If you work in a university outside of academia...

[dutofu]

What do you do? And do you enjoy it?

Just that really. I work in university admissions but keen to know what other roles are out there.

There an Academic Common Room section under Work that might attract more attention so you can get some more responses 👍🏻
I’m academic, just what you don’t want 🤣

Thanks! Will ask to have it moved!

I worked in the library for a long time and am now in student experience. Love both!

Surely you're aware of other professional service depts at your own university All universities have pretty much the same functions.

I knew someone who was IT administrator.

There are hundreds of different types of jobs in professional services/administration and each uni is slightly different. I'm curious to know what others do, what it involves and if they enjoy it. What's so strange about that? It's not like I work closely with people in every department and and know what roles exist within each department in any great detail.

Well, I'm following this thread with interest. Trying to break into the HE industry but proving unsuccessful so far!

I work as a surveyor in the business park attached to the university.

I found that from an outside perspective (before I started my current role) the number of different types of work encompassed by "university administration" seemed huge. Often I only discovered a role existed when I saw it advertised. Do you have a specific role in mind?

What do you do in student experience? Are you working directly with students or is it more data-focused?

Recently left HE after 20 years. Worked in planning/student finance/quality assurance/ student administration.

i don’t miss…

• Internal politics


• external politics (OfS consultations are no longer a feature of my life)


• unsustainable workloads, particularly for academic colleagues - meaning you know that people can never do everything they’re expected to do at the standard they want to


• the fact that despite the fact everyone worked So Hard through the pandemic, students got a really tough deal that I found difficult to defend.

but I do miss

• a really international feeling community, that looks across the world for peers


• a sector that has completely changed in 20 years (yes, driven by consumer preference issues but still it’s been exciting to be part of that change…)


• the knowledge around the place - there are clever people everywhere, and I’m the first to say a phd is a test of stamina and not intelligence, but you get a lot of interesting conversations


• the annual leave


• (a privilege of the role I was in) the diversity of things I was working on.

i wonder if I will return in the future but for now being outside is great, even if my new job is incredibly dull and frustrating. If you don’t already, sign up to wonkhe- you get a view on all sorts of HE issues that might not be what you know about and give you an idea on what some of your colleagues are thinking about.

I work in widening access. I love it, but it’s a bit crap being thought of as the poor relationship within the uni.

Information compliance e.g. FOI and Data Protection (GDPR). My aim is to secure a dull job!

@Squeezedsquash Thanks for the tip and for the detailed response.

I find HE a frustrating place to work in some ways, I think in large part because the ideal of 'the university' and the reality don't always match up. I feel very uneasy about the way HE is going (and has been going for decades now) and the workloads seem very unevenly spread. On the other hand, my colleagues are all interesting, intelligent people and seeing how a big institution operates from the inside, seeing how decisions are made etc. is fascinating.

Outside of? 🙄

My DSis finds placements for health students

Legal

convincing academics actually yes they do need a contract and it does need specific terms and yes they do need to manage data securely and in line with legislation….

I'm not British, is this considered incorrect in an informal context?

I work as a registered health professional in a really niche area of female health care for a famous uni.

How did you get into this? Do you have a law background?

I work in admin within a geography department. I don't love the work but equally I don't hate it. I like the people I work with and the flexibility- I worked from home 3 days a week pre-pandemic and no sign of having to go in at all now, and we get very generous holidays including extra time off at Easter and Christmas. It's a 9-5 job with zero stress - I don't get involved with any internal politics and am just left alone to manage my own schedule plus it pays pretty well for what I do. I guess in answer to your question OP, I don't love the job, but I love the work-life balance it affords me.

We received GDPR training from the Information Commisioner's Office. You might like to contact them to see if they can provide training in house

I work in student recruitment / marketing. I really enjoy it overall but the day-to-day workload can feel relentless. It's mainly stakeholder and project management.

I work with students, that's what I enjoyed about working in the library and I wanted something similar.

I work in so-called professional services. It’s the oddest place I’ve ever worked and a joke compared with the corporate sector. I have numerous colleagues who stretch out a two day a week job to fill five days, not helped by antiquated IT systems! From the inside, I’m genuinely shocked that such a revered institution runs much as it did in the 1970s.

I’ll give it another year as it’s convenient, local and fits in the with the DC but this is not where I want my career to be. Ironically I seem to have a good reputation and keep being promoted. I have to tell myself that this is only in comparison with Sheila (not her real name) who’s only stringing it out until retirement and Lucy (not her real name) who has the worst sickness record of all time… I’ve never met such a crowd of work-shy malingerers until here - it makes me laugh when people moan they’re busy and I sit there thinking I’d have done their whole week’s work in half a day ten years ago. High volume output is neither expected nor encouraged… I could have done another job on the side whilst working from home during the pandemic, had I not had the DC to homeschool.

On the plus side, long holidays and zero stress. Salaries are also low compared with the cost of living in our city and then HR moan about the constant (300?) vacancies 🤯 but there is stability, which seems to be prized above all else. Madness!