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Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

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Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#151

Post by rychco »

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…

I’m supposed to be encouraged to stay in the field when I can look forward to an acceptable wage in 40 years? Do I have that right?

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#152

Post by zach_garwood »

muaytimbo wrote: post #82
bsder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Parents always blame teachers when they should (almost) always blame administrators.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#153

Post by AussieWog93 »

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.

Not sure why you're being downvoted for this. When I was doing my PhD, I definitely noticed that the primary aim of research was not to produce something of benefit to mankind, but to produce esoteric silos for academics to protect their egos in.

The politics were petty and vicious, and the number one rule there was to maintain the "face" of the people above you.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#154

Post by p10_user »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #153
blahblarblar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure why you're being downvoted for this. When I was doing my PhD, I definitely noticed that the primary aim of research was not to produce something of benefit to mankind, but to produce esoteric silos for academics to protect their egos in. The politics were petty and vicious, and the number one rule there was to maintain the "face" of the people above you.

Its unfortunate that those groups exist. But there are many who genuinely want to discover and share knowledge and know how. Research is a slog and it’s hard to quantify how some seemingly esoteric research could benefit humanity.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#155

Post by akimball »

zach_garwood wrote: post #152
muaytimbo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Parents always blame teachers when they should (almost) always blame administrators.

Parents who don't effect a good education for their children should first of all blame themselves, as it is a core part of their responsibility to their children and their community.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#156

Post by robwwilliams »

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…

Yes, “professional management” and serious compliance overhead are producing a byzantine system.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#157

Post by p10_user »

bee_rider wrote: post #65
Espressosaurus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 7) Given we have had 2 years of at home lecturing, at what point does the value of this come into question? Professors barely learning how to use a laptop are not worth 3x an open university degree. Two years of home lecturing that by all accounts has resulted in close to two years of lost progress if my observation of teachers complaining about ill-prepared students is anything to go by.

I think I noticed more divergence in the level of preparation (although, didn't try to quantify it -- grad student here, limited responsibility/scope/ability to make change, so just informal observations). It makes sense -- with at-home instruction there's less of an opportunity to just passively check in with students, remote lectures are easier to ignore, and it is easier to cheat on tests when they are remote (so,…

Perhaps things will go more smoothly once the meta verse fully arrives (I’m only half joking..)

Maybe facebooks next pivot will be in education.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#158

Post by robwwilliams »

etempleton wrote: post #43

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 rea…

Perfect set of comments! Thanks.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#159

Post by prepend »

bsder wrote: post #140
prepend wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> practically all teachers now have multiple students who actually had a parent die. This is extremely unlikely and if you know multiple teachers with this condition you just have really bad luck. Only about 60k COVID deaths are 30-49 [0] with another 200k for 50-64. This is about 25% of COVID deaths in the US. There’s 50M school kids between k-12 [1] so the odds of a kid having a parent who died is really low: 1:50M…

Okay, let's grab Texas: We'll roll with 20-59 which totals to: 20,765 confirmed deaths https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/TexasCOVID19Demographics_... Texas has 1,247 school districts: https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/general-information/over... That's roughly 16 parent Covid fatalities per school. This, of course, ignores population clustering which is going to mean more deaths in larger school districts. And the…

A school district has multiple schools. So while there’s 1247 districts, there’s 20,000 schools do your math is very off.

Your statement about most teachers is blatantly wrong.

There are more survivors, but still not the vast majority of teachers.

[0] https://www.greatschools.org/texas/

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#160

Post by robwwilliams »

hintymad wrote: post #124

The number of administrative staff in universities has been increasing faster that that of faculty. I was wondering if this is the culprit of run-away cost of universities and the culprit of general stagnation of faculty salary.

Yes, great book about just this:

1. Benjamin Ginsberg: The Fall of the Faculty. The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why it Matters.

2. Harry R. Lewis: Excellence without Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education.

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