Lecturer salaries going down

[LCM001a]

I have noticed two London based lecturer posts advertised on Jobs.ac where the salary is £38,249 to £45,413 including London weighting.

These starting salaries are lower than when I became a lecturer 2 years ago and in fact are the same as an associate lecturer would get, or a research assistant, neither of whom have a PhD.

Is this where academia is heading, a race to the bottom salary wise where the expertise, expense and hard work of having a PhD is no longer recognised. Why bother when you can get a masters and a job at the same salary level, and probably more outside of academia.

Shockingly low, but I don’t think that anyone goes into academia for the money. There’s a huge over supply of PhDs and people wanting to be academics, so there’s little incentive to offer higher wages.

I've noticed that lecturer posts are being advertised at grade 7 whereas they used to be at grade 7/8. Same with senior lecturer, they're advertising at grade 8 where it used to be grade 9. With the sector being in financial ick, it's an easy way to reduce the wage bill.

It looks like they've dispensed with London Weighting? Those are Teaching Fellow (grade 6) salaries where I work (with the requirement of a PhD in my discipline, though I imagine that's not always the case with more industry-specific disciplines). Are they requiring postholders to do research? I get the impression that the move over the last few years to separate out T&S and T&R posts has created a lot more posts at this lower salary band. As well as being able to pay a lower salary, universities get more "hours" for their money.

These posts are for the University of Greenwich and LSBU, two universities that would attract a lot of applicants so they must be confident they can attract applicants.

I find it depressing that the very people that make universities work, highly qualified and skilled lecturers, are being underpaid and potentially de-skilled in their role. I can’t speak for the state of the finances of these universities, and perhaps this is a short term solution that will improve as universities get onto a better financial footing. And of course applicants can negotiate for better money, I know that I always do. However, not everybody who is new to academia may be confident in doing this.

There has been talk within the Russell Group about creating a lower Lecturer band for a while. [Edit] Universities like Greenwich and LSBU have had Lecturer roles at a lower level for a long time, with Senior Lecturer being the lowest role requiring a PhD and being paid at the level of Lecturers at other universities. This isn't something new for them, it is just a case of terminology not matching up across universities.

It's a reversion to how it was when I started my career 25 years ago, when Lecturer (and at some post-92s, Senior Lecturer), Research Fellow and Teaching Fellow (a rare job at the time) were all the same grade, the lowest grade someone with a PhD could be appointed to (which at most universities is what a job paying £38,249 to £45,413 today would be, i.e., you would need a PhD or equivalent experience to be paid that). At some point, Lecturer moved ahead a grade, effectively meaning in some disciplines it stopped being an entry-level position, leaving the more unstable, often short-term roles of RF and TF (now massively expanded in number) as the only post-PhD routes into the profession.

The creation of Lecturer roles at the equivalent level to RF / TF is partly designed to remedy that, while also recognising that someone at the very start of their career can do the job of a Lecturer but will likely not be working at quite the same level, or be equipped to take on the same responsibilities, as someone who has been in the job for a much longer time. It also, obviously, creates 'cheap' Lecturer jobs with all round teaching and research requirements and expectations akin to higher T&R roles, providing opportunities to reliably staff departments more cheaply, which is probably the reason we are seeing them emerge right now.

I’ve just taken a look at the universities’ pay scale again. In the last decade or so, some of the lower spinal points have either been abolished and had higher % pay increases than academic staff. The starting salary that the OP has indicated for the lecturer position is £8k more than the programme officer (formerly department secretary, before they got rid of that title as it was old fashioned) in my department earns. When you factor in the hours actually worked, it will be rather less than the PO’s wage.

The lower grades and spine points have been abolished due to living wage being higher than those points. Where I am the lowest grade and spine point is G3 point 14.