Question for any university employees

[MumblesParty]

Just reading the news about Cardiff uni, among others, having to make redundancies and cut courses. This is apparently due to dropping numbers of international students. Students tuition fees are £9500 per year. They have about 9 hours of lectures per week. Can anyone explain where the costs are? I’m not being argumentative, I would genuinely like to know why it costs so much to run a university. I’ve googled, and it seems the biggest cost is teaching. But I know lecturers aren’t paid much. So where does the money go?

And yet it's pretty routine for me to open my mailbox and Teams to requests from academic colleagues sent outside of office hours.

Yes, academics tend to work flexibly during the day and then log a few hours at night to balance things out.

I think that 75h/week is credible for marking season, but not the rest of the time.

By contrast, getting hold of academics during August when I'm trying to get the IT provision sorted out for the upcoming academic year is like hunting unicorns. You all vanish into thin air.

By contrast, getting hold of academics during August when I'm trying to get the IT provision sorted out for the upcoming academic year is like hunting unicorns. You all vanish into thin air.

This is true 😂

It is. I think I had 3 who'd regularly let me know when they were on annual leave or sick, the rest just....vanished.

University academic staff don't just teach. Teaching is a small part of their role. Research and academic publishing (not sure if that's the right terminology?) take up more time and the teaching involves a lot more than giving lectures.

Lots of fannying about by too many overpaid faculty professional services staff trying to tell lecturers how to teach and getting paid far too much. Many of these people are in those jobs not for the right reasons but just to get a hit from bossing others around.

True - but only because the workload is so bloody high the rest of the time, and still during August I am haunted by the time I take off because it’s the only uninterrupted research time of the year, and I know everyone else is going to reappear in September with a new grant application or a bestselling trade book they wrote over the summer or having curated a new exhibition at a major gallery or similar. (I am actually pretty lazy compared to many of my colleagues, who I honestly think have cloned themselves.)

Trust me, IT managers are just as useless and overpaid.

I wondered that too - but I think shitshow systems implementations are endemic in the sector...

Yes. Yes they are.

In fact, crappy IT procurement is endemic to the planet.

The ugly cousin of this is refusing to buy a solution that other institutions use and getting your frankly shit IT director to commission one in house that is no use to man nor beast.

Or buy a new system that's only got the first couple of modules completed but is incredibly cheap...

Or commissioning one that was suspected not to work with existing essential systems and then discovering it doesn't work with existing essential systems....

Ah - my place loves to take great and beautifully made in-house bespoke programs that run perfectly and do everything everyone actually wants them to do, and buy in generic replacements from the US that don’t fit what we need, are much more unwieldy to use, really buggy, need constant system upgrades, and still don’t have half the functionality of the old in-house ones. So you just can’t win!

With phenomenal implications

I bet your in house lovely ones had had consultations with end users before roll out though. Ours very much did not.

I’m not sure they were ever “rolled out” as such…more like crafted by some Unix wizards hiding in the basement of the computing department in 1990. Much loved but put out to pasture so that all the intense computing nerds could be replaced with something from Microsoft and outsourced to Crapita… 😆

Agree. My uni hours were 9, until 9. Professional course.

By contrast, getting hold of academics during August when I'm trying to get the IT provision sorted out for the upcoming academic year is like hunting unicorns. You all vanish into thin air.

Because that's literally the only time we're able to take any annual leave or have time to do research.
Or we are around but involved in clearing which is labour intensive.

Clearing is "labour intensive"? It's this kind of thing that makes us look ridiculous. It's essentially working in a call centre for a few days. Grips need to be got in this group. Imagine having a job outside of academia and working like this every day!

Clearing is "labour intensive"? It's this kind of thing that makes us look ridiculous. It's essentially working in a call centre for a few days. Grips need to be got in this group. Imagine having a job outside of academia and working like this every day!

Yes, if you are just working in the clearing call centre.
If you're coordinating clearing for the university/faculty/department then it's a lot of work.
Clearing is a much bigger deal now that it previously was.

Most academics ARE working intensively every day but the point I was making was that August is the only month where there is time to take annual leave or do research. Many universities have January and May starts now meaning teaching is all year round apart from August. However, those involved in clearing have to work then too so don't even get that chunk of quiet time.

Oh, I know why. Knowing why doesn't get the IT provision ready for next year when you're not around to acceptance test it.

Oh, I know why. Knowing why doesn't make my life trying to get the IT provision ready for next year when you're not around to acceptance test it.

What do you suggest?

I don't have to have an answer to state that there is a problem.

IT staff cannot user acceptance test the software you request beyond "does it launch?" My MATLAB skills stop at 1+1 and seeing "2" printed in response.

This is a management problem - different workflow, leave system, priorities etc needed.

Universities (like every other enterprise) need managers, who cost money, but whose job it is to iron out this kind of problem.

(Not that you have denied it but others do!)