Anyone regret going part time in an academic role?

[Fishfire]

I'm at one of the many places beset by redundancies. I'm currently full time, head of department.

I saw another job, applied and got it. It's the same grade but just standard Reader role so no big responsibilities like HoD which might be career limiting?

It's 0.6, so obviously earning less (they've matched my spine point but obviously 40% less than current full time salary). I can just about cope with less money coming in, but is 0.6 just more stressful trying to fit everything in? Is it impossible to do research?

My job is at my local uni, so there's also a commute to consider at the new place (1.5 hours each way).

Has anyone regretted going part time? Or giving up the local option? Or is it best in these times to grab what you can that looks secure (new uni seems to be much better off but who can tell)?

Really, it’s down to you as to how firm you can be not working 2 days a week?
But yes, likely that the research will suffer. I did none at 0.6, squeeze in some at 0.8.
To be honest I’m paid for four days, but aim to work 5 shorter ones as this suits me.

something to consider: realistically, it seems unlikely that you would be on campus every one of your 3 days? Do you get a sense of how acceptable it is to work from
home and for what proportion?

That's a good point. I think there'd be in person classes for at least two of those days, and I'd be expected to be in at least once a week all year round (they seem to have a limit on WFH). So hopefully at home at least once a week even in term but I guess depends on meetings etc.

That's what I feared about the no research at 0.6. I was hoping that at least the pay cut would give me more free time but I might just end up trying to catch up with research etc in the evenings! They also seen keen on wed-Fri so I'll not sure about leaving students hanging on for replies from sat to wed or if I'll end up logging on in Mondays and Tuesdays.

I guess I'm leaning towards preferring being full-time, but I'm worried about having to step back down to lecturer/have an even worse commute if I do get made redundant in the next few months and there's no jobs around.

If someone joined my school at Reader with HoD experience, they'd find themselves with a significant leadership role very very quickly. Less so in DH's school. So I'd try get a feeling for their staffing levels and the risk of that. The 0.6 may save you as it's hard to do a leadership role when you're down on hours which may save you or result in you working FT for PT pay.

I dropped down to 0.8 in a redundancy crisis. Basically that meant that I kept my current workload (already over 1fte) but it wasn't increased with new teaching etc. I viewed it essentially as subsidising my own research time. It has kind of worked but I wouldn't do it again, primarily because my personal circumstances changed dramatically and the salary cut has been much more challenging than I expected when I started it.

In your position, some things I would be asking:

• How precarious is your current post? (admissions projections?)
• How vulnerable is your institution? (and is this temporary or deep-seated? Could a change in govt maybe result in rapid change?)
• Is the new institution really in a better position? (And if so, why are they offering readerships at fractional contracts?).
• What is your next step? Is this a stepping stone to 1fte at the same institution or to somewhere else? If you need to maintain a good research output, I can't see that will be possible at 0.6fte without working additional hours. As in my position - are you ok with essentially self-funding your research for a year or two? (note that I definitely don't think that we should be ok with this, but it does seem to be the reality for a lot of institutions right now)
• Which job do you actually want? I read a book a while ago with a title that seems very apt for this - what would you do if you weren't afraid? This is worth thinking about particularly in light of the comment above - if you move to your new institution as an experienced leader, you will almost certainly find you are expected to take on leadership roles. If you ended up in much the same position at the new institution, would that be better or worse than your current place?

I work 0.6 and have done for 8 years (most of my career) for child care reasons. It works well for me. I do get time for research, although when it’s busy this inevitably gets squeezed. My research is maybe smaller scale than some people’s, but I don’t think worse. My career has progressed more slowly, but that’s also child/maternity leaves related.

On leadership, it has been a challenge to say that eg 0.2 of a FT role is more hours than 0.2 of a PT role (!) so you do have to willing to put in boundaries. Probably harder to do if you’re new? When I was more junior I didn’t and that was hard. I work Wed-Fri. I normally check my emails but would only respond if there was something really urgent. I tell my students my working days and that I won’t respond outside these from the beginning and it hasn’t been a problem.

Oh on bigger leadership roles my institution has been happy for people to job share roles as long as they can suggest sensible ways of doing it. Depends on the institution I guess.

Thanks that's reassuring about student contact.

Hmmmm, the leadership thing is interesting. I think I liked the idea of being HoD but in actual fact I don't like it, I thought there'd be some input into strategy/focus/approaches for the department, but all I seem to do is tell the Dean that what he's proposing will be problematic for x reasons (or we can do it but can't magic up more student contact/marking time without stopping something else), I get ignored and then have to deal with implementing it with people who have the objections I anticipated! So I really don't want another leadership role, I fell into it really as getting promoted above SL is almost impossible here so HoD was the only way for a salary increase.

What would you do if you weren't afraid is a good question. I hate the people management side. I love teaching and research. So I guess my ideal job is getting to Prof level and getting a bit more freedom over both. I think the new job might do this more, to be frank I've not done much research since taking the HoD role as it's a huge time suck. I think I'm afraid of being seen to step down and then not being able to get back up the ladder if this new job doesn't work out, and I'm also afraid of really regretting losing my only local opportunity, realistically it might be five -ten years before I could come back if I realised I made an error and the flexibility of a local job is enough to compensate for everything else. Equally I'm afraid of turning this job down, being made redundant and then not getting anything else.

Oh also, current programme and institution both quite precarious, I think a new government would help but we've still got a big deficit to deal with even if student fees went up etc. I think we'll definitely lose at least one person on the teaching team, I am maybe more protected by being HoD but also it's a small department so I think they could easily merge us with another and then one of the HoDs would go. It's really hard to tell though so I might sail through unscathed.

I think the new institution is doing better, student numbers a lot larger and seem to have realistic plans for growth (but who knows, they could always announce VS tomorrow!). The 0.6 thing is just because of expanded numbers, but they haven't expanded to an FTE I think. It was one of those ones advertised at a range of grades (8-9 I think), so I don't think they were particularly looking for Reader level, and initially offered at SL, but managed to argue about not taking a salary drop and keeping same grade (I just about met their Reader requirements).

Put it this way, I haven't regretted going PT and haven't met anyone who has regretted going PT - but I have met people who have regretted going into management. So I think it's the HoD part of your situation that is the problem, and the offer of a PT role which is also a non-HoD role that is the opportunity. The key to being PT is that it is a very effective tool for saying no. So you have to be clear about what you will and will not do, but it puts you in such a better position to negotiate about this: whereas a FT colleague may just look like they are shirking by saying no to an additional responsibility, a PT colleague has every right to do so if it would be on top of their contractual hours. So as long as you are clear from the start that you definitely do not want a leadership role, your job offer sounds a good chance to refocus away from leadership back to teaching and research, as well as improve your work-life balance. And yes, you just put up an autoreply on your non-working days and tell students which are your working days: it feels refreshing to be able to do this. The disadvantage is that, yes, you will have less research time, unless you are willing to do research for free in your own time. But due to ever expanding admin etc many FT academics are doing that too - which is much more worrying as it means they are working unsafe hours over 100% of FT to the detriment of their health and wellbeing, so that is not a definitive argument against going PT. Finally, 0.6 does not quite mean a 40% pay cut, as you need to take into account tax savings from a lower salary, as well as reduced commuting and lunch costs from travelling fewer days. Unless FT colleagues at your new university are expected to be on site 5 days a week (which should be a red flag anyway), there is no way a colleague on 0.6 FTE should be on site 3 days a week. So I would advise making it clear that you will only be on site 2 days a week. Hope that helps!

That's, that's really helpful! And hopefully it'll be true about regretting management and not the part time for me as well!

I definitely work way over my hours as it is, and I think you're right that I feel I can't say no as easily as I might be able to with part time hours.

I think it's that I've been burned before - I briefly went to 0.6 years ago after mat leave and my marking got reduced to 0.6 and nothing else (in fact I ended up teaching on an extra module that semester)! I think I'd be more assertive now though plus hopefully as it's been designed as 0.6 it will be different from dropping hours.