Hens

Sirens fade, Doppler-distant. Dive teams who donned dry-suits now peel the black neoprene from their lily legs like WPC strip-o-grams teasing down stockings. A veil lies fruitlessly in the fertile mud. Further downstream a flaccid inflatable man floats half-submerged. Waltzing alone in an eddy, he was not to be used as a life-saving device.

In which I tern.

A fierce summer sun burns off the early-morning mist. A mist hanging in the air over fields on the outskirts of a quiet northern city. The smoke of industry has long since left the area, but in its stead is a new shining beacon of progress. Where once were steam hammers and chocolate vats powering Britain’s empire, there is now the imperceptible thrum of thousands of inquiring minds, all working towards a common goal: Truth.

Through this dawn rides a young man. A young man on an old bicycle. A bike forged in the great mills of the industrious interbellum, now transports one of Thatcher’s children to a great mill of the information age. The University of York emerges through the mist, the gleaming spires of Central Hall flashing welcomes to professors and post-grads, doctors and freshers alike. The young man cycles on bird-filled footpaths, passing knots of black-robed swans honking their treatises to the unheeding ducks, swerving to avoid skullcapped moorhens and visiting geese. A smart dismount, quick lockup, grab your bag, check your watch (9.29), and up the stairs to room L/126.

The young man knocks. A voice within calls,

“Come in!”

“Morning Paul”

“Hi Tom. Let’s get you settled in.” With that Wakeling, P. outlines the project. “My doctoral thesis, as you know, covered the effect of social class on access to postgraduate education in the UK. Now I want to examine the role gender plays in this fascinating field,” He sits back in the high leather chair and sips pensively from a chipped mug of tea. “We know, of course, that undergraduate courses in most developed countries have, generally, a greater proportion of female students,” The mug is gently set down. “And yet,” his voice drops to a whisper, “And yet, postgraduates remain an overtly male population.” Tom’s eyes widen with surprise.

“But surely,” he says, “with increasing participation rates at undergraduate level the postgrads can’t be far behind?”

“It seems they are - and I intend to prove it!”

“But how?” A fire rises in Dr. Wakeling’s eyes and he cries,

“QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS!”

Figures fill the screen. Row upon row of figures. Each sheet a country. Each table a year. Each line one of the great universities of seven mighty nations. Spain. Sweden. Ireland, Australia. Finland. The United Kingdom. A morass of numbers. But with deft keystrokes they dance. Hundreds of thousands of bright young things, each reduced to a single stroke on the tally, together building a picture of the world.

His task seems impossible. Refine these figures. Separate wheat from chaff. Take what we need and let fly what we don’t. Mine this living rock of data for the twenty four-carat answers we seek. Smelt them. Smith them. And turn them over for hallmarking. The tools of this trade are functions, filters and formulae. The pivot table is his workbench, VLOOKUP his loupe. With multiple IFFS he pans for the quicksilver gleam of truth. When he finds it he snatches it from the furnace with the tongs of Copy and smites with the hammer of Paste, forging, on the anvil of Excel, a body of evidence strong enough to guarantee conviction.

Occasionally the metal is weak. Decisions must be made to abandon some for the preservation of the whole. Do Magisters and Masters command equal currency? Will a cohort of missing British women cripple the MMIXth, an otherwise battle-ready legion? In these instances the Doctor becomes Tom’s Consultant.

“Have you seen this article on qualification equivalency?” “Is this before or after the Bologna system was implemented?” These questions, in their wisdom, offer answers.

Slowly, surely, a correct and codified corpus is wrought. Again the vintage velocipede speeds across the pre-fab campus. Again the apprentice knocks tentatively on the door.

“Come in!”

“Master, “ he breathes, “It is ready.” A bold cursor assails the Dropbox. Wakeling’s machine creaks into life. 80,000 rows of data unfurl across the ominous sky-grey screen. The Doctor’s wry smile cracks into a mischievous grin and he cackles,

“It’s alive!”

His eyes bright behind his glasses, his face animated, Dr. Wakeling sets to work. He demonstrates to his student the mathematics of analysis. The importance of numbers greater than one. Relative risks and odds ratios scatter into graphs and are united again by lines of best fit, tying point to point, year to year, and projecting into the future. The results are clear. Though countries have their idiosyncrasies, the overriding pattern is bleak. Women are overrepresented at degree-level, but despite this they barely come close to postgraduate parity. Strangely it is in the testosterone-laden air of science and technology where women, their sparsity notwithstanding, see the lowest rates of attrition, even increasing their relative numbers. Shockingly Sweden, Scandinavian social paradise, sees the lowest proportion of female graduates continuing their studies to become Europasdotters, Phd. 

And just as it begins, his time is up. But the four heady weeks of assembly and analysis have left and indelible impression on his mind. The mountain of empirical dissertation looming at the end of his final year has become just another milestone on the road. Already he looks beyond, for higher word counts to scale and higher brows to surmount. It will be some time yet before the pupil becomes the master, for the path is long and steep, but these weeks of work have given our young journeyman the crampons and pitons to prevail.

Prologue:

As a recent arts graduate - and thus unemployed - I thought I ought to keep my hand in at writing. To this end, I am committing to writing a short story every week until I get a job. The title of this blog bears no relevance to anything posted in it, and exists solely for pun value. The first post is a bit of a cheat, as I wrote it some time ago as part of a ridiculous assignment following an internship. Ask a stupid question. Maybe I'll do another one tonight while my suet pudding is cooking...