To think academics are seriously entitled??

Well, as an academic, I would say that 90% of academics who would now be in their 60s had a very easy time of it. Generally speaking (though all fields are different), they entered academia at a time when workloads and expectations were less and pay was higher compared to hours put in. They moved to a very cushy secure place that most of us a generation or two behind will never experience. Now, pay is fairly low (I earned £34k a year at 80% FTE, so PT 4 days a week, after 20 years in academia with a PhD in the social sciences when I left a couple years ago).

Workload is high - all of my colleagues are still working at 10pm most nights, they take marking on holiday and book whole days of meetings on holiday! Mental health is in the pits and I’d say at least half of my close colleagues have gone off sick with long COVID, autoimmune diseases, I have been off 2 years now with cancer, all in our 40s. We are also supporting students who are really suffering with mental health challenges and financial ones given cost of living. We provide a lot of pastoral care in addition to teaching and supervising research and heading up administrative committees and writing to make our publication targets and doing lots of other ‘free’ labour like serving on editorial boards of journals and leading committees that award student funding or review applications.

Anyway, talking to a bunch of academics in their 60s is a bit like taking advice in buying your first house from someone now in their 70s. Of course, it’s going to sound easy! It was in the late 70s when you could buy a nice family home in a market town with good schools on one income! But times have changed a lot since then and they haven’t changed with it.

Law by any chance?

No but there are entitled and unrealistic student by the bucketful. If I release assessment marks, within half an hour my inbox will be full of furious emails demanding an immediate meeting, asking about appeals, demanding a remark etc. I have students who didn’t attend a single seminar brazenly demanding I tell them how to get a first because that is what they want. But yeah I couldn’t personally teach secondary school because of the behaviour issues. At least that bit is better at uni.

Agree that teaching in a school regardless of level is a lot harder. Especially as at universities there are seldom unrealistic or entitled parents to deal with.

People are allowed to moan, FFS. Academia is no longer a cushy job and most younger academics in arts/humanities are terrified for their futures. Lots of UK universities are on the brink of collapse .

Lovely but in a couple of years he will be unemployed. Maybe he lives in a country where there are plenty of permanent lectureships that he could apply for after his postdoc (and is a place he wants to stay) but in many countries eg Germany or the UK, permanent academic jobs are as rare as hens teeth.

😂😂😂 love this reply 😂😂😂

One of my sons is a post doc mathematician and lives in a beautiful nordic location. He gets lots of international travel to conferences and spends most of his day getting paid to think about what he's interested in.

I just just imagine this group having a Friday night beer and totally normal whinge about work, and @Bananavibez standing there with a cat’s bum expression on her face sipping her tap water, imagining the Mumsnet thread she’d start the next day!

How strange to be unaware of the huge changes and cuts Universities have gone through for decades, excelerating wildy now...no joy in a pick me colleague. ...much joy in solidarity 🥂

Your OP was signalling ‘chip on shoulder’ to me, and this has sealed it.

I left academia.

firstly the pay is shit. My first job after my PhD paid 14k, admittedly a while ago but band 5 technician in the nhs paid 18k at the time.

secondly job security is also shit. Usually 1-3 year contracts, 5 if you’re lucky. If your grant is not renewed and you need another job it’s usually so niche there won’t be another one at that uni, so you need to relocate to wherever is carrying out related research.

lecturing, in my field anyway, isn’t just teaching. You lecture in between carrying out your research, planning new grant applications, supervising PhD and final year projects, conferences, attending your own lectures by guest speakers…

it probably depends which field they’re in, but it was shit 20 odd years ago and I’d probably expect now the cost of a degree is so high students are now more demanding of lecturers time (hence the emails) as the are paying for it. That model probably doesn’t work so well as students will need more input and a higher level of guidance.

Depends on the field but yes a lot of people are limited to where they can work and many of my colleagues commute very long distances (as in several hours, staying over in hotels).
A lot of people say what the 60-something academic did because the standards are ridiculously high these days. You used to be able to enter my field 40 years ago with an undergraduate degree. Now you need a PhD plus many publications to even get an interview for a lectureship.
Minimal hours - nah sorry this isn’t true although I admit the classroom hours are less than for school teaching. I would be so physically exhausted if I had to do more though. There are insane amount of admin to do plus constant marking and huge volumes of emails (that bit is true). I have 45 personal tutees. In a school, I would have about 20.
Good salary - I actually think it’s okay because there is a degree of flexibility for a lot of the year that you don’t get in other jobs but it’s not a huge amount. Starting at about 40k. I’m on low 60s and need to be promoted to the next band for it to increase which is very unlikely to happen.
Moaning - maybe read about what the sector is going through at the moment. Mass redundancies more or less everywhere, pay and promotion freezes, poor morale, uncertainty.

Guess we’ll never know

I’ve been made to go into the office 3 days rather than 2 this year and I’ve whinged like hell about it. I’m not a lecturer!

And there is funding for PhDs. Most people who are in academic roles will have been funded for their PhDs.

A lecturer isn’t just a teaching role. Teaching only comprises 40% of the role. If you are going to be a researcher, bringing in funding that pays for the facilities and subject knowledge that underpins teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level, then, yes, you need a PhD.

Where did you get the idea the hours are minimal?

But surely anyone who was used to working 3/5 days at home and whose hours changed to having to work only 2/5 days at home would whinge to colleagues?

Strong disagree about pay as well - it’s very poor compared with what other countries pay, and the pensions which used to make up for it have been slashed in recent years.

IME academics, like teachers, do an awful lot of work outside of college/uni; marking, admin etc, and not often for extra pay. They also want time to do their own research, attend conferences, write books etc, not to mention in the arts pursue their own artistic practice. There’s precious little time for it all.

SOME academics are entitled yes. There's a few profs in my department who do fuck all and whinge because they have to answer their emails. But they are a dying breed, the vast majority of us are working long hours and still can't keep up with the workload. So YABU to think we're all like the bores you met.

Every academic I know works a minimum of 50 hours a week, and that includes summer travels with the exception of the typical British annual leave. In term time it is more like 60 hours.

Might this person have been moaning about students who expect instant, personal replies to questions that are in fact answered carefully on the syllabus for the course unit or similar? Our policy is to reply to all emails within two business days. Oddly, it is the students who can’t be bothered to read carefully written course materials - or or turn up to, or even watch, the lectures where these are discussed - who are most insistent that their emails be answered instantly.

Naturally people moan about this. It doesn’t mean we dislike students.

Do you work @Bananavibez ? If so, what as?