What do you mean "accused of"? This has been the official and government-wanted policy for years in some countries, so much so that there are specific laws that ensure young academics by default cannot expect a long-term career in academia.
Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
11–20 of 121 posts
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#12All 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.
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#13A reader may also be "shocked and appalled" that research universities like Stanford abused employees by keeping them "part-time" for years at a time to cheat them out of benefits received by FTEs.
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#14A reader may also be "shocked and appalled" that research universities like Stanford abused employees by keeping them "part-time" for years at a time to cheat them out of benefits received by FTEs.
Stanford has a business school, doesn't it?
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#15All 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…
Living conditions are worse for non-FTEs in America where there isn't the NHS and housing is more expensive.
By contrast, Stanford's FTEs c. 2004 received such benefits as:
- Choices from 9 health insurance plans
- Vision, dental, mental healthcare, and long-term care
- Employer-matched retirement contribution 1:1 up to 5% of salary, plus free 4% of salary
- Access to then closed mutual funds like Fidelity Magellan
- Secret discounts like on luxury vehicles
- Credit union with 0% VISA debit foreign currency exchange rate
- 50% discount on tuition after being an FTE for 10 years
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#16Higher education doesn’t want to shed its clergy status. It’s like they can’t figure out if education is truly a pure pursuit or just this crazy godly thing that is priceless but somehow has this exorbitant real world price that the clergy seems to value … They sell indulgences at this point, and I don’t think it’s a false analogy. Holier than thou institution where everyone must pay the price for their product or be…
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?
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep! Ask any PhD candidate in America how they love those poverty level wages!
Academia can be criticized as unsustainable as the OP does because the number of graduate students exceeds the number of secure employment positions available after one defends one’s dissertation or does a postdoc. However, the American model of PhD students being impoverished while studying isn’t the only one. In several European countries, the norm is for PhD students to be university employees under contract that…
Shouldn't they be paid a decent wage for the teaching, itself?
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep! Ask any PhD candidate in America how they love those poverty level wages!
Academia can be criticized as unsustainable as the OP does because the number of graduate students exceeds the number of secure employment positions available after one defends one’s dissertation or does a postdoc. However, the American model of PhD students being impoverished while studying isn’t the only one. In several European countries, the norm is for PhD students to be university employees under contract that…
Dude, I went through the European PhD system and it's not as glamorous as you depict it. First of all, you forgot to mention that the norm is to give contracts of 50% to 75% FTE. Secondly the hours worked and the vacation time is a complete forgery that you are basically forced to sign. Although the contract is nice on paper, in practice the norms and expectations are different. Thirdly, unlike in the US, in Europe you often don't have a graduate school (although it is a thing) so you are in a very vulnerable situation where you invest 3 to 5 years of the best years of your life and during those years your graduation is completely at the mercy of that supervisor.
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#19This is the foundation of all academia currently. It’s a nice pyramid scheme while you’ve got it, I just finished witnessing my youngest brother go through it in grad school and his defense is on Tuesday.
> It’s a nice pyramid scheme... Before I became aware of criticisms likening universities to pyramid schemes, I recall hearing a Stanford professor managing a large research team say something like: "For this project, we have around 150 PhD students exploring it further in many directions". I was astonished by the sheer scale of their capabilities, especially because I liked the subject and had hoped to explore it as…
I've had similar experiences on a with various ideas for compilers and for C++ debugging.
Although I'm my case, the other people were mostly at FAANG companies, rather than academia.
Re: Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms
#20A reader may also be "shocked and appalled" that research universities like Stanford abused employees by keeping them "part-time" for years at a time to cheat them out of benefits received by FTEs.
Stanford has a business school, doesn't it?
Schwab. I worked across from it in the reclaimed basement of Toyon like some sort of hidden Brazil ductwork steampunk menagerie for workers. Their IT department was well-regarded because each department did their own thing, which was inherently efficient in flexibility, control, and service but not in cost of delivery. I was an obsessive control freak, wannabe computer science researcher, and LTT-like PC putter-togetherer masquerading as a Windows sysadmin playing with a $100k budget trying to get barcodes on every single cable, every single asset tagged, inventoried, and reporting basic info 24x7, having everything racked in a real datacenter rather than the housing draw NetBSD "server" desktop going brrrr behind my head, and adopting DR/BCP so that the organization could survive another semi-malicious Microsoft RCE worm or maybe a building fire (the datacenter had FM200).