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Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

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Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#181

Post by j7ake »

cyrksoft wrote: post #179

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…

Isn’t VC funds structured such a way that one or two startups make it while 90 percent fail?

University outputs seem to be comparable in this sense.

The patent for Gatorade alone has brought in probably 100 million to U of Florida.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#182

Post by cudgy »

“increasing right-wing hostility towards academics” is listed as a reason for academics leaving. Is this true? Isn’t the power structure in a academics dominated by individuals that lean left? Most of the stories I have read regard academics being driven out by woke staff and students.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#183

Post by cyrksoft »

j7ake wrote: post #181
cyrksoft wrote: post #179

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…

Isn’t VC funds structured such a way that one or two startups make it while 90 percent fail? University outputs seem to be comparable in this sense. The patent for Gatorade alone has brought in probably 100 million to U of Florida.

That might be the case. But universities are not startups.

In one of the universities I worked at they had a four-year long History undergraduate degree. Between 5 and 10 students chose it each year (the entire university has around 5,000 students, give or take). That means that there are around 30 students combined. For these 30 students, there were more than 40 full time academics! There are more professors than students. All this is possible because they had 2,000 undergraduate business students, and 1,000 business postgraduate students paying 3x or 4x what a History student paid in tuition fees. I know this might be an extreme case, but it is not that rare. You cannot run a sustainable business like that. Of course History professors made a lot less than their business counterparts, and they complained a lot.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#184

Post by cudgy »

Pulcinella wrote: post #96
blululu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

It’s literally not structured to encourage retention, definitely not at the same school. Those salary schedules on district websites? Those are for new hires. So someone with 40 years of experience in one school will be paid less than someone hired with 40 years. Raises aren’t at all guaranteed each year and even when you do get them, they often don’t match the salary schedule of someone hired new to the district. Al…

“Those salary schedules on district websites? Those are for new hires. So someone with 40 years of experience in one school will be paid less than someone hired with 40 years.”

This is not true in any state I am aware of. Salaries are very rigid and all teachers and staff with the same years of creditable experience and educational status make the same amount regardless of new hire status. Some counties may offer extra pay for performance or extra duties like coaching or summer school, but it is usually not a significant amount.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#185

Post by cudgy »

wmeredith wrote: post #117
lvl102 wrote: post #87

It’s difficult for me to feel bad for these institutions. They jacked up tuitions and caused an entire generation of people to carry lifetime of crippling debt.

> They jacked up tuitions and caused an entire generation of people to carry lifetime of crippling debt. Please dig deeper if you care about this issue. My wife works at a state school and by far the overwhelming factor on rising tuition has been the systematic defunding of state schools since the 1980's. Our state university currently receives about 20% of what it once did from the state 40 years ago.

However, I bet the buildings are fancy, the gym is lavish, and the cafeteria looks like a upscale food court with chefs to cook your custom ramen or stir fry. I also bet there are twice as many administrators as there were 40 years ago and far more expenses to maintain the high end buildings and sporting venues. More schools, more competition means more administrators, more marketing, more fancy dorms and facilities to appeal to parents and students. More money.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#186

Post by ajsnigrutin »

nieksand wrote: post #169
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #69

Years ago i had an option to start an academic carreer (after finishing my studies), and the basic situation back then was publish-or-parish for titles and etting your own EU/locally funded projects/grants and doing most of the stuff yourself, while being limited a lot by paycheck (you're still a public employee) and promotions to tenured positions, because basically, the person there had to die, since it was impossi…

I've heard that publish-or-parish is a challenge for all theologians.

Sadly, you'd need someone way above a theologian to fix touchscreen typing with disabled autocorrect :)

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#187

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

pvaldes wrote: post #121
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…

This didn't started with covid19. It started with Bologne.

I'm not sure which parts of the Bologna process drove these changes, can you clarify?

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#188

Post by taylorius »

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.

Yep - more taxes, that's the ticket. Universities and the NHS - in need of a tax increase for the last 60 years.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#189

Post by foldr »

cyrksoft wrote: post #179

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…

> 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...

This is quite a bizarre statement, since universities have been run as a public good for centuries. The idea that they should be profitable businesses is relatively recent. I doubt that the classicists at Magdalen college have ever turned a profit over the centuries, but that doesn't mean that they had trouble recruiting competent people.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#190

Post by q-big »

_Wintermute wrote: post #88
udp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm in academia in London at the moment and this really struck true. All the senior staff bought their houses for pennies 30 years ago which are now worth millions, and don't seem to understand why the more junior staff are so worked up about salaries. Rent is 50% of our pay cheque and any house within an hours commute is 10x annual salary.

A potential alternative could be that the university provides lodging to its staff for a subsidized rent. This way, salaries don't have to be increased.

I mean: a lot of universities provide dorms for their students, why not for parts of their staff, too?

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