Anyone else not striking?

Not working yourself into the ground trying to be excellent at everything is a good strategy. However (in the field I work in at least) the requirements for promotion in reality are somewhat lower than the official 'always excellent at everything' criteria. So I'd suggest still keeping an eye on the career progressions of contemporaries with similar profiles, and if/when they're getting promoted then seriously consider applying yourself.

I am really depressed about the pension cuts, I feel we've been a bit cheated by the low valuation during Covid.

Totally agree with all you've written about the individual competition hollowing out strike action though.

I'm glad to see some sanity here since I also treat my uni role like a job not some intense calling. Unis are corps now, they will never love you back, as today's decision shows.

Bit sad for the profession these days. I hope people don't go into it tbh! With lecturer starting salaries as low as £38k in London it's becoming hugely unattractive. Students coming out of our Masters courses will be on a starting salary of £33k and I don't even want to think about what the data science grads will earn.

On the topic of "not putting in more effort than necessary" we have been told we must put 2 comments on every page of an essay. And no, a tick or a smiley face won't do. I tend to highlight awkward phrasing and make a note in feedback that I've highlighted parts that are hard to understand.
But no, one colleague "privately advised me" (he - you won't be surprised - is often privately advising me) that I should be suggesting an alternative wording every time. I'm not their blooming proof reader!

I mean on balance I’d rather have a DB scheme due to the certainty but it’s so disingenuous to make out that the DC element won’t produce any growth whatsoever. It’s more of a risk because the burden of underperformance is borne by the employee but it’s quite unlikely that it will produce nothing and that profs will be living on 9k a year. Lots of people who don’t know anything about pensions will believe that (I saw someone say that he can think of no pension scheme in existence that is worse than USS). Why do they want to fearmonger and depress people even more? No wonder some of them feel they need counselling.

I have seen this £9k figure used on SM a lot over the past few days, almost as if it will be the norm for profs in the scheme. Does anyone know where it comes from? I assume they must be taking someone joining the scheme now and then assuming continuing high inflation plus the imposition of the cap (and ignoring the DC part).

Here are the projections for someone who has recently joined the profession (assumed birth year 1992, so 30 years old). Current salary: 43k (lecturer), assume 55k by 2026 (promotion to SL) and 70k by 2032 (promotion to reader/prof). Not a hugely unrealistic career trajectory.

Predicted DB income: £14,700 p/a
Predicted lump sum (mainly made up of DC): £406,000

Don’t anyone DARE say they will be living in poverty in old age. Those profs who claim they will be scraping by on 9k have put in their date of birth and it assumes they are joining the scheme NOW, not 15-20 years ago when it was a final salary scheme. The UCU calculator doesn’t have an option to put in a start date. It deliberately gives out misleading information which is now doing the rounds on Twitter. People seem to be completely forgetting the hundreds of thousands that their DC scheme is likely to produce and only focusing on the DB income (which only looks dire when it thinks you are 50 and just starting to pay into a pension).

I wonder if it’s because most profs are on not much more than the professorial floor of £65k? If you use that as a figure you come out with a DB sum of £8.5k a year.

Oh that is really interesting about the UCU modeller. It explains the massive discrepancy between my DB amount from the USS modeller and the UCU modeller. UCU was 7.5k and USS was 14.

I'm actually quite confused about the salaries being mentioned. I'm at the top of SL/Reader at my Uni, and not yet to £50K. Very close - so close I fill out Self Assessment each year, to discover I'm a few hundred away from needing to pay back any Child Benefit (this year it was less than £100! Might owe some next year). But it seems some SL/Reader are on a lot more? Although, personally, I feel really 'rich' - I still haven't gotten over how wonderful it is to buy able to buy whatever groceries I want without having to worry if I can afford them. If I want to eat it, I can buy it!

And I've just applied to Prof - according to the payscales on our website, the next slot (Prof level) is something like £1.5K over my current salary. I've also heard that there used to be no regular spine increase, so many Profs just stayed on the bottom rung until retirement. But they've now instituted some kind of additional scale-within, such that you can go up 3 spine points automatically, and then stop, unless you somehow meet the next scale. Not quite sure how you move between scales. I suppose I hope I find out! Or maybe you can't. Someone from another University told me she was on the button Prof rung, and also expected to stay there - she said the only way to get higher at her Uni was to be hired from outside and appointed at a higher level (at which you then stayed). She was a bit bitter about that, but personal reasons meant staying at that Uni was the best choice for her.

I might be overestimating Prof salaries but surely they jump up a spine point each year like most of us and don’t just sit at the bottom rung? So I’d have thought 70 is fairly realistic, although I wouldn’t know as I am not a prof

Many universities have introduced Professorial Pay Bands in the last view years, so there are less automatic increments than previously. Typically ~75k is where you now 'top out', unless you want/can jump through more promotion hoops. [Incidentally the way that this has been done has sometimes been somewhat inept, but the outrage has, IMHO, been larger than justified...]

Here are the projections for someone who has recently joined the profession (assumed birth year 1992, so 30 years old). Current salary: 43k (lecturer), assume 55k by 2026 (promotion to SL) and 70k by 2032 (promotion to reader/prof). Not a hugely unrealistic career trajectory.

In my (STEM) field getting to £70k by 40 would be fairly unusual. However the projections wouldn't change much for a more realistic/typical trajectory.

Many universities have introduced Professorial Pay Bands in the last view years, so there are less automatic increments than previously. Typically ~75k is where you now 'top out', unless you want/can jump through more promotion hoops.

That's too low as an estimate within research intensive universities. I receive benchmarking data for my disciplines (STEM) & the mean professor salary is above 75k. Top 10% is typically above 95k or so.

I agree that the salary progression has been slowed in recent years by the introduction of bands and the removal of automatic increments, but there are still many professors on salaries much higher than 75k.

Take a look at scales at UCL as an example:

www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/pay-benefits/salary-scales/professorial-banding-structure-20212022

First band tops out at 87k + London weighting.

I also have median benchmarking data. It isn't that different, as the number of very highly paid is not high & balances against those just entering the professorial payscales.

Places like Nottingham do top out their lowest band at around 75k, but they have more bands. It's not true that almost all professors in such universities are in the lowest bands - they tend to be spread mostly over the bottom two bands, which together go up to around 90k.

As ever those professors who are hired externally typically have salaries that are higher than those who have been promoted internally. This is a big underlying cause of the gender pay gap within the professoriate, as women are of course less able to move.

I might be overestimating Prof salaries but surely they jump up a spine point each year like most of us and don’t just sit at the bottom rung?

No we don’t.

Well, certainly not at any of the 3 institutions where I’ve been a professor. Currently, I am invited to apply for a salary increment every 2 years. Actually it’s been 3 because COVID, and there was talk of salary band G and H staff taking a 20% pay cut over COVID so the university could keep paying TAs. I wasn’t opposed to that and am currently NOT charging a lot of research-related travel to my research grant so I can keep my postdoc in their contract for another couple of months extra given the dire state of jobs in our bit of the field.

Anyhow, the only way I get the incremental increase I’m invited to apply for is by landing a large grant, or taking on a big admin/leadership role. Mostly my “research” time is spent facilitating others’ research. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed at SL level at a nice quiet rural university …

Some of the things that colleagues complain of “them” doing - particularly the performative radicals on Twitter - are done by people like me, because we spend a lot of time facilitating other people’s careers. These are things I could (should) say No to, but then, who would do the work?

Another I’m on £50k as a lecturer. Not London, either. I’m surprised top of reader band isn’t 50k for you

We have externals being appointed to prof over £100k, it causes some disquiet among the people who work their way up internally

But I do agree that prof and 70k by age 40 is not a usual career path to use for modelling!

Okay point taken that that might be a bit early to become prof, although at my Uni, the reader scale goes up to 71k so would include that.

In my discipline (soc sci) at a pre-92 institution, not London, the following are normal salaries:

Lecturers: 40-51k
SL: 50-62k
Reader/Assoc prof: 60-71k
Prof: who knows but I think 70k is a pretty modest estimate

I’m an SL on about 52k and fairly recently promoted. I move up every year one spine point.

Also, making prof/reader in 12 years is really not unusual in my discipline but I appreciate it is in others.

Even with a lower salary estimate, poverty is unlikely on a scheme with 21% employer contribution.

Thanks GCAndProud yes you must be right it comes from the UCU modeller and the modeller only takes account of your future accrual not the entitlement you've already built up.

Under the new system the maximum DB you can build up each year is 40000/85 = 470.59 so it looks as if mid-career people are using it, looking at 20ish year remaining contributions and coming up with a number around £9k and saying that is their total pension. The reality is that people at that stage of career probably already have at least that much in the existing scheme and will be building up 20% of their salary over 40k in the DC part.

Another I’m on £50k as a lecturer. Not London, either. I’m surprised top of reader band isn’t 50k for you

I think this might be to me... this is really illuminating. I clicked around some more on the UCL site and found their non-prof bands. That actually looks a lot like ours - I'm at the top of 8 there, which is just budging over £50K for the current year with the non-London values, so probably I'm right that next tax year I'll break the £50K barrier (I think there is also some magic the Uni does with contributions that lower your taxable salary, so that could be part of it too).

So it seems like at my Uni what is called SL/Reader is on the similar scale to Lecturer at other Unis (or maybe at bigger, research-intensive Unis?). I had really thought things were more consistent across places. And Prof here starts a lot closer to where GCAndProud says their SL starts! I checked a bit more, and there is more of jump than I remembered - so if I get to prof it would be about £53-54K.

Seems like I might be able to make a lot more money by getting an SL job at another Uni... but I really have no appetite for moving.

I am at a big, old, research intensive place. I don’t know if that makes a difference. Our prof scale starts at 64k

But if you don’t want to move this doesn’t help!

I should also reiterate that I am really disappointed with the cuts and I totally understand that people are angry about it. My issue is with terms such as poverty being chucked about and people claiming they will be scraping by when that is blatantly untrue. I also don’t know why UCU would try to create the impression that people will be living in poverty when in reality they have built up an excellent pension over the years and won’t be hit as much by the cuts.

I agree very much with this. IF you look at the UCU modeller FAQs then it is clearly explained that is only concerned with future and not past service and that there will be a/a larger DC sum for anyone earning above £40k here There is also a link to USS's own modeller which does give you an accurate personal forecast including past service here

It can also depend on policies about where universities place new hires on the various grade scales.

I used to work at a big civic RG place - one of the original redbricks. As a professor, my salary wasn’t amazing there, but they were far more generous at the bottom of the scale - they tended to put entry level lectures a few points up the scale. Which was a good thing.

I was headhunted to go elsewhere just as they started to band professors - I was offered that I’d go straight intoBand 2 (better than starting, not quite Nobel prizewinning) if I stayed.

Where I moved to, I’ve found the professorial money good(subject though to what I’ve written above) but it’s an RG university which is well-known for heavy workloads, so I bloody earn it.

The other drawback to where I am is that they tend to place new hires at the lowest salary pint within a grade. There is relatively swift promotion if you tick all the boxes - I’ve mentored entry level, newly minted postdocs into SL in under 5 years. But the starting salary for lecturers is the lowest they can get away with, so we sometimes lose “hot” properties! Well we did in the days of REF horse trading …