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

theguardian.com

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

#111

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

oersted1234 wrote: post #94
mkl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not least because in academia, either you teach, or you do research. You can't do both. This is not true in general. In NZ, most academic positions are 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% admin. Lecturers, distinguished professors, and everyone in between. Big research grants can provide temporary buy-out of some teaching, but it's explicitly part of the role, and not often reduced completely for long. Maybe 10% of…

Yes, I don't understand that point either as all UK Lecturer job positions I have interviewed for (quite a few!) required at least 40% of teaching. A 40% teaching is the most research-intensive contract you can get at most universities. Good departments will still let you enjoy a sane workload because they will allocate a realistic amount of that 40% for teaching preparation, marking duties, etc.

Well, lectureships are teaching jobs, not research jobs, that's my point. I don't think it has anything to do with the department, if you sign a contract that says you have to teach, you're gonna have to teach, however much of your time it takes- and it is going to take up most of your time. Anyway from my point of view, any amount of time you spend on not doing research is a mallus on your productivity as a researcher.

I mean that's why most mid-level and senior academics leave the research to their PhD students and post-docs. Yes? Because they don't have the time to do it themselves.

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

#112

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

oersted1234 wrote: post #75
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what kind of academic work you're looking for, right? If you're going for a teaching career, then yes, of course you need to have some teaching experience. If you're after a research career, e.g. a research fellowship like the ones from the Leverhulme Trust or the Royal Society of Engineering, then you really do need an astounding publication record and I don't reckon that having any teaching experience…

IMHO, this also applies if you want a research career. At the end of the day, you eventually need a permanent position. Most professors at top UK universities got established in Academia by doing a PhD and getting a lectureship straight after their PhD or sometimes a postdoc. Lectureships demand significant research and teaching and supervision experience. A high-end fellowship like the ones you mention is also fine…

>> At the end of the day, you eventually need a permanent position

Yes, unfortunately. I'm not saying it's easy, but from what I can tell it's possible: you can have your entire academic career as a long string of fellowships.

>> Lectureships demand significant research and teaching and supervision experience.

Yes, but we know that in practice what that means is that the professor leaves the research work to their PhDs and post-docs, and then puts their name on it at the end. Sometimes that's because the professor has run out of good ideas, sometimes it's because they don't really care, most of the time it's because their lectureship duties leave them without enough time to do it.

This was not my experience during my PhD, btw, my supervisor (who is retiring next month, three years after supervising my PhD) was an active participant in my research and he had his own totally hands-on line of research that he pursued separately ... and whenever I told people about that they were full of surprise. "Don't tell me that he is still coding?". That sort of thing. People were surprised because that just doesn't happen.

>> In some fields getting a lectureship after your PhD or postdoc might be extremely difficult as the market is too crowded.

I've had an offer that I turned down because it was in China, and a discussion about another in the UK that I didn't even consider. Teaching is the death of a research career, that's what I've seen and I'm not going anywhere near it. What that means I don't know. It's possible that my research career is already over anyway- next week is the last of my post-doc and I don't have anything lined up after it :/

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

mkl wrote: post #92
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what kind of academic work you're looking for, right? If you're going for a teaching career, then yes, of course you need to have some teaching experience. If you're after a research career, e.g. a research fellowship like the ones from the Leverhulme Trust or the Royal Society of Engineering, then you really do need an astounding publication record and I don't reckon that having any teaching experience…

> Not least because in academia, either you teach, or you do research. You can't do both. This is not true in general. In NZ, most academic positions are 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% admin. Lecturers, distinguished professors, and everyone in between. Big research grants can provide temporary buy-out of some teaching, but it's explicitly part of the role, and not often reduced completely for long. Maybe 10% of…

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

mkl wrote: post #92
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what kind of academic work you're looking for, right? If you're going for a teaching career, then yes, of course you need to have some teaching experience. If you're after a research career, e.g. a research fellowship like the ones from the Leverhulme Trust or the Royal Society of Engineering, then you really do need an astounding publication record and I don't reckon that having any teaching experience…

> Not least because in academia, either you teach, or you do research. You can't do both. This is not true in general. In NZ, most academic positions are 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% admin. Lecturers, distinguished professors, and everyone in between. Big research grants can provide temporary buy-out of some teaching, but it's explicitly part of the role, and not often reduced completely for long. Maybe 10% of…

I see what you're saying, but 60% of time spent doing something else than research, is not a research position. That is no way to be productive as a researcher. The upshot of this is what I point out in my other comments, that you end up offloading the research work to PhDs and post-docs while you take the back seat and of course keep the funds coming so that they can do their job.

... although my PI didn't :)

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

#115

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

cherryteastain wrote: post #76
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is talking about full-on lectureships, for example, this part-time role, initially advertised as full-time, according to the article: >> One of Oxford’s top colleges, Christ Church, which had an income of £42.6m in 2022-23, is currently advertising a stipendiary lectureship in modern European history for £15,244 to £16,983. For comparison, 15-16k was the range of my PhD stipend at Imperial College London…

To be fair, Imperial is the best paying UK university by far. Postdoc positions at Imperial pay better than Lecturer/Senior Lecturer positions at other universities.

Too bad I only did my PhD in Imperial and my current post-doc elsewhere :)

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

#116

Post by insane_dreamer »

m463 wrote: post #107
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…

I wonder if medical residents get paid ridiculously low salaries too given their hours?

they do; the average resident salary is $64K, and given the number of hours in many cases they're being paid less than minimum wage / hour

it's basically free labor for the hospitals

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

#117

Post by jjmarr »

BeetleB wrote: post #103
jjmarr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Down side: Your peers aren't as smart, and your peers are really what push you to work on interesting projects. This outweighs pretty much everything else for me. Your ego either inflates to infinity because you're a big fish in a small pond, or you get depressed being around really incompetent people. Every lecture I have is booked for 300 people but only 20-40 people ever show up. And yet everyone complains that…

> Your ego either inflates to infinity because you're a big fish in a small pond, or you get depressed being around really incompetent people. Neither was the case with me. If you want intellectual stimulation, just go talk to the professors! > Is it easy and low stress? Probably. But I feel like I'm being driven into mediocrity. Quoting another comment of mine: "Yes, you need the motivation to do well. In my experie…

> Neither was the case with me. If you want intellectual stimulation, just go talk to the professors!

Many of the professors don't make their own slides. They just read stuff someone else wrote and pretend to understand it. Then they proceed to buy a test bank and grade us on content they don't fully grasp.

I don't even care about the education; it's just wanting to meet like-minded people and not being able to.

Really, the only thing that's motivating me is the job I'm going to after graduation. I did a 16-month internship, and I don't think I've ever been happier/more emotionally fulfilled in my life.

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

#118

Post by AtlasBarfed »

robocat wrote: post #67
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJEmE7IYoLk Summary: colleges are way too selective today at the high end. Boomers got into elite schools far more easily, although there were less schools. It's a bit of a disingenuous argument however, because the huge increase of schools down the long long LONG pecking order of school "eliteness". But the boomer thing is spot on.

Paraphrased: it used to be easier for boomers to get into say the top 2%? I can only guess that the meaning of elite has changed. Aside: a comment with the word "boomer" in it is usually offensive in my experience. But doing worry, you'll get a different word applied to you when you reach the same age cohort. Disclosure: not a boomer. There are two types of people in the world: those that split the world into two gro…

The boomer generation has done demonstrable environmental social and financial damage to the world.

Why is truth offensive? I'm a leftist, and that attitude is a strong component of the last election result.

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

#119

Post by xhkkffbf »

aSanchezStern wrote: post #58
xhkkffbf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

By relatively new, I meant "within the last 100 or so years." Princeton only ceased being a Presbyterian school in 1920. Certainly some graduates went on to other things before then, but the old model goes back hundreds of years.

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

#120

Post by myroon5 »

graemep wrote: post #33
MrMcCall wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put, and that's a good part of the reason they're going the way of the Catholic Church. That said, I'd call it an 'aristocracy' instead. But, tomato/tomahto, ya know?

Both British universities (I do not know about globally) and the Catholic Church have expanded rapidly in recent decades.

probably American:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/235406/undergraduate-enr...

https://www.qualityinfo.org/-/college-enrollment-among-recen...

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/03/13/strong-catho...

https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-catholic-church-is...

The Catholic Church is similarly struggling in the UK:

https://faithsurvey.co.uk/blog/church-attendance-in-england-...

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