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Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

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Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#171

Post by sai_c »

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…

"2. Society stopped valuing education as much. While once educators traded lower pay for the prestige of being a professor they can’t really say it is a worthy trade anymore as a vocal minority do not value education at all."

I can totally see why that is the case. Raised in a classical worker family and observing how my peers from childhood are doing, I can imagine where this is coming from.

Most of them were also raised as workers kids (i.e. both parents working in mindless jobs in a factory and earning barely enough to raise the kids), but some had the chance to go earn a BS or MS. Yet, they are financially struggling for severals reasons. Also, they have a hard time explaining to their parents why they can't afford a house, vacation, a new car and all the things their parents never had, but wanted their kids to have. So all the reasons their parents fought to get them a good education are nullified.

I know getting a good education is of value in and of itself, but the reality is, that most parents want a good education for their kids because they want them to be financially successful, not for humanistic reasons (remember who attended universities in their beginning and why, it was aristocrats with a lot of time and money).

So to play the devil's advocate, what value has this education, if my kids still struggle in life, just they way I am? And why should I have "high esteem" for the people teaching, if what they offer has so little practical value?

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#172

Post by AussieWog93 »

p10_user wrote: post #154
AussieWog93 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

I understand that "mooshot" research exists, and why it sometimes has to be that way. It's just that the entire process of academia seems to be almost designed to crush any curiosity and redirect mankind's brainpower to validating particular ideas that incumbent scientists base their ego on.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#173

Post by anonymousDan »

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 wish someone had told me that before spending a chunk of my career to get a permanent academic post!

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#174

Post by anonymousDan »

jknoepfler wrote: post #125
lozenge wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but UK universities don't have much headroom. They can't raise their student fees past the government set level; the government funding per student has decreased; only the oldest institutions have massive endowments; and they don't spend crazy amounts on sport, admin or pampering students. Some of them can try to squeeze their student base a bit more (increase accommodation prices, reduce subsidies in the food…

I mean... If the voters won't pay more taxes to fund their own educational institutions, then that's that yeah? The people are letting their centers of learning rot because they don't value them.

I fear this is the problem. You see the same for example with underfunding of NHS dentistry, but at least in that case there is the option to work in private practice.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#176

Post by orbifold »

cehrlich wrote: post #97
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…

I don't know about other parts of the UK, but I interviewed for some (senior) lecturer positions last year and the salary was a joke by London standards. I'm not comparing to lofty SWE salaries here, but just compared to what it takes to make a decent living in London.

PostDoc salaries in BayArea Universities are 1/2 or less of what a junior engineer makes. You can literally consult the tables at https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/income-limits/state-an... that a NIH postdoc would pay you an extremely low - low income. Other countries like Germany or Switzerland at least pay somewhat decently (Germany 3x above media income).

I got an offers to work on several really cool projects, but the pay is at poverty level basically.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#177

Post by derbOac »

Espressosaurus wrote: post #27
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…

> 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 agree the benefits of in-person learning are often vastly underrecognized, but there was a lot going on over the last two years other than just in person versus online learning. People in a relatively favorable environment, learning from people who are prepared to do so with established online communication tools, is pretty different from the last two years.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#178

Post by pjc50 »

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…

> the main problem is that academia has become hideously corrupted by "professional management" values leading to de-skilling as good people leave.

This hits the nail on the head. Everyone I know in academia is there despite their management. One had to leave the UK for the US in order to progress her career. The ongoing pensions fiasco has produced some extraordinary responses. Some universities are threatening to withdraw a whole month's pay for any strike action, not just for the period of the strike. Strike action is likely to hit exams: https://twitter.com/ucu/status/1531245496190128131 , with the result that universities are trying to outsource and automate marking (a lower quality product for which students will be charged the same amount).

Inflation over the course of this year is likely to be 10%. Pay offers are in the region of 2%, with pension cuts of up to 40%. Staff are going on strike simply to maintain their pay levels.

Marketisation has ruined the concept of the university. It's now seen as a place for manufacturing Education Units (to be sold to students) and Research Units. The staff on the Unit production line are therefore as metric-driven as Uber drivers. And there are attempts to casualise them similarly. Nobody senior or in government really cares about the content of the Units, only how they're ranked by the Unit Assessment System (RAE).

The culture war is also squarely pointed at universities, which are in and of themselves a threat to the right-wing, apart from the top two or three which are required for elite reproduction.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#179

Post by cyrksoft »

I'm surprised how very few departments within most universities actually make money. If you had a company where most products lost money you would stop producing them. Universities have a lot of departments and degrees that bleed money. I don't understand how anybody thinks that you can have good wages like this.

I worked as an Econ professor and visiting academic in top Business Schools in Latin America and the East Coast (USA), and I can tell you that Business Schools make A LOT of money. They charge whatever they want and people (in most cases, their employers) pay them. In many cases Business Schools can amount up to 40/50% of the universities' revenue. That is also why business professors are paid a lot more. I personally know people at London Business School making more than £ 200,000 a year. Salaries at INSEAD are very similar as well. Of course, salaries at top US Business Schools are even higher.

My point is that you cannot run a business where one or two products make money and the remaining 90% bleed it. That is, if you want to run it as a business and attract talent and pay nice wages. If you want to run universities as some type of public good, then good luck. Pay everybody the same and offer as many degrees as you'd like. Good luck hiring competent people...

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#180

Post by erddfre3423 »

pjc50 wrote: post #178
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…

> the main problem is that academia has become hideously corrupted by "professional management" values leading to de-skilling as good people leave. This hits the nail on the head. Everyone I know in academia is there despite their management. One had to leave the UK for the US in order to progress her career. The ongoing pensions fiasco has produced some extraordinary responses. Some universities are threatening to w…

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