Senior University Lecturer salary - shocked!

[salary]

I've just seen an advert for the above position, at a nearby Uni. The salary is anywhere between £39k and £64k, based on whether it is filled by a grade 7, 8 or 9 person.

I am genuinely shocked at how low this salary is, for such a high profile role. Do they get huge bonuses or something?

SL here, with a professional background whose high average income often leads students to ask why I'm teaching and not raking in the money in the "real world". I did the high-income job for a while, it was not worth it for a moment, I now have an extremely interesting job which I enjoy, with minimal stress and a great "work-life balance". I think that within the options available on the labour market the pay is great. (Although I'd never tell my students, colleagues or bosses.)

I think it sounds like a nice job. And therefore that's reasonable pay compared to maybe a primary school teacher and all the full on requirements, duties, etc and hours they put in. i bet they can top up their pay with other things too.

Not sure where the idea that 'nice jobs' should pay less comes from. I think being a film actor or a footballer sounds like a nice job and I'm sure most of them enjoy it. They're paid extraordinarily well.

As for topping up their pay with other things - there's a serious problem with workload in academia. So unless you take on a job as a night cleaner, you're probably not going to have time to top up. The realities of the workload are laid out here:
ucu.group.shef.ac.uk/workload-in-he-the-broken-reality/

University pension schemes are often very good. Some universities still offer final salary schemes, others defined benefits or significant contributions in defined contribution schemes. They also get massive benefits from the university itself - eg discounts on courses (which can often be applied for family members), learning opportunities, parking, even accomodation. Need to also remember that prior to becoming a senior lecturer they are often making money via contracting. DB earns £500 a day lecturing a module two days a week at one uni and gets £64k at his main one and then more money through OU contracting.

So academia isn’t all the same. Popular courses and good lecturers are definitely making money.

A Dean is a Senior Leadership position, not an admin role, and a Dean certainly does not "knock off each day at 5" - what world are you living in?

There's still money to be made. I work at uni - many of my professor colleagues are earning around £100k. They can also do extra consultancy work and some charge £2500 per day (my DH who's a professor does this). They can also make extra money by doing things like marking dissertations if it's over their workload (they get paid several hundred pounds for each dissertation). My DH who's a professor has an extremely varied role working with all sorts or organisations including government and the EU. Sometimes he gets paid additional money, depending on who he's working with - e.g. the work he's doing as an advisor to the EU pays well on top of his salary.

They also get massive benefits from the university itself - eg discounts on courses (which can often be applied for family members), learning opportunities, parking, even accomodation.

I cannot give family members discounts on our courses
I pay for the opportunity to park ( which means there are more parking passes than spaces so if you don't get in early you pay to park elsewhere.
No university i have ever worked at has offered me accommodation

Need to also remember that prior to becoming a senior lecturer they are often making money via contracting

Not true! Unless you've come from the private sector and career changed into academia and therefore.

DB earns £500 a day lecturing a module two days a week at one uni and gets £64k at his main one and then more money through OU contracting.

What university is paying £500 per day???!! All universities I have worked at have clear part time hourly paid lecturer salary and it's certainly not £500 a day!!

My dad was (still is) a university lecturer and professor, but I was always under the impression that he was pretty well paid. I'm sure his professorship might have given him a bigger pay than "just" a PhD (and I'm not minimising PhDs at all, I certainly couldn't do one!)

A PhD is the highest qualification achievable in the UK, so what does 'just' a PhD mean? You generally need one to be lecturing at uni. His professorship is his job, it's not a qualification. 'Professor' denotes his academic staff grade.

They can also make extra money by doing things like marking dissertations if it's over their workload (they get paid several hundred pounds for each dissertation).

What university is this? I've never heard of this happening. We're just told to suck it up!

All these careers are low paid. That is the problem. Britain is a low pay high tax economy but with COL we are now seeing the cracks.

also @SallyWD what you're describing is the work of a professor not a lecturer or senior lecturer. Once you've achieved professorship the game does change and you can potentially earn extra money. But you've got to get to professor first which is becoming increasingly difficult as the criteria to make professor often involves the stuff many of us just don't have time for at the moment!

Nope.
Academia often doesn't pay well.
In fact it's often hard working talented people who aren't paid that well.

Ha ha ha ha ha!
Don't have tonnes of marking, and working only 10-4.... Not in any of the 3 Unis I've worked in. 99% of people are putting in way more than their paid hours - and have marking, prep, and their own writing to do over the 'holidays'.
I love the thought of colleagues getting £150 per student, per book, too.

CEAs are all gone now - no new ones will be issued. Private practice is seriously under threat because of new ISTCs unfortunately, a lot of colleagues complaining they are losing their work to this sector of private companies who can offer treatments in weeks for free on NHS cost terms. Not many medics are academics. I think a lot of medics will be hoping that the new salary increases and control over DDRB will uplift salaries. Some are joining ISTCs for higher salaries even going into partnerships. Medicine salaries are good but you are describing an outdated system.

Senior academic and course lead on 59k. I know I could earn more elsewhere and I am increasingly stretched but honestly, I could never have this level of flexibility and autonomy in any other role. I’ve worked full time in academia while raising 2 children and never missed a play/parents evening/sports day, I have done many school runs. I can spend evenings with my children and make up time elsewhere. I’m not slacking, I’m extremely dedicated to my students, it is possible to do both without the micromanaging I’ve experienced previous to being in academia.

@faffadoodledo It's a national pay scale: www.ucu.org.uk/he_singlepayspine (those figures are out of date as there has been an increase in 2024 and the highest point is currently £69,757, set to increase to £70,579 next March). There seems to be some flexibility at the top to allow some extra points. I have seen senior lecturer jobs advertised with a higher maximum than point 51 on the national scale but I assume this must be done by authorising repeated ex gratia payments rather than putting them on a professorial pay scale.

You don't get paid more for being a senior lecturer at Cambridge than you do for being a senior lecturer at Hull. Your starting point will depend on experience and skills but the top of the scale is the same everywhere, apart from the slight rule-bending referred to above.

Most places don't have as much generous annual leave, and while school and sixth form teachers work at least 9-3pm and have tons of marking and tons to do over the holidays, lecturers don't. Many of the lectures are rehashed from other talks or what they've lectured on in previous years. A lot of their work like marking is handed off to PhD students to do.

You really don't know much about the modern university and your post says more about your attitude as a student than actual knowledge of the realities of working as a lecturer.

Typical though for MN, that a poster thinks that anecdotes from decades ago are more accurate than posters who are actually doing the work, day to day.

This is my experience too in terms of flexibility. I career changed into academia from the financial services and the flexibility is incredible.

For PP - I do refuse to teach outside of 10-4 so that I can commute in time for pickup and drop off (refuse is a big word, I just say I can't do outside those times and that's ok), but that doesn't mean I don't work outside those times. Obviously. I was regularly stopping at midnight this time last year thanks to a new module.

What's the research grant target for a primary school teacher? How many research papers and book chapters are they expected to publish each year? How many exam papers (3-hour essays, not 10-minute multiple choice) do they mark each semester? How many 30,000 word dissertations and 80,000 word theses? Do they need to be able to identify work that's been done by an essay mill rather than a student? Do they write their own curriculum from scratch? What's their public engagement and outreach workload?

DD relies upon bar manager shifts to make up for her lecturer pay.

She is paid less than a peripatetic music tutor telling 8 year olds not to twat one another over the head with boomwhackers - that's not punching down on the peris as it's a skilled job, it's academia punching down on the lecturers.

I'm really shocked at the misconceptions on this thread about what being an academic is.

My husband is a chemistry professor. His working day is 8-6, although he usually also works evenings and weekends. He gets 6 weeks holiday a year like most people. He lectures once a week and only marks exams at the end of the course. Most of his time is spent in his lab trying to find ways of recycling industrial materials and advising companies who urgently need to know why that unidentified barrel in their warehouse is spontaneously smoking.

I've only ever had minimum wage jobs so to me he is very well paid. But the reality is that his salary does not reflect his expertise at all. When you're the go to person in your field for the whole world, you should be on more than £50k.

When Dd was studying architecture a number of her lecturers weren’t qualified architects, but people with architect degrees. They can’t recruit architects due to the pay…..and architecture isn’t that well paid either! She was offered a job as a lecturer straight after graduation (in fact as a third year student she was paid to take the first years for sketching classes). It’s not great really when students are paying so much in tuition fees.

Just to say, for balance... Most people will be doing their dream job (worth a lot). Once established it can be flexible and you have a lot of agency (worth quite a bit). And the benefits (especially pensions, in particular the level of employer contribution) are pretty good.

I'm also an academic spouse. In the eighties we were in Cambridge. The senior professors lived in fabulous Victorian villas, and had college rooms as well. Senior lecturers lived in nice Victorian terraces slightly out of town, but had rooms in college. New staff had small terraces. And now I have no idea how anyone affords to work in Oxbridge or the south of England.
Dh got a postdoc in a cheap area of the UK. We bought a house with a mortgage based on his salary, 16.5k in 1989.
We don't live in the UK now, but in Ireland. Academic staff are better paid but housing in the cities is a nightmare.
Dh has had phD students and postdocs along the way. Those who have left academia are doing well. Those who remain, two now in the UK, are stuck with low pay and the threat of redundancy in their late thirties. With very long hours and massive expectations. One has to basically clock in and clock out.
We have three kids, all have masters and assorted further qualifications. None wanted to do a PhD....two do occasional third level teaching.

I’m a senior lecturer (grade 8) and i earn less now than I would have if I stayed in my band 7 NHS job which I left 3 years ago (I was salary matched when I left).

No bonuses, lots of out of hours work. Higher education in the UK is in a major funding crisis!

When DH did some consultancy it had to go in to his research fund and was not a wage. When it comes to marking dissertations there is no payout of £500 it’s about £150 plus a night in a hotel, travel expenses and a dinner when you go down to examine the candidate.

@BringBackCoffeeCreams its laughable isn’t it, DH did some research that has potentially saved millions of lives.