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Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

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Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#41

Post by RandomWorker »

I left academia for a software company, not midway my career but at the early start.

The decision is easy when you have mouths to feed, wages don’t keep up, and I can earn double my salary doing the fun part of my work (ML+optimization+data/energy modelling in civil engineering space) literally the next day. I was working with all kinds of companies to help them get started with this kind of work. Instead of sending my students I just leapt and it’s been a tremendous experience. If I return I will be a better professor, however not publishing for a couple of years may kill that dream. Right now, it’s a great feeling not to have to worry about food and I can actually focus more on doing my job better. I feel bad about leaving my group, but they can find someone more hungry than me that wants it more.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#43

Post by etempleton »

A few things have happend recently:

1. Covid was hard on education from kindergarten through college. Systems and processes that were already stressed to the max became overloaded and everyone was asked to do more and sometimes take a pay cut or have reduced benefits while doing so.

2. Society stopped valuing education as much. While once educators traded lower pay for the prestige of being a professor they can’t really say it is a worthy trade anymore as a vocal minority do not value education at all.

3. Faculty no longer run colleges/ universities. Once faculty ran everything, but as regulations have tightened and colleges started getting sued for any number of things professional administrators started being required because the jobs got bigger. In theory this has created less work for faculty, but they now feel disconnected and impotent.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#44

Post by munk-a »

blululu wrote: post #36
mikewarot wrote: post #9

Here in the US, I expect a lot of K-12 teachers to be leaving the field. The additional demands created by Covid were the last straw for many. Their employment contracts are such that they have to give months of notice, so I expect all to be quiet until August, then panic everywhere as slots can't be filled.

(Public School) Teacher pay is largely structured to encourage retention. The salary is pretty lousy if you only do it for 2 years, but if you stick around for 40 years it is a well paying job in most States. The pay increases for seniority and the compounding interest of pensions add up to a very good salary. There is also the other problem that a lot of states require an education degree to teach in public schools…

To be honest though - even rather senior teachers in the states can expect a large pay bump if they emigrate to Canada. There is pretty decent competition to get into the teacher's union up here but due to the much more reasonable salaries for a career that most people enter due to their love of the field folks are happy to stay in the public side of education.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#45

Post by pmyteh »

kd913 wrote: post #22

At some point, this nonsense has to stop. Both in the UK and the US. 1) Student loan plans (especially in the UK) are gonna cripple the economy and are vastly unsustainable. Especially given the ridiculous payback terms that change on a whim every year, and vastly unsustainable interest rates. People aren't earning enough to pay them back either. 2) Grants are being used as a negotiation tactic, with EU horizon fundi…

FWIW on your (5) there's nothing unsustainable about the most recent iteration of the pension scheme. The problems are an interesting (if infuriating) combination of the employers wanting to kill the defined benefit scheme to save money, the government's regulatory framework being designed to protect pensionholders in closed defined benefit schemes and not to run functional private DB schemes (which are nearly all gone), the Trustee company being untrustworthy, and the governance arrangements being poor. The only people really committed to the scheme continuing are its members, for whom it's theoretically run but in practice have very little control over it.

If you want an illustration of the magnitude of the problem the might resonate with HNers: the USS Trustee is aiming to achieve CPI+0% investment returns for the next 40 years. With long-run equity returns being what they are, that's borderline criminal. (It's certainly not the investment strategy that universities will be adopting for their own endowments).

The honest truth is that the USS was highly solvent on a going concern basis before the recent changes (which already involved prospective cuts of 30% to accruals only a few years ago). It only generates a deficit if you model closing the scheme tomorrow and shunting the entire fund into gilts in order to eliminate all investment risk. But even if you do that, the scheme can still pay: it's explicitly backed by the combined assets of every scheme member, which includes all the richest universities and (hilariously) the government.

Oh, and the present cuts will take it down to less than half the pension of our colleagues in the newer post-92 universities who are in the Teachers' Pension Scheme. What price a formal government guarantee?

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#46

Post by jxidjhdhdhdhfhf »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #2

Can anyone show me statistical evidence that this "great resignation" is anything more than a story made up by the media?

It doesn't even really make sense as a concept. People resign from their jobs and then what? Maybe a small extra portion of the elderly retire early and a small portion become stay at home parents. The rest find new jobs.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#47

Post by adamsmith143 »

joshgroban wrote: post #21

This is actually really scary. As American universities become less powerful I shudder to think of what kind of radical politics and cultural narratives will sweep the nation.

Isn't this exactly the opposite of the current state? That the overwhelming power of Universities in the US is what spreads cultural and political movements? I think you could argue that the entire Woke enterprise is centered on Universities particularly elite ones.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#48

Post by pmyteh »

jimbob45 wrote: post #39
kd913 wrote: post #22

At some point, this nonsense has to stop. Both in the UK and the US. 1) Student loan plans (especially in the UK) are gonna cripple the economy and are vastly unsustainable. Especially given the ridiculous payback terms that change on a whim every year, and vastly unsustainable interest rates. People aren't earning enough to pay them back either. 2) Grants are being used as a negotiation tactic, with EU horizon fundi…

> 1) Student loan plans (especially in the UK) are gonna cripple the economy and are vastly unsustainable. Why do you say that about the UK? I’m not from there and this is the first I’m hearing about problems with UK student debt.

They're backstopped by the government, in that they're written off after ~30 years if they weren't paid off in that time by the 9% marginal income charge. The scheme was designed as a backdoor graduate tax rather than a conventional finance agreement, and the government has been using them like a credit card to fund the universities off-balance-sheet. Which will be difficult to continue.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#50

Post by kd913 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #39
kd913 wrote: post #22

At some point, this nonsense has to stop. Both in the UK and the US. 1) Student loan plans (especially in the UK) are gonna cripple the economy and are vastly unsustainable. Especially given the ridiculous payback terms that change on a whim every year, and vastly unsustainable interest rates. People aren't earning enough to pay them back either. 2) Grants are being used as a negotiation tactic, with EU horizon fundi…

> 1) Student loan plans (especially in the UK) are gonna cripple the economy and are vastly unsustainable. Why do you say that about the UK? I’m not from there and this is the first I’m hearing about problems with UK student debt.

So the current plan 2 loans are about 15k per year of study. So for a typical 4 year course, that is about 60k worth of loans.

If you take a 6 year medical course, you are on your own for the 2 extra years at least from a maintenance grant AFAIK. Hence a lot of students, especially those in London struggling for their 5th and 6th year of study. Don't even get my started in regards to the junior doctor salary.

The payback terms of this is 9% of everything you gain beyond a specific threshold i.e. anywhere from 20-25k.

After 30 years, theoretically the loan gets wiped off (unlikely). Already there are talks of extending it for the next gen plans by another 10 years.

The interest rate for this student loan is RPI + 3.5, and adjusts higher the more you earn. Effectively becoming almost impossible to pay back apart from those who are the absolute highest earners.

So far, we have seen the government repeatedly change both the repayment threshold, and the time before it gets wiped.

Given NI rises, I have seen effective marginal tax rates up to 60%.

At the end of the day, the rich are gonna pay it off immediately and avoid the problem, the middle get loaded and pay back far more than necessary during the loan lifetime, and the bottom may get it wiped off but forget the idea of having savings or disposable cash.

https://www.student-loan-calculator.co.uk/

The current system basically reduces massively disposable spending for middle and low earners, doesn't affect the top earners. It also is an effective black hole given most people aren't expected to be able to fully pay back the loan. This will have a massive impact on the economy and government finances. Especially given this is an open blackhole.

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