AIBU to think university executives should not be paid so much that the uni can't afford lecturers

@TheyGrewUp thats so sad to hear. I love our professional services staff and feel they make a massive difference to the program, the students and to the academics. I fully appreciate they’re under a massive strain themselves.

I am going to bite. I am a head of/director of a support service function. I used to work in the private sector. I work far harder in HE than I ever did in financial services and except for the Executive Board, academics generally are not appreciative of suppprt staff going the extra mile for them and there is no cognizance that many support staff work just as hard, if not harder than some academic staff.

My salary is less than it would be in the private sector, pension and holidays are far better. I have been in HE for 15 years and whilst workloads are higher than they were 15 years ago for academics, I was very surprised back then at how little teaching academics did, 6hpw for a Reader, which may have been fair enough if they'd been producing any refable research. Whilst I accept things have got tougher, the gravy train had to stop.

One massive improvement has been around behaviours. Ten to fifteen years ago, some academics thought they could be unbelievably rude to support staff. Shouting, unreasonable demands, reducing people to tears because they were working in accordance with the rules. I remember a professor calling an administrator because the copier had run out of paper and demanding they walk 800 or so yards across campus at 4.45 in the dark and pissing rain to fill a copier with paper from outside the professor's office. That member of staff came back drenched and in tears having arrived at 5.01 to find the Prof putting on her coat because it had gone 5 o'clock. Thank goodness that sort of thing has improved. I escalated it to the Academic Head. Nothing was done - it would be now and thankfully that sort of nonsence has largely been stamped out.

It’s awful isn’t it?
Our university decimated our professional services and we as academics were left to pick up the slack.
My team have been amazing but they’ve had to pick up so much additional admin alongside their teaching that it was inevitable that NSS scores would dip. There are only so many hours in the day.
It’s incredibly frustrating and is having a huge impact on wellbeing and staff morale.

It isn't your fault at all. Education is a nightmare for depriving funds for basic resources which renders individual staff powerless. It's all about performance and all the other sizzle - sucking up to management teams, seeing internal promotions because of who they are related to/friends with at the top. I was sickened when I read a Principal getting an MBE. I worked under him and he was a self serving arrogant tosser. I used to see some of the ignorant replies he would send back on students' complaints. Education, being a business, has now dumbed down the quality of services.
I don't know why FE and HE still issue student satisfaction surveys because they are completely ignored. I wish you well and really don't envy you still being in the thick of it. 💐

And the NSS has just been released with a disappointing drop in student satisfaction scores. I ve been sent an email saying I need to attend a meeting so that opportunities for improvement can be identified.

Comments talk about lack of equipment (which I’ve been requesting and have repeatedly been told there’s no money), lack of support from professional services staff (because loads have been made redundant), would like more teaching (can’t happen because we teach what we’re allowed to teach with the restrictions on hours per module due to staffing levels). 🤷‍♀️

Its so disheartening to go through the shit of rounds and rounds of redundancy (another one announced only this week), to be one of the ones left firefighting after 25% of your team take packages and leave. You’re doing your best. Of course satisfaction will drop. And then made to feel like it’s my fault that the students aren’t as happy as previously? I probably need to be thicker skinned.

We are going to lose a lot of PS staff to automation. A lot of the programme support jobs are essentially moving data between platforms and linking messages between different groups. Most of it can be automated leaving one person to make sure it's running smoothly rather than a team of 20.

Everything has become a business now, it's the same with academy schools and the NHS. Lots of people at the top being paid huge salaries to discuss strategies while they can't afford to hire TA's or nurses.

Friend of mine works in the private sector as a PA two days a week and earns 20k a year for 2 days. So if she was full time she’d be on 50k. It’s a well paid profession for experienced PAs.

I was an EA for many years (several of them in an HE institution) and it's astonishing how many people genuinely think the role is mainly coffee and typing. In my case it was also events and stakeholder management, office management, line management and HR, facilities, extremely complex international travel and diary management - a lot of drafting e.g. letters, emails, presentations - research and due diligence, FOIs, compliance, and a lot more.

And of course a fair bit of counselling/coaching of principals who didn't always know what they were doing 🙄

I'm not saying I wasn't paid a fair wage in my HE EA job, but it was just that - fair rather than inflated. Also worth considering that a lot of PA/EA roles have no room for progression, particularly in a university, IME.

So just £5k a year above the national living wage?
To work as a Finance Administrator who has to be working towards professional qualifications? Sounds reasonable tbh.

Perhaps you’re just out of touch as to current salary levels. The national living wage is £26.5k.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a professional level job to command a higher salary.

An Administrator, not manager, at Exeter with the opportunity to work from home. 31K starting salary. I'm reminded how local councils are also mismanaged with finances.

Compared to the private sector, it's an obscene salary. I'm not only referring to PAs before I get accused of internalised misogyny. Support staff have always been overpaid.

Why do you have an issue with the term professional services? You sound very out of touch.
As previously mentioned, many staff will have professional qualifications and significant experience. They’ll be managing complex departments and services.
Why don’t you feel they deserve to be paid fairly?

When universities are complaining about being under funded, those salaries - that's a modest example I've given - are not justified. That includes Estates, Finance, HR etc. I've worked in HE and back in the late 90s the pay scales were high. I might do a bit of my own research later to shock myself at today's extortionate scales for 'professional services'.

I’m in a very unique position in that I’ve worked in professional services and now work as an academic. There’s no benefit in trying pit one against the other. They’re both equally as important and the staff in both roles are typically very qualified and have worked hard to progress their careers.
The best departments I’ve worked in are those where academics and PS staff are viewed and treated equally. As they should be.

It’s also quite rude to call a doctorate pretentious.

That’s a really ignorant viewpoint.
They’ve been referred to as professional services for years. I started working in HE 22 years ago and I remember them bringing the salary scales in line with academic salaries and moving on from using the term support services.

An executive officer or PA role is akin to an office manager role. They often have wider responsibilities and in some cases line manage staff. Why shouldn’t they be paid appropriately?

There are a huge number of professional services role across a university and they are vital in the running of an institution. Many senior PS roles will require the same level of qualifications as an academic. For example, A careers consultant at my university is paid the same salary as a senior lecturer. They both require specific postgraduate qualifications, FHEA membership and relevant knowledge and experience.

@LuckyHazelFox Are you always so rude? That’s a reasonable salary for a PA. Do you think the job is making coffee and typing? Of course staff running non teaching services are highly qualified. They haven’t got the pretentious doctorates but have undoubtedly worked longer for their positions and had to take professional qualifications. Some lecturers could think about a career change after redundancy if it’s money for nothing?

A PA to the VC getting in the region of 45K plus? As well as the incremental pay and public sector pension. There's an argument for starting there with the cutbacks. So they are now called professional staff? So pretentious.

Professional services not support staff.
They’re professions in their own right and deserve professional salaries. We’ve moved on from referring to them as ‘support staff’. Many are just as qualified as academic staff and the salary scales reflect that.

I agree, I’m paid significantly less than my previous job….though that was in the public sector! We struggle to recruit because people with the qualifications necessary for my programme who are working in the public sector won’t take the paycut to come to HE.

The point I was making was that most of this work is done by existing staff, mainly academics, rather than there being an ‘explosion of staffing’ which needs ‘trimming’ which is what you were suggesting.

I think in the current climate there are very few universities who have an excess of staff at any level. Quite the opposite. I’m genuinely worried about how I’m going to staff my existing courses next academic year as my staffing has been stripped to the bone and there’s a blanket ban on recruitment and using temporary staff. Fixed term contracts haven’t been renewed so I’ve lost the equivalent of 2 FTE. When I couldn’t spare it to begin with.
I’m not sure how our VC expects us to operate.

My experience is the opposite! I came from the private sector and as a university lecturer I am now paid less but don't work as many hours. I prefer my current work life balance, and I agree some of my colleagues who have always worked in academia don't realise how good it is.

Overworked absolutely. But I really don’t think we are underpaid. Lots of my colleagues moan they don’t earn enough but I genuinely don’t see how you can complain about a starting salary of 45+k a year with automatic increments every year.
Like you I did a lot of jobs before and I earn way way more than I ever would have in any of those areas