Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia? • Hacker News Board

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#81

Post by arghnoname » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #28

krastanov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "senior and middle positions" mean? Are you talking about something that has the potential to be a tenured position, non-tenured academic positions, or non-academic positions?

By senior I mean "senior or associate professors and lecturers" like myself, and by middle I mean postdoc full lecturers with at least 5-10 years. I don't know what to say about the word "tenured" because it's meaning seems very different in the UK than it is used in USA. In the US I get the idea people think "tenure" makes you impossible fire. Yet here I know of two full professors with over 20 years service, scores…

I had the training and a reasonable chance at an acceptable offer if I went on the academic job market, but I bailed out and went into industry instead of trying my hand on it. To my mind, it doesn't make sense to try to break into and establish yourself in such a competitive field with all of the problems of academia.

I also knew plenty of more senior professors that left the field, which didn't encourage me to backfill it. Strangely enough, whatever difficulty there may be in the more senior ranks, entry sure seems like a grind.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#82

Post by muaytimbo » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #58

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.

Teachers are not waiting. I know of several who retired mid-year. That NEVER used to happen. Covid didn't break their back--shitty parents did. Covid just ran the parental shittiness meter up to max. And, to put a cherry on top, practically all teachers now have multiple students who actually had a parent die . In a normal year, that would be rare and that child would get lots of counseling. With Covid--it's too comm…

Studies show that students didn't learn almost at all during covid (1). Understandable that remote learning likely isn't good in general and that teachers were not trained to teach in this setting but parents might have realized their children were not learning at all and fair or not placed this blame on the teachers.

1. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022376118

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#83

Post by randomsearch » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #18

Universities are in trouble. I know of three that are unable to hire for senior and middle positions. They've been advertising for months. Here (UK), Brexit is partly to blame, along with post Cov19 fatigue, and aging population with many retiring. As I've said in other comments, the main problem is that academia has become hideously corrupted by "professional management" values leading to de-skilling as good people…

> As I've said in other comments, the main problem is that academia has become hideously corrupted by "professional management" values leading to de-skilling as good people leave.

As I've said in other comments, this is correct - I can confirm this is the case at several top tier UK universities.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#84

Post by rednerrus » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

How is this possible? Hasn't academia been cranking out more academics than they've needed for the past 40 years?

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#85

Post by TSiege » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

arghnoname wrote: post #81

nonrandomstring wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By senior I mean "senior or associate professors and lecturers" like myself, and by middle I mean postdoc full lecturers with at least 5-10 years. I don't know what to say about the word "tenured" because it's meaning seems very different in the UK than it is used in USA. In the US I get the idea people think "tenure" makes you impossible fire. Yet here I know of two full professors with over 20 years service, scores…

I had the training and a reasonable chance at an acceptable offer if I went on the academic job market, but I bailed out and went into industry instead of trying my hand on it. To my mind, it doesn't make sense to try to break into and establish yourself in such a competitive field with all of the problems of academia. I also knew plenty of more senior professors that left the field, which didn't encourage me to back…

Interesting. Are you in STEM or some other field? As an outsider I'm curious if this is specific to some fields or the same across academia

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#86

Post by SantalBlush » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

blahblarblar wrote: post #79

muaytimbo wrote: post #16

I'm surprised it took them so long to get fed up, reaching the mid-career level. I realized doing my PhD that all of academia is a toxic house of cards built on cheap grad student labor, foreign student tuition and grant beggary, and the false promise to students of at least an interesting (if not particularly well-paid) career. If it took you until mid-career to realize this . . . you weren't observant and I don't r…

It’s not that they weren’t paying attention. It’s more that academics egos can’t handle the loss to their identity of not being an academic anymore.

That's not entirely the individual's fault. With many (or most) academic fields, leaving academia for industry is seen as failing, and leaving the institution means leaving the network.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#87

Post by lvl102 » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:57 PM UTC

It’s difficult for me to feel bad for these institutions. They jacked up tuitions and caused an entire generation of people to carry lifetime of crippling debt.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#88

Post by _Wintermute » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

udp wrote: post #61

anonymousDan wrote: post #6

In the UK at least there is huge discontent about the recent pension cuts. The salaries already suck (especially in a technical field such as CS), but a 40% cut to pensions as a reward for the efforts put in to handle COVID is just too much.

The salaries suck but this is the UK. If you’re in the correct social class to be an academic you should have your own independent means, and use your academic salary as nothing more than rent for the townhouse you’re staying in while away from your country estate. /s (Somehow this is both sarcasm and the literal situation of people I know.)

I'm in academia in London at the moment and this really struck true. All the senior staff bought their houses for pennies 30 years ago which are now worth millions, and don't seem to understand why the more junior staff are so worked up about salaries. Rent is 50% of our pay cheque and any house within an hours commute is 10x annual salary.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#89

Post by time_to_smile » Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

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…

> Professors barely learning how to use a laptop are not worth

I have a lot of friends and acquaintances that are university professors and it was frankly embarrassing how many of them could not be bothered to learn to adapt to online teaching. There was endless complaining about basic things that anyone who works in an office doing meeting with remote teams has to learn.

There are entire industries based around providing educational content online, and even more based around creating engaging content online. It's more or less a solved problem and someone with a Phd should certainly be capable of learning a few new tricks. You're not tasked with some impossible challenge, you're just being asked to rethink how you teach for the benefit of hundreds of students paying collectively millions of dollar to learn from you.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#90

Post by brianwawok » Tue, May 31, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #44

blululu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

And in college, the situation is reversed.

My econ prof was from Canada and told us all the time what a better racket the US is to make money. All while making us buy a $90 book that he wrote and changed editions yearly.

At least he was honest that he was robbing us blind.