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?

I think she was being ironic.

I think she was being ironic.

I did wonder ..... but wasn't entirely sure given the tone of previous posts 🤷🏼‍♀️

Is it so terrible to say secretary?

I know my local school still has a secretary. That’s the listed job title, not administrative assistant or anything like that.

They also have petty cash.

We have secretaries. They have more formal titles (programme officer I think) but they're known as secretaries.

Never known a secretary in any university I’ve worked at. There are administrators and PAs working in professional services. PAs are very limited even our heads of school don’t have them anymore (there are school managers who I think may do some diary management for the HoS).

No petty cash that I’m aware of either. Nor biscuits sadly. Even the open day staff sandwiches are a thing of the past.

Universities aren't schools.

Academics don't have secretaries or access to petty cash.

Only the very senior staff have executive support and often that is only part of a wider profession services role.

A programme officer role is not a secretarial role though.

I've work at and with a lot of universities. Never known one employ secretaries.

I'm not in the UK. My lucky husband has a school manager and two secretaries who each work for a sub department within the main school.
Dh and the office manager have keys to the petty cash tin. I have no idea what it is used for. I have never worked in academia or an office.

Within the last decade their official job titles were "X Department Undergraduate Secretary", for example. Their jobs would include processing enrollments and progression, timetabling etc as well as some general admin support for the 20 or so academics in their group.

I'm a Prof and Dean and earn £104K, been at same Uni since first lectureship a decade ago. My salary has taken some hard-nosed negotiation, and the 'bonus' / uplift has come from the Dean role. Will lose a chunk of salary when I revert from that role so currently assessing options elsewhere.

The office manager is also the school manager. She works managing the office and attends wider faculty meetings in her school manager capacity.

@BarbaraHoward

They would be course/programme administrators at my university.
But academics are also expected to do their own admin!

I left out the words "a little" (typing in the playground). Obviously one secretary to 20 academics doesn't have much scope.

@BarbaraHoward 😂😂

I think I'd take any amount of admin support at this point!

I have a family member who is a university lecturer. She has taught at some of the country's most prestigious universities but didn't get her first full-time permanent position until she was in her forties. Up until that point she went from temporary position to temporary position, most of them part-time.

Another massive problem in academia is the recruitment process being a mere legal technicality. Jobs are advertised, interviews are held, but the position has been offered to someone the senior staff already had in mind.

Mainly it's because we can't be trusted with the room bookings system 😂

The idea that university lecturers don't have a commercial benefit to the country is insane. Aside from the facts that they are educating people and universities are businesses now, some of the lecturers I know at the moment are doing research into, amongst other things, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer vaccines, macular degeneration, the depletion of fish stocks, the effects of global warming on the oceans, the use of AI in medical diagnosis. The teaching is just one aspect of the job.

Yes I think administrators is the official title in unis, but some do informally refer to themselves as secretaries still, or used to until fairly recently anyway. A friend of mine when asked what she did always said I work at (local uni) in dept of x - I’m Prof y’s secretary. (Prof y was well-known locally.)That wasn’t her official title, though it did reflect what she did mostly - she considered the prof to be her boss day to day. It was a small dept which might have made a difference though.

Very sadly an emeritus professor has dementia. He still is able to respond to small talk if someone asks a question. But he can have full conversations with his long retired secretary who did his audio typing.
Whatever job title the departmental admin people have they are really Important here at least!

Mainly it's because we can't be trusted with the room bookings system 😂

😂😂😂

Fair point

Whatever job title the departmental admin people have they are really Important here at least!

I don't think anyone is suggesting that professional services staff aren't important.
It more that 'secretary' isn't really a true representation of the job role at most universities.

Oh here there is a whole department of room booking people. I have no idea of their rank. Not secretaries though. 😊

I have no idea about some of the things you have commented on. But I do know that a friend who is a primary school teacher - does a lot of planning, and marking and evening events, and discos, and break duties in the rain and gets a lot of stress. I have no idea if she has a research grant target - but she has targets re SATs and stress. Obviously they are different jobs. But my point was that it is a hard job too. But here's the thing we all have a choice what job to do. You sound very angry.

I think secretary might be a broader job title than you're thinking of? It certainly doesn't just mean a PA. For example, a Company Secretary is a very senior role.

I'm an academic but I'm the secretary to our exam board (meaning I have oversight of the results and classifications) and in a previous life was charged out at £££ to be a secretary to trustee boards.

@BarbaraHoward
When that previous poster used the term 'secretary' I don't think they were referring to the type of secretary role you're describing.