I'm an academic and I've dedicated 5 years of my life to getting here and DH wants me to leave my job....

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Just that really DH hates my job and wants me to leave. I have spent the last 3 years doing a PhD, which I completed early last year with no issues and was extremely lucky to walk straight into a permanent senior lectureship (like gold dust in my sector!). However the strain on universities now and what they expect from their staff is immense (or maybe it is just my institution?!). To do my job well (which is the only I way I want to work) I have to put in 50+ hours a week, often more, and continuously dart from stressful situation to stressful situation. I've seen a number of colleagues go off on long term stress and mental health problems, which sadly then increases the strain on the rest of the team. The thing is I love my job, I absolutely love it, I just don't like the amount of it I am supposed to do on a weekly basis.
Dh, quite rightly I feel, hates it, he feels it is impeding too much on our family time, quality of life and more than anything my emotional state - which impacts on me as a parent etc. He is extremely supportive at home and takes on 80% of the household stuff and children school runs etc. I've tried lowering my work load, seeking support from management etc and all to no avail. I'm expected to teach a ridiculous number of hours (with all the prep, assessment and marking that comes with that), oversee students well-being, provide students with one to one support, carry out high level research, generate income, publish high level academic articles, oh and of course write a book or two on the way.... Just not sure where to turn - stick it out and hope it gets easier, or go back to the career I had where I was on equal money, and closed my inbox down at 5pm each day, but I was unhappy!

But I also have enough respect for those whom I'm caring for to not brag about doing 'just enough.'

Nobody is 'bragging' about it, are they? It's just being pointed out that there are not enough hours in the day for academics to do every aspect of their job to the highest possible standard, and they will burn out if they try.

You sound like you are speaking from a healthcare perspective, so answer me this: are NHS GPs giving the best possible care to their patients at all times, or are they mostly doing "just enough" to deal with one specific problem within a 10 minute appointment? Are NHS nurses giving the best possible care in an overcrowded ward, or are they doing "just enough" to keep things from collapsing? Why should academics in an overstretched education system be any different?

If someone is paying 3x more for something, it's right to expect the service to also be higher - the same as it is with anything else we purchase.

But the universities didn't get 3x more money when they increased the fees. In fact, they didn't get any extra money, so how can you expect an improved service?

If someone is paying 3x more for something, it's right to expect the service to also be higher - the same as it is with anything else we purchase.

You seem to be suffering under the quite common misapprehension that universities got more funding when tuition fees went up. The point was never to give universities more, it was to save the government money (which it hasn't much done). You've actually put your finger on the whole problem - student expectations have, not unreasonably, rocketed now they're paying more, but resources haven't. So how do you square that circle? By making academics - like OP - essentially do it in their free time. Like the poster above, I'm quite surprised you don't recognise the 'deliver more but without costing any more' problem since it sounds like you're a doctor?

I actually think there's a big difference in how different lecturers and different students define "good teaching", though. And this is one of those much wider questions that has to be answered about the scope and purpose of a degree.

For many who are pushed for time, a "just good enough" lecture might be one that delivers a series of fairly straightforward points about a topic in a fairly entertaining way. This is actually what students tend to want; it's a style that is rewarded time and time again in student surveys. "Just give us a list of bullet points we can learn to regurgitate" is the message.

But actually, we know that there's a whole raft of teaching that would be better than this. We look at lectures by the greats, by the boundary-pushers, and we measure ourselves against them. But, in the current climate, if we were to deliver lectures on a par with this - and this is sad - the vast majority of students would complain that they were too complex, too challenging, too difficult. And the lecturer would probably end up being disciplined.

What is good teaching? Delivering a lecture that will get someone through a degree? Or delivering something field-defining and boundary-pushing that is historically important? Most parents and students think the former, and in most places the conditions within universities militate against the delivery of anything else. Students-as-consumers would probably have greats like Wittgenstein in performance measures.

And to answer the point about "complaining to the employer", actually in the best cases results come from students and lecturers recognising that they have cause in common in ensuring that the educational experience is the best it can be.

I opted out of academia so perhaps not the best person to advise you but in my opinion you need a strategy to survive an academic job.

One strategy is to be a very good researcher. This is not just a matter of being good at your research but also it's about choosing a trendy topic (i.e. one that funding bodies are interested in), being good at networking to build a team of researchers and being excellent at applying for grants. Once you get a grant you are more likely to get another one, etc. You also need to publish strategically, papers in top tier journals and monographs only. Don't waste time on outputs that are either not valued in REF or not valued highly, e.g. textbooks, book reviews, chapters in collections from conferences. Spend as little time on teaching and admin as possible. This way you likely to be headhunter by other institutions and have more chance of ending somewhere where they value research and protect your time.

Another strategy is to join the dark side. Apply for valuable admin posts, do them well and apply for the next one up heading for Dean. The salary is decent, there is a lot of admin but you have leeway to then drop either all research or all teaching. This way you can be on top of the pile in your institution and less affected by the vagaries of HE policy.

A third strategy is to go for a teaching only contract. Here you know that you get what it says on the tin. Teaching the same courses makes life a lot easier, do minimal admin and it's a lot easier to close the door at home and forget about work.

Sorry, x-post, notdavid!

I think the posts blaming students right now is more annoying than the original comments

You mean the posts talking about increasing expectations that students have? I didn't read them as blaming, but as highlighting the fact that it's important (if we're going to be able to do all aspects of our jobs) to manage student expectations. Students won't realise that we don't have endless hours to discuss essay plans with them unless we tell them, or set boundaries.

On a related note, the policy on tuition fees as turned students into consumers who want their money's worth (understandably!) yet it's their lecturers, as the staff they interact with most, who are expected to provide this extra value for money, even though we don't get any extra time or money to do so. We don't like the consumerist direction that higher education is taking any more than students. It's the politicians and the University bureaucrats who are the villains here, not the lecturers.

Needs saying: to be research active is to solve problems that are important and have not yet been solved. Almost by definition, these are at the limit of human capability to solve. There may be fields where you can make progress by turning the handle while exhausted - but I can't think of any. In my field, if you are exhausted, you are not doing high quality research: human brains don't work that way. So all the people thinking they, or worse other people, should be working 60+ hours a week: nonsense. That way, the research side of the job simply doesn't get done (poor quality research, the kind you might produce when exhausted, actually isn't research, in the sense that it doesn't advance human knowledge) and then, neither does the research-led teaching students are paying for. Maybe other posters' jobs aren't like that, but ours are.

You were employed for the quality of your brain. If you then take your brain down to half power, you're not doing your job.

I think it's also worth pointing out that 'quicker' doesn't always equal 'worse', perhaps especially with teaching. My lectures improved greatly when I stopped writing scripts for them. It also saved me about 15 hours of work on each one.

I assure you, the first of my team - doctors or nurses - to tell me they're aiming for 'Just good enough' in patient care, I will absolutely be saying all of this to them as well. I'm under no illusion that it happens - like I say, it's also a profession where we are actually unable to eat or sleep, 50 hours is a slow week, we also have immense pressures on us at all times to do a wide range of tasks and we do so with the public constantly expecting more.

But that is not my patients fault. It's the system, it's the government, its hospital management. And I know, I promise you, I know, that it seems impossible to defeat. But I will never agree we should not aim for just good enough.

I guess what I don't understand is why it's the teaching you aim for 'just good enough' - why not all of the other aspects of your job? Do you truly not understand why a current student, in thousands of pounds worth of debt, aiming for a lot more than a degree which is 'good enough' would be angered reading that? Why parents paying for this for their DC would be angered at that attitude?

Hi, Just wanted to say that you are so lucky to have secured an academic position straight after your PhD. I have given up on an academic job, for, as you say, they are like gold dust. I feel like I am just settling for the job I have now and that my PhD was just a waste of time and effort. So, please don't give it up!

At least your husband is not working 50 or 60 hours a week too like a lot of dual career couples both doing those hours on MN. He only works part time.

I would stick with it. The young children will become older. I have teenagers now and it is absolutely dead easy in every way compared with having small children. one day yours will be teenagers and your life will be utterly different and you will have a good career you never compromised on.

Then look at saying no. I refuse things all the time whilst telling people who they can go to to do it - I give them solutions not problems when I say no. That works quite well. Also it takes a bit of time. I do some lecturing. the more you do it and the more your notes are organised and materials done the easier and easier it gets. Teachers will tell you the same (if only they would stop changing the exam system).

Eiffel I understand how you feel - and I'm still looking for a permanent job myself - but I think it's really unhelpful to the OP to say she should be grateful. I've felt a lot of guilt at times about struggling with my job when lots of other people wanted it, but that doesn't actually help me. If OP would be better off doing something else she doesn't owe it to anyone else to be grateful for her job.

But that is not my patients fault. It's the system, it's the government, its hospital management. And I know, I promise you, I know, that it seems impossible to defeat. But I will never agree we should not aim for just good enough.

Not just public sector. Business has to be the same. I'm under pressure from my clients because if I spend more time and charge more, they'll go to other firms that are cheaper. So, it's a balancing act between charging a price the market will bear against the time I need to spend on doing the job so that it's fundamentally complete & accurate. I could spend a few hours more on every job I touch to make it 100% perfect, but clients wouldn't pay for that extra time, so corners have to be cut and compromises made. Believe me, I'd love to spend more time on fewer clients, earning the same, but providing a rolls-royce service, but we have to live in the real world.

I think you're misunderstanding "just good enough".

In a context of extremely bright high-fliers, "just good enough" does NOT mean the same thing as it does to an average person. It means not being an absolute perfectionist about your lecture being the greatest in the entire world. "Just good enough" will still be way higher than most people's concept of "average".

room again, I don't think you understand 'good enough'. It's saying 'do your job well and effectively but don't go beyond your contracted obligations'. Is that really an attitude your staff aren't allowed? They're all expected to be essentially part employee, part volunteer?

And there are other ways in which people are urged to be 'good enough'. I just finished my first book and when I really struggled towards the end more than one person told me variations on 'done is better than perfect' or 'do all the must dos, not all the could dos'. Because when you aim for perfection, there's a change of being paralysed into achieving nothing at all. This is true of teaching, too - students don't benefit from having beautifully crafted lectures for the first half of term if they then have a lecturer in breakdown for the second half.

Argh, another x-post - sorry whisky!

Students paying huge fees will expect to see value for the massive investment they are making, this is obvious and to be expected. They will be lumbered with big loans for decades or maybe for life and will expect quite rightly the very best available education. I don't think anyone would disagree with this sentiment.

It is a clash of a private sector mentality from the students whom are paying big bucks for a service with the public sector (university staff) that is not used to this level of demand and what I guess they see as entitlement. The two are like oil and water.

As the fees increased I can see it only getting worse.

I guess more support, better hours, going part time or becoming much more skilled at delegation, with the use of boundaries with emails and family time surely it is then possible to be both effective and having some kind of life.

the public sector (university staff) that is not used to this level of demand

Well, except that we have always placed high demands on ourselves and we have (generally) expected a lot of colleagues and, because we believe they are capable of it, students.

I am trying to think of an analogy with medicine that would work. I don't know if this does work, but I'm going to float it and see!

Say you have a bog standard case of someone who needs a totally standard knee op. You can do the surgery in a perfectly standard, expert, and safe way. It's not boundary-pushing but it achieves the objective of the patient getting what they need with minimal pain. There might be loads of other hypothetical ways of doing the same surgery more experimentally and maybe some of those would actually advance medical science world-wide. Some surgeons have to do things in new ways some of the time for the discipline to advance, but the majority may well just keep on keeping on with the standard way until guidance and wider practice changes. There is nothing wrong with the work of the latter group - it is quick, clean, meets guidance and fulfils the objective and is quite possibly the backbone of the service working!

In this case, the former routine surgery done competently and with care is the definition of "good enough" - the latter innovative method would be the definition of "better than good enough". Academics are trained to think that if they're not doing something innovative, original world-beating it's not really good enough, but there's nothing wrong with solid, competent, organised and well-executed.

Eiffel Sorry to hear that. In case it helps, when I was trying to get back to work after kids, i applied for well over 100 before I even got an interview.

It is a clash of a private sector mentality from the students whom are paying big bucks for a service with the public sector (university staff) that is not used to this level of demand and what I guess they see as entitlement. The two are like oil and water.

It's a clash between fundamentally different ideas of what higher education is for. Increasingly, students seem to take the view that they are purchasing a degree and that it is the job of academics to make sure they get one. Academic staff generally take the view that their role is to facilitate a student in obtaining an education and that this requires a fair bit of input from the student.

I'm teaching a third year optional module this afternoon. I think my job in that module should be to facilitate a discussion about the materials I put on the reading list; to answer questions students have about the material; to draw to students' attention any particularly interesting/controversial/'hot' topics within the subject matter; and to generally probe and challenge their understanding of the material, ideally while encouraging them to challenge one another's understanding.

However, most of my students take the view that I should be conveying to them, in class time, the essentials that they need in order to get a 2.1 on the assessment. I guarantee only a handful will have done any reading at all (and will freely admit it).

"Just good enough " for the teaching aspect is a bit shitty for the students paying £9000 for it

See my comment about the definition of that above lovelystar. There's been a lot of discussion about it on the thread.

It is entirely possible I'm misunderstanding your individual use of 'just good enough'. If so, I apologise.

But you must also realise the negative connotations of that statement publicly. There's a reason we'd never tell our company at a job interview we were aiming to do a just good enough job. When applying for research funding, do you tell them you will be aiming for just good enough research? Even if, as you say, your just good enough is higher than most?