Office space

[nythbran2]

How common is it to have your own office as a senior academic (senior lecturer and up)? Where I am it is now rare, but I remember most academics having their own offices in the 90's.

It differs massively per university and discipline. But many places are trying to phase it out as much as possible. With wfh becoming more common individual offices are vastly underused. Many academics, as you would imagine, are very put out.

Prof with a big research group - I share
but it varies massively in our school

it drives me (and my colleague i share with) absolutely insane between our online meetings and the constant stream of students and staff coming in and out to discuss projects

Every member of academic staff has their own office here (Russell Group Engineering).

I've had my own office since I was a full-time lecturer. But 30 years later, it's looking like I"m going to have to share - I have a large research team coming in next year and we have no space! Not looking forward to it, I'm afraid.

Even a tiny office of my own would make such a difference to getting concentrated work done (do that at home now), or meeting with students/staff. Currently it is very difficult to find space for private conversations, and you don't always know in advance if a student meeting is going to lead into difficult waters

My 7 desk office is shared with one FT lecturer, one 0.5 lecturer and 34 sessional zero hours contract lecturers. Two desks are assigned and the other 5 are hot desked. Russel group Humanities dept.

SL here and we sit in a massive open plan office that looks more like a call centre than anything remotely academic. It's a tough environment to think, mark or have an online meeting and I get easily distracted into conversations.

We have an 'expectation' to be on campus 60% of the week. It's a nightmare

This is very dependent on discipline. Anything vaguely scientific tends to have shared offices (generalising obv) as labs take up so much space. Even profs share in my department. Only the head of dep has his own

Same here. (RG business school.)

I must admit I miss the open plan office from my days in the financial services though.

RG prof here in science. i've had my own office since I became a lecturer 17+ years ago, always big enough to host meetings of 4-6 students too.

postdocs & phds share 4 to an office, and people who are part time or emertius have to share (normally not in on the same day).

I could not have confidential conversations with students if I had a shared office, it would be unworkable.

@parietal - i can confirm... it is unworkable

I didn't know that many permanent/senior academics had to share offices! In my department anyone on a permanent contract has their own office. Postdocs are 2 to an office, PhDs and research assistant 2-4 to an office.

My husband WFH so I tend to go to campus 5 days a week. Not sure how I'd manage if I didn't have a private work space at home or on campus.

Whoa! 34 zero hours lecturers! I had no idea anything like that many could possibly be workable! I've done some piecemeal contract work at points to top up my basic role but I always had the sense that people in some sort of term post were the mainstay of teaching. I'm amazed at 34! How the hell is it all coordinated and coherent?! The office must be like a bus station.

A quiet place to think and have conversations seems so fundamental to academia. Maybe the assumption of management is that we do all our thinking after hours at home? I suppose they have no idea of the chaos of my house most evenings

Each does between 1 and 3 modules and most never come in to the office. There are about 6 or 7 regulars who I see (I'm the 0.5) just before lectures. The rest disperse in common areas, the break room, or the 'cupboards' which are small windowless rooms that you can hire out for confidential meetings. Or they WFH and only go into the lecture halls.

Hot desking is the official policy for everyone, although some Proffs in some depts still commonly have private offices.

Meeting rooms are easy to book if need private conv.

With hot dealers of office sharers, what happens about all your books?! I have acquired so many and have heebeejeebies wondering what will happen if my next post has no storage for them. (I know, I know, there are worse things than not having an insane second hand book collection but still )

I think most people keep their books (aside from library books) at home.

I'm not hotdesking (again) yet but tbh, I don't have academic books any more. Who ever reads them? We have some shelves at work heaving with vintage unread scientific journals & magazines and such.

I have a stats book at home. My thesis is at home. I sold most copies of the book I coauthored & a few copies are packed away; I wonder if DC will care about it. Sporadically at work we see huge piles of books being "offered for free" and I think most of them go to recycling, instead.

When I hotdesked before I had a large drawer for my stuff. I think large baskets might be the system now. I will miss consistent storage and hate lugging laptop & all my stuff (to make work comfortable) back and forth, but that might be how it happens.

@MedSchoolRat I think it varies by disciple. Im in the Humanities and have a ton of books that I use regularly. Not all of them are available electronically. My challenge is that I don’t necessarily know what books I’m going to need from one day to the next. That means I’m tied down to wherever I have them stored.

All academic staff in my university (not RG) have their own offices, except for a few part timers, but even most of those do. I treasure my own space. However, there's no denying that many of these offices stand empty a lot of the time, as increasingly more and more people work from home when they aren't actually teaching students face to face.

In my RG STEM School older permanent staff below professorial rank have small individual offices. Some new lecturers share as do all fixed term staff. Older professors have large offices but we have run out of these.

The more recent buildings are all about hot desking and booking meeting rooms for everyone, allegedly on the grounds that STEM is built on collaboration. No one believes this rationale.

In general we have two people per office (SLT and long-time professors have their own) and they try to match up people who are in a lot with people who hardly ever come in. My office mate lives two hours away and only comes in a couple times a week during term, otherwise I have it to myself.

I would be really lost without a decent office as I have several hundred books in there and no good space at home.

I could never in a million years hot-desk it. I don't understand how anyone gets any work done!!

We're RG, STEM, and almost everyone, professors and HoD included, shares. Not sure how things could be improved without a new building!

RG, social science, SL.

My department has recruited lots of new staff over the last four years. We are seriously strapped for space
We're housed in crappy old buildings which are listed and so can't be changed/expanded.

Before our hiring drive, I had my own office for about six years.
Now I share an office.

I hate it. I can't work in it.

I WFH as much as physically possible. Even when I'm in work, I set myself up in a cafe. Our HoD is very keen for everyone to be around as much as possible but I refuse to do so while I'm sharing an office.