Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms • Hacker News Board

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#51

Post by jvvw » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

cherryteastain wrote: post #9

All UK universities do this. Not necessarily a bad thing unlike how the article portrays it. PhD students (and depending on the institution, postdocs) in the UK get a stipend that has no mandated teaching hours. Teaching allows PhD students to earn some extra income within the university. We certainly still have a compensation problem in academia. Bright STEM PhD grads don't want to earn £30-40k as a postdoc when ear…

When I read the article when it came out, I was a bit annoyed that it singled out Oxford as it's the same at all the universities. It's also been that for a long time - I earned comparable amounts as a DPhil student and post-doc teaching at Oxford and another UK university. More recently I've worked as a tutor for The Open University and the pay for that has felt in a similar ballpark once you take into account all the marking and prep you need to do.

When I did it, I had my DPhil grant/post-doc salary and it felt like side money rather than being my 'job' and I was partly doing for the experience, for my CV (good to be able to put 'Lecturer at Oxford' on it!) and partly because I enjoyed it. I felt quite lucky to be offered tutoring jobs at Oxford as they were much sought-after by DPhil students.

I think it's also worth pointing out that not all Oxford colleges are 'rich' and many have buildings and grounds that are expensive to maintain. I don't think most of them are better placed to pay more than other UK universities.

There's an argument to be made that people teaching at universities should be paid more, but it does feel unfair to single out Oxford.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#52

Post by motohagiography » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:17 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #34

motohagiography wrote: post #10

what do the people who make and manage money learn, and could clever people be taught this skill too? maybe instead of spending their afternoons on the golf course like wealth managers they could pursue research and teach. how difficult could it be?

Because money does not come out of nowhere. A lot of people make money from zero sum games, or from things with a small positive sum socially (e.g. selling something for a little bit less than someone else).

not with that attitude. how much time does it take to manage a portfolio? people who work for charities do it, many of them part time. if professors were given responsibility to manage some portion of the endowment and paid as a percentage on the return they generated from it they could do a lot better.

I was raised in this institutional class that had contempt for "trade" and it's a cover for meekness, envy, and a smallness that justifies some pretty terrible worldviews. I love brilliant people, but someone with the mind to be an academic is only ever poor becuause of their own fatuous snootery. they do it to themselves and they moralize their envy by blaming "systemic" factors while affecting an unworldly out of touchness that makes them repellent to anyone with responsibility.

perhaps I have a bit of a chip from being outside of it, but having managed some personal success in spite of it, the problems of bureaucracy are the problems of children to me.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#53

Post by njjnjj » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #12

cherryteastain wrote: post #9

All UK universities do this. Not necessarily a bad thing unlike how the article portrays it. PhD students (and depending on the institution, postdocs) in the UK get a stipend that has no mandated teaching hours. Teaching allows PhD students to earn some extra income within the university. We certainly still have a compensation problem in academia. Bright STEM PhD grads don't want to earn £30-40k as a postdoc when ear…

Was about to say the same. Haven't PhD students usually done tutorials and supervised labs to undergraduates for the extra cash. Certainly was the case in my electronics undergrad course a few decades ago. > in 2023-24 one in five tutorials (20%) were taught by hourly-paid tutors – typically PhD students or academics at the start of their career.

Depends on the university. 25 years ago now but a number of the PhD students I worked with had mummy and daddy paying for everything. One enterprising guy had a side business selling cocaine. Most were slumming it in house shares and taking on casual work. Only the blessed had teaching appointments. I was blessed until I realised it was a curse.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#54

Post by anonymousDan » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #23

cherryteastain wrote: post #9

All UK universities do this. Not necessarily a bad thing unlike how the article portrays it. PhD students (and depending on the institution, postdocs) in the UK get a stipend that has no mandated teaching hours. Teaching allows PhD students to earn some extra income within the university. We certainly still have a compensation problem in academia. Bright STEM PhD grads don't want to earn £30-40k as a postdoc when ear…

When I was a postdoc in Cambridge, the problem was that there were too many PhD students and postdocs who wanted to teach. Not because of the compensation but for the experience. A lot of people wanted to try a career in the academia, and they needed teaching experience for that. But there were not enough undergraduates for them all to teach.

FYI you really don't need teaching experience to get a good academic job. The number one criteria is excellent publication record.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#55

Post by probably_wrong » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

cherryteastain wrote: post #9

All UK universities do this. Not necessarily a bad thing unlike how the article portrays it. PhD students (and depending on the institution, postdocs) in the UK get a stipend that has no mandated teaching hours. Teaching allows PhD students to earn some extra income within the university. We certainly still have a compensation problem in academia. Bright STEM PhD grads don't want to earn £30-40k as a postdoc when ear…

It is definitely a bad thing: as a postdoc you have to constantly uproot your life chasing the ever-elusive permanent contract so good luck rebuilding your social circle from scratch every five years. And God help you if you're married or (the horror!) want to have children.

It's also not good for the Universities, who are constantly losing institutional knowledge and having to retrain people from scratch. Did you offer a kickass course on Neural Networks last year? Well, too bad, the guy who offered it is now gone. But here's a fresh guy with a PhD in economics, and that's just as good.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#56

Post by njjnjj » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

cherryteastain wrote: post #9

All UK universities do this. Not necessarily a bad thing unlike how the article portrays it. PhD students (and depending on the institution, postdocs) in the UK get a stipend that has no mandated teaching hours. Teaching allows PhD students to earn some extra income within the university. We certainly still have a compensation problem in academia. Bright STEM PhD grads don't want to earn £30-40k as a postdoc when ear…

That has improved. Back in 1998 I was managing £8k a year (!) part time, which was really a full time job, while being told I was privileged to have such a position at a prestigious university. With little experience I didn't know any better.

Woke up one day, said fuck it, pissed off my doctoral advisor, a somewhat rotten old tenured professor by suggesting that it wasn't worth doing this any more. Looked around and picked up a job for £26k within a month. Never looked back.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#57

Post by shermantanktop » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

anonymousDan wrote: post #54

jltsiren wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a postdoc in Cambridge, the problem was that there were too many PhD students and postdocs who wanted to teach. Not because of the compensation but for the experience. A lot of people wanted to try a career in the academia, and they needed teaching experience for that. But there were not enough undergraduates for them all to teach.

FYI you really don't need teaching experience to get a good academic job. The number one criteria is excellent publication record.

That’s an extremely broad statement. Biology, physics, architecture and history are pretty different professional cultures.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#58

Post by aSanchezStern » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #41

rwyinuse wrote: post #27

It seems that these days academia is mostly garbage for anyone who wants things like money, family or a healthy work-life balance.

I think traditionally it was for people who were unmarried. Hence its connection to the church. So expecting enough to raise a family is a relatively new idea.

Not sure what the timeline on that is, but the University of Washington had housing specifically for PhD students with families in the 60s/70s IIRC

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#59

Post by stanford_labrat » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #31

is this news? this sounds like every university in the US, which uses underpaid adjuncts to do most of the teaching and underpaid phd candidates and postdocs to do most of the research not saying this is right -- adjuncts and postdocs absolutely need to be paid more commensurately with the value they provide -- but it has been the status quo for a long time; the bigger problem is that it used to be a temporary steppi…

this is all my opinion as a 3rd year phd candidate who is thoroughly disillusioned. in STEM science there are two types of labor: thinking of experiments to do, and actually doing experiments. doing experiments is high-skill, manual labor. you often work with dangerous materials for crazy hours (some experiments take 10 hours to just do and you have no choice but to work from start to finish) and do tasks that are physically and technically challenging. as such, the fair market wage for this labor is actually pretty high. when i was an employee at Stanford, I was making nearly 80k in salary alone and i had fantastic health, retirement, and vacation benefits. oh, and i had overtime as a union employee to boot.

higher institutions realized that they could conveniently circumvent the rightfully high cost of labor to do experiments by hiring "graduate students" who they can pay poverty wages to do the manual scientific labor in exchange for a degree. as a student i am classified as a 20 hour per week worker, 20 hour per week student, and paid 37k a year. to be honest i wouldn't mind this if i actually were allowed to work 20 hours per week but this is not the case. the expectation, is that you will work 50-60 MINIMUM. and don't even get me started on postdocs. the PhD market has become so oversaturated due to the over-training of PhDs that to be competitive you must do an additional 5-8 years of "training" as a postdoc (again at poverty wages around 45-50k) before you get the opportunity to APPLY faculty positions.

this has had some predictable but unfortunate consequences. for one, institutions no longer select for the best and brightest. their number 1 criteria for offers of admission is "ability to finish the phd" aka willingness to be subject to these labor conditions for 4-7 years. of course you do need a minimum level of intellectual ability to get there, but trust me when i say this, the bar is low. and academia has suffered because of it imo. prestigious institutions get by as you mentioned by having their pick of the smartest AND hard working.

Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms

#60

Post by kleiba » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 6:32 PM UTC

njjnjj wrote: post #40

rwyinuse wrote: post #27

It seems that these days academia is mostly garbage for anyone who wants things like money, family or a healthy work-life balance.

Throwaway account. Yes that is exactly what happened to me. Figured I'd do a PhD so took a research / part time teaching position after masters. Terrible money, demanding job, knee deep in politics. After about 12 months I said fuck it and went and got a job for 4x the money and a 35 hour week. No regrets.

How did you get that job? I've read similar stories a couple of times here on HN yet I'm struggling to do the same. My main road block: not really having acquired the right skill set for industry after having focused for year to fine-tune my CV for academic positions. This is now kind of biting me in my rear side: I cannot do the rat wheel of academia any more, am not exactly young any more either, am sort of highly skilled in CS academia but not really suitable for a lot of CS industry positions.