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?

As a university admin, I can confirm that this is not where the money is…

People asking why salaries are low - what jobs out there should. My kids be aiming for that pay more than this?

Banking
Accountancy/tax
Risk & actuarial
Law
Consultancy
IT/robotics/automation
Medicine

You can easily get to £120-150k in these in the south east. Medicine the salaries are quite obscured & the junior dr salaries are not great - but your typical consultant will get a 6 fig nhs salary with a great pension, then will be supplementing with academic work, private clinics, clinical excellence awards etc. Thus why so many can afford to have kids in private school or a non/low working spouse.

A senior manager in finance team in a large corporate will be on £100k plus, at director level it can be £125k plus. A vp or head of department can get 150k plus quite easily

Lawyers can start a training contract on £60k plus and be on £100k 2 years later.

In addition to running a postgrad course with 50 students a year and line managing 4 teaching staff:

I oversee £2 million pound of grant funded research. I line manage 6 research staff.

I publish papers and serve on editorial boards.

I sit in government committees and contribute to policy documents

I provide training to local professionals on our area.

all these (except the publications) bring money to the university. I’ve been on grade 9 for years. I bring in a lot of money but my applied research falls between REF categories so I am not that valuable to the university.

I live in a remote area so our expenses are relatively low. I’d have to travel to make more money and I have a young child. It used to be more money. Now it’s the same money that doesn’t go very far.

Do you see any mention of higher education here…

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/

What other stuff do you have to do other than making PowerPoints and occasionally talking with students ?

For me personally this includes:
Lectures
Seminars
Tutorials
Marking (with detailed written feedback)
Moderation ( with detailed feedback)
Course Admin - including updating the module VLE pages, chasing incorrect timetable info, supporting students with extensions and ECs
Admissions work inc Open days and Offer Holder Days
Marketing (if I don't promote my course I won't get any students!)
Course Committees
Annual Evaluations
Supervision of Phd students
Exam boards
External examining

Research inc writing bids

and I've not even included the work I do in my leadership role.

So yeah, it's a bit more than just making PowerPoints

Nope no bonuses that's the salary 🙄 it's not a good career

Sorry, no. It’s a life of interesting learning while also being paid like crap. But those with an academic heart love the research side too much to leave it.

Advice would be to marry a high earner. Ideally someone who has a city job and needs to spend lots of time at the office, because that gives you the money to hire the cleaner (so avoiding the bit most don’t like) and all he’ll have to do is support his partner. He’ll have lots of time to pursue research as said partner won’t roll in until 10pm at the earliest. And there’ll be money available as the partner brings it in.

Worked for us. 🤪

To be fair at this level people in most industries are expected to work more than their contracted hours.

Re holidays, an extra 3 weeks holiday means a drop in pay of 8%. So the 40-64k from the OP would be 43-70k.

Then we haven’t talked about pension and job security. Usually better conditions in these two areas come with a lower salary, ie other industries need to pay more to make up for the fact that they don’t offer as good a pension / as much job security. I don’t know what a uni lecturer pension is to be honest, so maybe this doesn’t apply.

I’m not saying the salary is not too low. Just that we can’t say based on the numbers from the OP.

To add to this, can we please not forget that 1/3 of all academics working in academia are employed on fixed-term contracts, not permanent jobs. The chronic stress and time involved in applying for the next job is intense. It also means you can't apply for any promotions as you are constantly on the lowest rank, and in every new post you get treated as a newbie (because if the department acknowledged that you weren't straight out of your PhD, they might have to feel guilty).

I'm in my late 30s with a doctorate, several publications that any department should be over the moon to be able to submit for assessment, heaps of teaching and administrative experience, and I'm in that 1/3rd. Last year I earned 20k, and this is pretty common. You say 'yes' if it's the only offer you have.

It does seem ridiculously low, which is why is probably takes a certain sort of person to do it. There are many professionals where the pay is relatively high or low compared to percieved skills. Doctors are an obvious example, so income is not low but when you think about what they actually do..also works the other...vet for example would have similar study time and skills but because its business based they can be earning £200k. Its the ability to make more money for your employer that brings a big wage (think banking/finance).
My DD is currently completing a science based Phd, she could get a job for a big corporate pharma business and get paid a lot but she is choosing to do a PostDoc and continue living a frugel life, because she is drawn to it and the research she is invloved could potentially be life saving in the future.

Not surprised at all, I've heard of lecturers in London living in house shares. Also always on temporary contracts. I'm very glad dp decided against it. (This is humanities subjects, I'm sure there's more money in other areas)

However, you can't directly compare what a self employed window cleaner earns with what a university academic or anyone in an employed job earns. And salaries arent the only factor in a package

• sick pay (could be anything from statutory only to a year on full pay)
• annual leave (none paid if self employed.... To teachers etc with chunky amounts)
• pension contributions (in the public sector this can be pretty hefty)
• maternity leave/paternity leave
• job security

I could earn a lot more (at least double my current salary) if I was self employed, but for me the overall "employed" package is much better. I may change and go self employed once the children are grown up and mortgage is paid off. It's the "self employed" potential for my career that I would compare with a window cleaner or similar income.

DS has a recent PhD in a humanities subject. Quite apart from there being few post doc opportunities in his subject, there are even fewer in his area of interest (at least in the UK). After much thought he's reluctantly concluded that his future lies outside of academia. Even if he were to be offered a post doc, he'd then have to secure further fixed term posts, very likely having to move around the country, with no guarantee of a longer term job - or even if there were, the likelihood of further closure of departments could mean having to start again in a new sector in his early to mid thirties. Added to which he knows far too many academics who are close to burn out from juggling teaching, research, admin and the rest - on low/relatively low salaries.

I think I have been living in some kind of parallel universe because £60k sounds like quite a big salary to me, perhaps because despite having a degree I've never been in a job over 30k. Now I'm self employed and earn £30-£40 an hour but quite part time. DH (no degree) earns 40k and this means we are eligible for no help or benefits or full student loan or anything. So that implies on a countrywide scale we are still quite well off. Mad to think there are a large proportion people who think 60k is measly. Admittedly I am aware that academics spend years doing MAs, PHds etc but that seems to be mostly down to genuinely being interested in their subject rather than to trying to earn lots of money.

wow!

I was in academia. 3 degrees including a PhD. Postdoctoral research in public sector, then private R&D. Dozens of papers. Hundreds of citations.

As I approached the age of 30, I realised the not very bright kids I'd been at school with were getting paid far more than me (those who'd gone into teaching were making about 30% more, those who'd gone into construction, double), owned their own homes, had pension schemes, could afford to go on holiday.

After a decade of working my guts out, I was heartily sick of being poor. I know poor is relative - I wasn't in debt and didn't need to use a foodbank. But I couldn't get a mortgage, couldn't afford to start a family, had been on one foreign holiday in my 20's, and it seemed I faced a lifetime of living in rented accommodation, being flat broke at the end of the month, eating a largely vegetarian diet not out of choice but because meat was too expensive, and looking forward to penury in old age.

I changed field and went private/commercial. My salary doubled immediately, and doubled again within a few years.

My Phd supervisor who had started his career in the 60's had a nice detached house a couple of miles from the uni, and a second home on the coast. He couldn't understand why I left academia.

After 15 years or so, I looked at going back to academia as a senior lecturer. I realised I would have a similar "R&D" workload to my private sector position and a significant further teaching workload, all for about a fifth of what I was making in the private sector.

In terms of insultingly poor pay for years of training and specialist expertise nothing beats UK academia, though maybe classical music comes close.

I don't think £60k is measly, BUT, it sounds terribly low for a role that has so much responsibility.

Admittedly I am aware that academics spend years doing MAs, PHds etc but that seems to be mostly down to genuinely being interested in their subject rather than to trying to earn lots of money.

But to be an academic you HAVE to have these qualifications.
I teach a very niche subject so was employed as an academic with 'just' an MA which was the absolute minimum requirement. It was written in to my contract that I had to achieve a PhD within a certain timeframe.
Doing the PhD ( alongside the full time job!) didn't mean I earned any extra money and didn't make me a better lecturer but it was an essential criteria.
So while there is an element of doing it becuase you love it, it would be nice if the level of qualification and expertise was matched by the salary!

My friend is a handyman, a very good one, he can do anything. He earns about £100k per annum. As far as I know, he has no exams, no degree.

Do they get huge bonuses or something?

Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee

Chortle

Guffaw

Errm... What's a bonus?

I've been working in HE (first research, then education + research, now education + management) for almost 40 years and have never received a bonus in my life, nor do I know anyone in non-executive roles who has.

My brother, who is a senior manager in the private sector, asked what happens if we meet our performance indicators if we don't get bonuses. I replied that we get to keep our jobs.

I'm in the top grade listed in the OP. I don't think I'm badly paid, as I don't think my skills would really be all that marketable outside HE, but there is a lot of responsibility in return for very unspectacular rewards.

I’m a senior lecturer and programme lead, I’m on just over 50k. Band 8 and not at the top of the band yet. I teach on a professional course for an nhs subject and we struggle to recruit staff from the nhs as they say they’d have to take such a big pay cut for a starting lecturer salary of 37k. The university won’t match their current salary.

what do I do apart from make PowerPoints? Very little of my role is actual teaching. I teach about 180 hours a year. I do curriculum development work, loads of programme monitoring- so constant reports after crunching numbers about progression, etc. Setting assessments, marking assessments, tutorials. Sorting out placement issues, liaising with placements about student issues. Timetabling, room bookings, equipment requests, exam boards. Answering student emails and sorting out student problems can easily take a couple of hours a day. I’m effectively line managing over a hundred people (students).

We pay our associate lecturers £17 an hour so struggle to get anyone to come and do any infill teaching when we’re short staffed.

The flexibility of the job is nice. If I’m not teaching and wanted to do something during the day I could and then work in the evening. There’s no micromanagement. Treated like an intelligent adult and trusted to get on with the job. Sadly on my course the students only have 6 weeks off for summer so no long gap between academic years like some courses!

I work in payroll for a construction firm. If you ignore the apprentices dh earns the same as our lowest paid worker on site. (PAYE, not self employed)

DH has just taken severance and was head of his dept on 70k PA. Him and his other friends who remained in academia were easily the worst paid out of all their mates who also did their PhD’s at Cambridge back in the early 1990’s.

Three degrees and speaks 4 languages, has been on TV, radio and there was a time I would see him quoted in articles. His students loved him and some of his colleagues cried when he handed his notice in this summer. Academic is being utterly destroyed, I also retired early from higher education. I point the finger way back to when we were junior staff to Blair.

I live with joy that his research did make a genuine difference to lives.

Also, a lot of academics are stuck and can't get promotion (despite qualifying) because the institutions they are in invent crises which mean that they have (conveniently) to halt all internal progression.

The current financial crisis in HE is most definitely not "invented".

I agree £64k seems like a very good salary to me. Comparable to NHS, teaching and social care jobs.
It's quite a privilege really to spend years immersing yourself in something you're interested in and then to have a rather decent salary at the end of it.
Aren't there also other opportunities to make money e.g. by publishing a book in ones specialist subject?