What might happen to me?

[SuzieQuatro]

I'm a lecturer at a very prestigious university.

I'm shit at research and I actually hate doing it.

I really struggle to write papers (two so far this REF period, one graded 2 and the other 3 by internal review). I have attracted startlingly little research funding (less that £50,000 since January 2014).

I might just scrape four papers for REF 2021 if I can co-author with PhD students or colleagues. I can't see me attracting any remarkable funding.

I suspect that after REF 2021, everyone will be scrutinised for their contribution and I'll be identified as under-performing.

Do you think I'll get shifted on to a teaching only contract? Or do you think they'll put the wheels in motion to have me fired?

There is also a well known tactic among academics of exaggerating how bad the conditions are to put-off any potential upstarts who might come in and take there jobs (I'm not saying this is happening here, but I have seen it happen in a couple of universities I've studied at, and I think it is a very distasteful thing to do). There was a thread on here a while ago. A couple of professors said they wouldn't go down the academic route again.

Doesn't the second statement contradict the first?

I am one of the (senior) professors who says that I wouldn't go down the academic route again. However, since I am a senior professor I have nothing to gain personally by putting off potential upstarts - they are not going to be taking my (management level, senior) job. And if I can't recruit strong young people then I will myself be judged to be underperforming.

Seriously - what senior academic would be putting off junior people for fear they would take their jobs? This makes no sense at all because junior people don't get permanent jobs at the expense of senior academics who already have permanent jobs.

It largely comes down to the timing. I've seen junior academics (who shouldn't really be supervising postgrads) tell some postgrads towards the end of the course things like, conditions are terrible, get out while you can. This a) means the junior academic has benefited from having a postgrad to supervise and b) prevents that postgrad from potentially rising up the ranks and becoming a competitor in the future.

This relates to the academic pyramid scheme which has been well documented over the years.

Out of interest, can you say why you wouldn't go down the academic route again? I'm just very confused on this issue. I know a few academics (from SL upto Professor level) and most of them like their jobs overall; I've shown them academics corner and most of them think it is over-the-top.

That is in contrast to people I know in other jobs who say they pretty much hate them.

Apologies I've completely derailed this thread.

I still don't understand: if a junior academic has a permanent position, then they aren't in competition against anybody else within the university. They can be promoted even if somebody else is promoted. It doesn't make any sense for them to put postgrads off because of fears of competition.

The competition argument only applies to those who don't have permanent jobs but those who are in the same boat tend (for the most part) to be sympathetic to each other.

Why wouldn't I do the job again: because academia is unrecognisable to what it was like 25 years ago. Lots of time spent on trivial and boring admin tasks; endless justification and meaningless measurement of everything we do; escalating teaching loads; escalating pressure to get grants when the amount of funding available is decreasing in real terms; pressure to direct research into areas of short term impact, even when our academic judgement says that other areas would be more worthwhile in the longterm; much less time to do research.

Academia has changed from 25 years ago, and I also bemoan the fact that the creeping, clammy grasp of neomanagerialism is now around the throat of the sector.
But things are relative - such neomanageralism is rampant in every other industry, where it took root a good 10 to 15 years before it did in the academic sector. It's now a feature of the public sector, and even the church of england now uses performance management techniques and sends off its bishops on executive mba courses.
At least there is still some security in academia, and the pay is reasonable on securing a permanent contract.
The big accountancy firms deliberately over-recruit knowing that they are going to cut a third of the new intake. Public sector is going through endless cuts. Long hours are a feature of many jobs, many of which are insecure and relatively poorly paid.
I just think there needs to be some perspective. It may be brutal inside academia, but outside academia tends to be brutal x 2.

I don't think your comparisons are entirely fair.

A lecturer earns around 40k. To get a lectureship in my field, you typically need a top degree, a PhD, at least six years of postdoctoral experience, so you are at least 30 and usually older. By contrast, in my subject area, the same level of ability/work would get you into jobs that pay a lot more than 40k ten years after graduating with a first degree. The "top" students who stay in academia are on a par in ability with the "top" achievers outside academia, not the middling ones. So one cannot compare generic relatively low pay graduate jobs with the kind of jobs outside academia that academics from my area can (and do) get.

Many of us work both inside academia and outside academia. I would dispute the claim that outside academia is brutal x 2. And academia is public sector - we are also forced to stick to 1% pay rises (i.e. well below inflation at the moment) plus cuts in resources, staff numbers etc.

Maybe you have a few academic friends who are currently coasting - but there are many departments where there are high risks of redundancies and very real pressures to raise performance continually. Redundancy for academics is also not remotely comparable to being made redundant from a typical job, where you can just apply for a similar job at another company.

Insightful points, and as I said, I'm just confused on the issue. I'm not debating this for the sake of having an argument, so thanks for your response.
Perhaps the academics I know are unusual, then, or in lucky positions in lucky institutions. One is in law and when I said to him that from reading Academics Corner, I had the impression academia is harder, if not as hard, as law, his reply was "Horseshit".
I would make some qualifications on the issue of pay. £40k for a starting salary is actually very good, particularly if it is in a provincial area of the UK; provincial lawyers with a similar period of training, for example, would think that a very good starting salary. It is then possible to become a Professor on £70k before the age of 45. That is very good money.
I think the financial sector, with its ridiculous salaries and bonuses, has inflated general expectations about what counts as a high salary.
On the redundancy issue, you are right, it is doubly scary, particularly for humanities academics. But the world of business is also very unstable and it can be difficult to transition out of an industry which has been utterly disrupted by technology, like working for a newspaper.
I'm really in two minds about whether academia is a good gig or a bad gig overall.

I don't know but some of my best lecturers are shit at research so I really hope you're not shafted ( I'm only MA at Lancaster though ) x

I also agree that the idea of junior academics putting their PhD students off academia because of competition is ridiculous. As a lecturer with a permanent position, I'm not in competition with anyone- I already have my job and if I apply for promotion it's not against anyone else (i.e. there's only one promoted position up for grabs- this year, my department promoted about five people from L to SL).

I don't put my PhDs off academia as such but I tell them the realities of the job and how the job is changing. It shocks me every year how naive PhD students are about academia. I understand how some people might interpret this as me putting them off but I'm not, I'm telling them the truth- we're subject to huge pressures, redundancies are a real risk, students are hugely demanded and our performance management (through REF, TEF, NSS and individual reviews) is completely flawed and unfair.

If my PhD students want academic jobs and get them, I'm always absolutely delighted for them and I'm always willing to help them get the job in any way possible (read over CVs, covering letters, practise interview skills).

I like (most) of my PhD students and I want them to do well in whatever they choose to do.

Far from being competition for me, I actually see PhD students who become academics as collaborators so it's actually beneficial for me if they land an academic job.

£40k for a starting salary

But it is NOT a starting salary. It is a salary for somebody in their 30s. A solicitor does not start their first job at 32+.

Professor on £70k before the age of 45

But this is not the norm - look how many academics in their 40s are not professors, despite working hard and producing good research. Some universities are turning down a lot of promotion applications to keep their salary bills down.

And again - somebody who makes professor by 40 would be likely to progress very well in other organisations and earn substantially more than £70k in a management position by the age of 45. You can't compare them with the "average" because they are very far from average. (I say this as somebody who earns well over 70k in academia - but also earns pro rata a mid six figure salary outside academia.)

"Some universities are turning down a lot of promotion applications to keep their salary bills down."
I didn't realise that was the case. Out of the five academics I've stayed good friends with, four of them made professor by their mid-40s. Occasionally they complain and say they think they could be earning more money outside of academia (being high achievers), but they think the security of academia is a big selling point.
Like I said most of them are happy overall and have said they find Academics Corner a bit exaggerated. My own understanding is the pressures are very real, and maybe this particular set of people find it easy to cope with intense pressure and are workaholics. Having read some of the above, it does seem to becoming a very difficult career; but it's hard to find a career which has not also become very difficult after decades of neo-liberalism.

@Suzie Quatro, you say 1) you have a permanent position and therefore you are not in competition with anyone and then 2) that redundancies are a very real threat.

user
you say 1) you have a permanent position and therefore you are not in competition with anyone and then 2) that redundancies are a very real threat

Yes, I have a permanent position so I'm not in competition with anyone to get a job.

Yes, redundancies are a very real threat but I meant across the whole sector (including administrative staff) not just for me and my colleagues individually.

In many universities the biggest risk of redundancy is via whole departments being cut - because of poor student numbers/research income. It's rather less likely that universities will just cut the bottom performers of specific departments.

In the latter case a low performer might be worried about how their performance compares to that of colleagues. In the former case the issue is not about competition with colleagues in the same field, but sustainability of their subject as a whole.

That was true user7214743615 but I am not sure it is any longer - look at the redundancies at University of Manchester for example. They have stated that they absolutely won't be closing any departments - instead they are trimming academics from multiple departments. Partly this may perhaps be a PR strategy - elsewhere Universities have faced a lot of public criticism for cutting whole departments.

And for the other user - those posts won't be replaced, so even in that situation permanent staff going does not lead to any chance of more junior academics getting a job (thus permanent posts simultaneously face no competition, but can still be insecure).

@Deianira, that was also my impression about how redundancies in the future will work, as that is what happens everywhere else. Although I think we could also see departments being shut, as happened in the 80s (if not whole universities given the overexpansion that's taken place on the back of tuition fee rises).
It's classic neoliberal performance management - set staff in competition with one another, tabulate their performance on a set of metrics, and "trim-the-fat" once a year by getting rid of the lowest performers on those (frankly ridiculous) metrics. The effect of all this is to build mistrust among colleagues and undermine morale.
I hope there is some kick-back from academics and they don't roll over like the rest of industry has had to do.
(Btw, these techniques were developed by researchers in a business school in the late 1970s - if only that business school had been shut down!)

General note: academics in the UK don't have tenure any more. We haven't had it for a long time (was that one of Thatcher's beautiful 'reforms'?). We have either fixed-term or permanent contracts, with variations of FTE (full-time equivalent) hours.

So we can have a contract for a permanent (or 'continuing') job from which we can be made redundant.

My place had a round of voluntary redundancy measures, with a nice incentive if you were quite near retirement age.

^I find research tedious, difficult and unrewarding
I do absolutely love the teaching so I don't really want to leave that behind.
I am a very good networker
I'm torn about this. I can see the benefits but those on the teaching only track are treated like second class citizens and it's very very hard to get promoted on the teaching track

All this should ideally being discussed in your PDR. Taking the first statement at face value (rather than due to a period of self doubt and low morale ) the only reason for you to continue to be employed in academia is for teaching and administration both of which you could contribute to.
If you are not interested in research and being productive yourself then you can't really help PhD students produce high impact research and publish. I am afraid that your last statement about promotion is not an option in any case for you from your research productivity so you need to focus on your strengths.
Don't forget that any employer values their employees by the income they bring and the bottom line is that research grant income alone, even for extremely successful departments, still results in a negative financial balance in the current climate for universities . Teaching and industry income (if possible) allow a department / university to be sustainable.
Ideally what is needed are high profile researchers who combine their research impact with a contribution to teaching aided by their postdocs; this model reduces staff costs. However usually that is insufficient to administrate and deliver teaching hence the importance of people like yourself.
I would suggest that you make the most of your skills including the networking and think about ways of bringing in income. That will give you recognition, increase the chances of retention and of promotion Could you create a new course that will involve several departments or can be a component of higher professional training for external money? Could you arrange short courses or seminars for companies?
I have no idea what your social science subject is of course but you have to think flexibly.

There are some odd ideas about academia on this thread, not least that £40k would be a starting salary in the provinces, try £25 on an associate temp research fellow contract for a couple of years post-doc and try and get a mortgage on that.

The other is that young staff are a threat to older well established ones. This might have been the case when younger PhD finishers were able to jump straight into lectureships but this hasn't been the case for many years, usually there's a 5 year or more post-doc period, and then only a few of those individuals will secure permanent jobs. So, the chances of your brilliant PhD student leaping in and challenging your position as a Reader or something is just laughable- they aren't able to command the grants, anything, I don't know in what way this could work. I love having younger brilliant PhD and post-docs working with me and do everything in my power to keep them in academia if that's what they want, because they make good collaborators (10 or more years my junior) and I love working with them. I do discourage some of the not very suited ones to think about jumping out at that point- there are many who have drifted in as they are very clever but don't know what to do in life and aren't likely to have successful academic careers either judging by their PhD/lack of pubs/conferences etc, general 'oomph', but I have never scuppered anyone with a bad reference, they could sue for a start!

My friends who are lawyers earn so much more than me, it's funny, however I don't envy them as I do genuinely love my job as an academic and think it has a lot to offer in terms of flexibility of working patterns, autonomy to research own interests and so forth, and as someone else has said, the neomanagerial target setting is everywhere, as are short contracts and the danger of redundancy, I work a lot with the public sector and have no desire to jump ship at present.

I also agree with whoever said if you can work in research groups or get on larger grants, this helps a lot, doesn't stop you working on your own projects, but if you work on your own all the time, you are bound to go slower and suffer from motivation issues, plus it is good to work collectively on social science issues anyway. Definitely start joining networks/research groups/contact people from the last conference you went to and start making it clear you would be up for collaboration- I have to say though, it's taken years for this to be a successful strategy for me, in tandem with working alone too. It's only now that I'm starting to build the critical mass of colleagues to work with where I have choices about what to do/who to work with, as opposed to feeling really quite on my own at times, I've seen other especially female colleagues go through this as they tend to neglect that side of things when family small/lack of flexibility to attend events, but even just making your presence felt in your own institution, attending research events there, may net you a good collaborator.