trust in science and in the idea of expertise (https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/downfall-and-possible-salvation-expertise ). A university science professor is, or once was, seen as someone who has earned a level of expertise to comment on scientific issues to the public. There was a time when those comments came with nuance, humility and a level of healthy skepticism that are foundational to the scientific enterprise. If those experts now make oversold claims to help promote their universities, then public trust is undermined.
[7] King, A. (2019), Polluted at the Faucet, EMBO Reports, 20:e49600, DOI:10.15252/embr.201949600, https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embr.201949600
[8] Lenardic, A., Seales, J., and Covington, A. (2022), The “Attention Economy” Corrupts Science, Big Think, Sept 30, https://bigthink.com/the-present/attention-economy-science-damaged
[9] Sociologists have long argued, and provided support, that systems are not just people and that it’s not only misguided to assume they are, it also leads to false blame being placed solely on individuals (Johnson, A.G., 2014, The Forest and the Trees, Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Although individuals have choices within any system, there are competing choices versus a single binary choice of, for example, should I hype or should I not. I don’t think the professors associated with the press release or the public relations staff member who wrote it set out to, or wanted to, send misinformation. They were put into a situation where focus was taken off truth, accuracy and healthy skepticism that defines scholarship. The focus was shifted to gaining attention. This can lead to the spread of misinformation from honest actors within a system, as studies of social media have shown (e.g., Fisher, M., 2022, The Chaos Machine, Little, Brown and Company). In the BiS system, gaining attention for a class becomes a job requirement for educators. Gaining attention for a university was always part of the job for public relations (PR) writers but BiS adds a new twist of advertising particular classes. People put into a system that favors attention over accuracy are not blame free for how they respond but when jobs, promotions and rewards are on the line, it’s unfair to say they bear the burden of blame. This is an added frustration of university level advertising and PR that comes with corporatized budget models – the blame for any collateral damage gets shifted to the front-line workers (professors, educators, staff) while the administrators and university boards (often aided by for-profit consulting firms) that made the higher-level decisions regarding university operations are screened from scrutiny and critique. Suppressing critique from students takes care of itself. Students who come into the advertising-heavy system, will not be educated about its origins or its downsides. They will naturally assume that it’s just the way universities operate. The idea that there is another way will fade away.
[10] It is not a stretch to say that this will involve advertising classes on social media accounts that range for university and department levels all the way down to personal accounts from educators teaching a class. The goal is to draw attention, and social media is effective for that. A press release that promotes a class (a university product) is already more a social media post designed to draw attention than a document designed to provide the public with balanced information. Soon enough, a B in an S becomes a Like for your post. Higher education becomes a purely social experience centered on engagement. The more students you can draw in and keep engaged, the greater your educational value. You cater to the most likes. Your job is to keep students content and entertained. Customer satisfaction is, after all, the goal of the student as customer university. Contrary views, the confrontational, the difficult and ‘boring’ fade away along with balance, along with scholarly nuance.
[11] Ritchie, S., (2020), Science Frictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth, New York: Metropolitan Books
[12] Falk, D., (2021), Why do so Many Astronomy Discoveries Fail to Live Up to the Hype, Undark Magazine, Jan 18, https://undark.org/2021/01/18/astronomy-discoveries-fall-victim-to-hype/
[13] Lenardic, A., Seales, J., and Covington, A. (2022), Hype, Skin in the Game, and the Stability of Cooperative Science, International Journal of Astrobiology, 21(6), 484-496, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1473550422000222
[14] Green, J., et al. (2021), Call for a Framework for Reporting Evidence for Life Beyond Earth, Nature, 598, 575-579, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03804-9
[15] Lenardic, A., Seales, J., Moore, W.M., and Jellinek, A.M., (2023), Communicating Astrobiology with Words versus Numbers and Fact versus Fiction, Nature Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-02031-8
[16] Mittelman, J.H., (2018), Implausbible Dream:The World-Class University and Repurposing Higher Education, Princeton: Princeton University Press
[18] As satire is dead, here is a link to the very real, very world-class University of Bums on Seats: http://cynicalbastards.com/ubs/ (no, really, it’s real … for real – I read the press release). I discovered this university in writing this essay – it was like discovering life on another planet. The UBoS is an aspirational university for US universities, only recently seeing the quality of education that comes with BiS or, if you prefer English, BoS (both share BS in common, so their values clearly overlap). If I was thinking of getting another degree, I would apply to this end-game ideal of a Neo-Uni. They even offer a class titled Self Promotion inc., which comes with this description: “In the current academic climate, it is very important for institutions and academics to be able to justify their existence by researching topics which create mass-media appeal, despite limited scientific or sociological value”. Talk about a course that is good for future academics and hits the ‘never too late to learn’ button for many olde school professors who wanna thrive and be winners in the repurposed new world of higher education. I need to see if I can audit it.
Well, this BIS will certainly kill liberal arts learning.
Sadly, I agree. Although professionally I went a STEM path, I took many humanities, arts, history classes via a liberal arts path, They still serve me well in many ways – including at a professional level. That gets lost in admin level thinking about ’employability’. The idea that the only goal of education is to be”employable” sounds just awful (you have been trained such that some one can employ you to do something; sounds dehumanizing to me) – I read about such potential worlds in some of the literature classes I took via my liberal arts path 😉