To think academics are seriously entitled??

Any rudeness on my part is simply in response to yours.

All jobs have cushy aspects and not so cushy ones 🤷‍♀️

I don't know why we need everyone to be miserable all the time to feel like we have 'won'. When I have done some marking this morning, I will work on a chapter I am writing that I am really enjoying. It's Sunday. I like writing this chapter but realistically if I don't dedicate Sundays to it, I won't have time and won't hit the deadline.

Writing the chapter is good for my institution but also good for me personally, raising my profile and having a space to articulate an important new idea. So it's complicated. I will also work on a project proposal that I hope will help us understand more about the way we are interacting with AI tools and open up potentially an intervention to improve our cognitive functioning with AI. It will benefit me because I am curious and interested but hopefully be of wider contribution to society more generally.

We all have a part to play in the great patchwork of community. I hate the race to the bottom.

And again with the rudeness, no nerve hit but being rude. Perhaps this is why posters perceive academics as entitled as they are happy to accuse people of being ignorant when the point I make about academics not being teachers is one you actually agree with!

I have lots of anecdotal evidence of HE teachers not turning up to 1:1 meetings, ignoring important emails for months, rather shockingly changing marks after complaints, failing to support students in any meaningful way, lack of mark schemes the list goes on. However, other lectures were dedicated hardworking and supportive. I’ve held back as parental involvement in HE isn’t useful but there have been several incidents that teachers would have been sacked for.
There needs to be an acknowledgment that standards in HE can be like the Wild West, some brilliance but far to often shocking gaps.

Research is part of the job. It’s part of an academic’s job description (unless you’re on a teaching only contract). We have targets and KPIs related to research.
We’re not doing it just for fun, it’s how we’re also paying our mortgage and feeding our kids.

But the research is part of the job requirement 🤷🏻‍♀️. People aren’t doing it for shits and giggles. It brings in money for the university and also furthers the reputation of the university which when it comes to attracting students who pay fees is important.

I haven’t published anything in ten years. I don’t have time. Every year at my annual review I have to come up with some reason why I’ve done no research (staffing issues) and talk about some idea for something which I’d like to do next year. Both me and my manager know it’s not happening but we tick the box and keep the pretence up and everyone is happy.

unlike most courses my students are at uni till the end of July. Some of them throughout august. So I have no let up. Maybe six weeks with no teaching but I spend those weeks sorting out exam boards, admissions stuff, getting blackboard sites ready, end of year reports, ee liaison, updating teaching materials and trying to take leave.

To be fair, I’d like time to “pursue my own artistic practice” but I have to work to pay my mortgage / feed, clothe, house kids.. 🤷‍♀️

OP can you study and become an academic? It does sound like a nice job to me.

I have been reflecting on the differences between teaching in secondary and teaching in HE. Not because I want to do a whinge about how hard it is but because it is interesting.

Lots of time in HE, you are more independent even of colleagues. I used to deliver 2 core modules to second years on my own entirely from design to marking and preparation for external examiners. I don't think this is best practice but it is done. The bonding I did as a teacher where the sense of a joint enterprise meant we were all in the pub at 3.30pm on a Friday isn't there in the same way. I still have dear friends who are in teaching.

However, I have research collaborations that span my time at several institutions and I feel immensely privileged to know that these are people I trust and will work with until I die

I think comparing HE teaching with 'teaching' is weird anyway - it is closer to FE teaching than FE teaching is to EYFS teaching obviously.

I think everyone feels a bit rubbish about the way things are going at the moment. I don't know anyone happy or secure in their job across any sector. Saying some things are frustrating in one job isn't saying things aren't frustrating in other jobs.

We are not teachers in the same way school teachers are. We are, however, educators with much more autonomy than school teachers. And no, no nerve hit. Just irritation at your sheer ignorance.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a facilitator in practice but do believe my role is to facilitate learning using whatever pedagogical theories and techniques are appropriate for the topic.

I work with both types of academics and universities need both. But people who come into academia from industry tend to end up in teaching-focused roles - as your reference to the benefit of great holidays suggests. They don't experience one of the biggest stressors which is publication and grant income pressures where you are given precious little time to do these things but still expected to deliver a book, other "world leading" publications and impact for REF and secure awards from massively diminishing funding streams. The "generous" holidays are taken up with this work - none of the academics I'm line managing have used up up their 6 weeks annual leave as we are under serious pressure to get publications out for the REF deadline.

I manage an academic journal and it relies on reviews done (for free) by fellow academics. So many of them respond to us on the weekend. Last night (Saturday) I had a notification at 7.30pm of someone agreeing to review. I think that tells you many are struggling with the workload.

I had a boyfriend who was an academic and he used to joke that academia was 50% teaching, 50% research and 50% administration.

I do both. The challenges are different. Secondary school has the edge with intensity. Universities have unbelievable bureaucracy! Listening to people moaning is always boring though.

Totally agree. I’d love to know where these cushy public sector jobs are. NHS? Police? Teaching? Ambulance service? Don’t think so.

Ive had two private sector jobs for eight years combined, over a decade in the nhs and now lecturing

My most cushy jobs were the private sector ones by far.

I’d like you to say that to the face of someone in the military. Don’t confuse job security and pension for somehow being devoid of hard work and realism, you deal with your husband being deployed to a war zone for 6 months when your baby is 3 weeks old, 6 weeks after moving to a completely new area not knowing anyone and tell me we don’t know working in the real world, we’d tell you where to go.

As someone who stopped teaching at doctorate level precisely because it was evident not everyone there wanted to learn, or was committed to putting in the requisite effort at lectures, I'd disagree. It absolutely can be like herding cats, and I expect teaching undergrad is a long haul sometimes.

Edit: replied to the reply to the post, rather than the actual post claiming that at university level, students 'all want to be there' etc. Apologies.

Couldn’t agree more with this. Teachers in schools who have always been in education also have a bubble. Not saying it’s not a hard job but the bubble doesn’t help.

You do know that universities aren’t public sector?

I’ve said academics aren’t teachers you agree with me despite other academics arguing that they do teach. You the make lots of claims about spoon feeding children, when teachers are working under a massively regulated, external exam system with detailed marking schemes and we don’t set our own exams, all of which make teaching way more complicated.

The level of snark in your response suggests I’ve hit a nerve.

Academic here...

Going to disagree with some of the other academics who are objecting to the OP.

In my experience, while there are stressful and difficult parts of life in a university, there is a tendency for people to have a lower threshold for their complaints.

It is a common observation that I heard about before I worked in universities, and have seen since that there is a split in academia between those who have worked professionally outside of universities, and those who have been in education for their whole lives.

Generally those with professional careers prior to academia tend to find university life to be demanding in some ways, but actually fairly soft and easy in many others. The hours are great, the holidays tend to be great, the work-life balance, and work environments are generally good (obviously this depends on the university ands its management). Class loads, marking, student supervision are all easy compared to working in a school or in the private sector etc.

Yet those who have spent their entire lives in education.. School, Uni, Undergrad, Postgrad, PhD, Post-doctoral position, Lecturer, and onwards etc. They tend to have a slightly different perspective and get highly critical of the state of universities, largely because they are very (and correctly) aware of right/wrong/fairness/correct ways of doing things, but they have no comparison to how tough it can be outside of the university bubble.

I have no doubt that plenty on here will defend how tough the job is, and it can be very tough, but it isn't as bad as some, especially the "lifers" in academia would complain it is.

And your opinion is based on something someone once said to you about working as a lecturer after working in industry. Right.

😂😂😂 nice pay for minimal hours!!! What planet are you on??!! Lecturing is very often less than minimum wage by the time you add in all the teaching prep, marking and, yes, you guessed it, emails. And as for the idea that they should have stopped complaining and changed careers - it's that easy is it? Yes some people manage it but most people have to do the job that they actually know and have. The idea that you should never complain about your job since you can just switch career is ridiculous.

Anyone who has only worked in the public sector has no idea what life is like working in the real world. Nothing magic about it.

HE is in chaos with mass redundancies and course closes each year across the sector. They can complain. Just like anyone else can complain about their job in difficult times.

In what way is a university magically not part of the ‘real world’?

I know someone who was a lecturer at a uni after working in the real world first, and they say it was very easy job.