Advice from fellow academics, please??

[NK5BM3]

I've just been headhunted and been offered a senior management role in a university in London. (All happened in the last few weeks). I think I got short listed because of my managerial experience where I am now, and also coz I'm research active. All good so far.

It will however require me to commute to London and I'm in the se. Money aside (we are still negotiating), would you guys commute? It'll roughly be 1h 15 min or so each way. Chances are I will get a seat there and back. I currently work 5-10 min drive from home. Kids are in primary school and after school clubs. Dh works locally.

I would like to get ahead in academia as would anyone else who's interested in a career I guess (not just in academia, but just in general). I think I'm a good manager and will be considering positions like deans/associate deans, after this job if i do decide to go for it.

What would you do?

To spend that length of time travelling the pay increase would need to make it worth the while.

Could you work flexible hours and complete some of your work on the train?

Sounds a great opportunity and how often do they come along in academia as its a small pond. I'd take it and once settled in post try and negotiate some home working-in academia noone ever seems to notice if you are not in the office anyway especially in August.

Thanks so much for your quick replies! Forgot to say that I have already negotiated Fridays work from home. I am guessing I can do a bit more from home once I'm settled in and there's a routine, timetable, possible to perhaps do later starts and early ends (not on the same day of course!!!) I imagine.

It sounds like a very good opportunity. Is the new Uni more prestigious?

What are your reservations?

What are your reservations?

There's a thread with a similar dilemma in Employment at the moment: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/employment_issues/2321827-Decisions-commute-or-not-Plus-more

Personally, I'd look carefully into the environment. E.g staff turnover, what sort of REF pressures are likely (are they expecting you to manage the next REF?)

It's very highly ranked. But it's a different field from what I currently do so I don't know much about the actual subject area but I know a lot about how they can move into my subject area (if that even makes any sense?!).

My reservations are the so called commute (am I mad to give up the 5 min journey to work for one that's so long??) let alone the cost of it.

I started a thread in employment (I can try and link it here) and I was very very surprised that practically everyone bar one or two were against it. I can only imagine they are the corporates (but that wouldn't even make sense coz those sorts of people earn money that we can only dream of?!). So everyone was saying how commuting was hell and that if i even considered commuting, I clearly cannot value myself very much!?!

Hi toothless - yes that's me!! Thanks for linking the thread.

Can you work at all while commuting?

Well that proves I need to pay more attention to detail (or not, seems less stalkerish to not have noticed).

Anyway, I think the key issue with the commute is that as an academic you can flex your start time, so no pressure on a daily tricky commute; having Friday at home is a big help; not needing to use tube or bus means it's much less hellish.

You could use the journey, assuming you can reliably get a seat, to do intensive bursts of work, like article reading or marking.

BUT the provisos I wrote above are key. From my own experience, the working atmosphere can make all the difference in the world in an academic setting where normal rules of behaviour seem (sometimes) to not apply.

Yes I'm pretty sure I can do work on the train ride, marking comes to mind, drafting emails, writing reports or at least jotting down main points. I go to London often enough for work reasons and I relish the hour where I can sit and actually read a journal article or think up new papers or even do something boring like marking.

I'm an academic, and I've commuted for the last 15 years, and loads of people where I work commute. In fact, I'm really surprised you haven't got lots of colleagues who commute the job market in academia being what it is, it's increasingly rare for couples who are both academics to work in the same university sometimes not even in the same country. In my department alone I can think of 4 people who have commutes of over an hour. I also know lots of people who do a weekly commute, and stay over during the week.

I must confess I don't like it, and I don't know anyone who does. But that's academic life nowadays.

Yes I get that the working environment is key, so hence why the potential new boss is organising for a meet up with the staff I will be line managing. She did say to me that she wanted me to be absolutely happy to be joining them. So that bodes well. I've also recently found out that a recent recruit is someone who shares a couple of friends with me on LinkedIn. Having spoken to my friend, he has very much endorsed this new guy. So that sounds positive particularly since this new guy is someone that I'll be working closely with...

I don't work in academia so can't weigh up the particular circumstances. However my points would be:

1. how much flexibility over hours will you have?this is key to:
2. how much is this going disrupt your family life?will you still be able to attend assemblies, Xmas plays, school meetings, get back for important events? Five to ten minutes from school and home made a big difference to me when I was trying to juggle primary school children and work and workplace flexibility and attitudes counts a lot too
3. is it a nice work environment? That sort of relates to number 2 above and makes all the difference to how you feel about your work.
4. what is the quality of the commute? Big difference between getting a seat on a train and sitting there and having to switch to different transport modes and jostling.
5. does your husband have enough work flexibility to step in for things you might not be able to do?

Good luck - never easy.

I'll put that on my list of things to ask! Thanks.

Incidentally, if people were to ask about our staff turnover rate at my current place, I'd say that it's got worse over the last couple of years. Even omitting those that leave for personal reasons (eg Australian moving back to Oz, spouses relocating due to other half) it's been v high. People have little trust in the boss.

I don't know which London uni this is, but I would be cautious of Imperial given this:
www.dcscience.net/2014/12/01/publish-and-perish-at-imperial-college-london-the-death-of-stefan-grimm/

I have heard other stories of misery there too.

Other London unis may have a better culture.

No, not imperial!! horrid going ons.

Can anyone shed light on my dilemma re pension contributions, please?

With the pay rise and the train ticket, at the moment it looks like it will cancel out or worse, may lead to me forking out more money due to tax etc. I was thinking about the child benefit element where we get the roughly £170/200 a month for both kids? The gov's rules of reducing child benefit once we hit £50k would hit me. I currently earn more than that but I claim childcare vouchers so that brings me slightly below the £50k. But with this new pay rise, I was thinking I will need to put in more in my pension (which was always my intention anyway) to bring the income under £50k.

However that doesn't take into account the train ticket which will come out of post tax income. So... It looks like I will be paying more than what I am at the moment to go to work, even though on paper I have at least a 20% pay rise.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?!!

OK, re the commute: I commuted 2 hours (door to desk) each way for 9 years to stay living with my OH rather than move. I was lucky: the university I was working at had a pretty good system of buses meeting the trains from the main city where many of its students lived, and we lived within a 5 minute walk of the local metro to make the connection to the mainline train.

I sometimes did 6 days a week, sometimes 2-3 days a week although that was when I ran a Womens Studies MA that we taught in the evening, until 9pm I'd always get a taxi home from the main station home on those nights.

I was on a teaching/research contract at SL level, rather than a management role, although just about to be Head of Department when I left.

Pros and cons:
Living NOT in the same place as your students is very relaxing. I have a much shorter commute now, but it's so I don't live near my students. I deal with enough of their mess (I despair of how some of them are brought up!) day to day: I don't want to have to talk to them in the supermarket when I'm not at work ...

When I did my long commute, I tended to spend every Saturday pretty much sleeping!

But, I got a LOT of work done on the main train journey (90 mins) -- I used to work going to work in the morning (train at 7:20, lucky I'm a lark) and read for pleasure going home at 8pm. Or if I had marking, it was marking both ways. I was pretty disciplined about that.

I find even now, some years later, if I have some tricky or tedious reading (examining a PhD for example) I schedule it for a longish train journey. I am in the habit of thinking really well on trains. In the Quiet Zone, if some entitled selfish arse doesn't think s/he is above the rules. And I DON'T log on to the WiFi!!

But -- and it's a big but, when I commuted regularly, I was commuting AGAINST the main tide of commuters and I ALWAYS got a seat (usually a table). I think if that hadn't been the case, I would have found it much more stressful.

People didn't realise I didn't live in the awful, provincial satellite town in which the university was located. I thought that was good -- I worked recently at a place with a number of commuters, and it is very annoying when they can't help in the inevitable need to cover stuff at short notice. Very annoying as I think commuting is a personal choice, and others shouldn't have to carry the can for a colleague who won't/can't contribute as part of the team.

That said, if they're careful & thoughtful to show willing in other ways, it's fine.

Re money and pensions: my personal take on this is that you have to weigh up the costs & benefits in ways other than simply financial. That's why I despair of young women saying they "can't afford" to work because of the cost of childcare yes, childcare may be more than your pay, but that's only for a few years, and the long-term benefits even if just calculated financially outweigh the costs. The main long-term cost/benefit seems to me to be the opportunity cost (that may be the wrong accountancy term) the long-term cut in income one suffers from being out of the workforce. I happen to think that's significant (although I was widowed very young, when my DS was 3, so I really really believe in the advice "Never give up your job")

So, in your situation, you might think about the longer term benefits of the short term costs of this post. I'm a professor, on a lot more than you say you're in the ball park of, and I don't do a management job at te moment (had my share of HoDing). To me, "senior" roles start at Dean level, and at my place, that's when one starts to earn that famous "six-figure" salary (sorry to use such a vulgar term). At the moment, I've got too many books to write to want to do that sort of job, but I'm looking at it for the last 5 years in the run up to retirement.

I pay extra on my pension anyway (being widowed early made me really financially cautious) so I suppose I'm constitutionally one of those people who tends to look 5 years ahead, rather than living for the day.

Anyway HTH

I'm a bit surprised that it would be a "senior management" role on a bit over 50k - like the previous poster I would call "senior management" in London academia roles which are paid at 100k+. Leaving aside the commuting issues, are you really sure that this role would lead on to associate dean/dean positions? Are you sure that you would have enough time to pursue research interests?

Personally just like UptheChimney I earn substantially more than 50k without having senior management responsibilities. Candidates for associate dean/dean positions in my area would usually be professors with a very strong track history of research, education and leadership, who are already on 80k or more. I wouldn't advise a colleague in their 30s or 40s to take a management role paid at 50-60k (inc London weighting!) which cuts out research.

Having been an HoD as a Senior Lecturer, I've never seen that as a 'senior management' role -- for me, that starts at Head of a [large] School, Dean or PVC. And doing either of those jobs, I'd be wanting £100k, and pensionable at that, not just an extra, unpensionable allowance. I turned down a role at that level, because they were just going to offer me an "allowance" of £5k. A joke. The massage & brain therapy I'd have needed to survive that job would have been more than that!

OTOH, the person then pressing me to do that job said that such roles made it pretty much a given that you'd get a pay rise every year on your permanent salary (professors don't get pay rises automatically we have to "outperform" our roles given that by being a professor one is already "outperforming" the general academic role, it's rubbish really).

It's sad how my 30 yo self would view me as so thoughtful of the cash Still academia is not what it was 25 years ago.

That Stefan Grimm story confuses me.
I have only worked in soft science depts. non-RG Unis. So we are "Second Tier" and not working in the most expensive research areas either.
7+ yrs ago conversations with friend (who works in math dept. another non-RG Uni), where I moaned about my lack of direction & he told me to be grateful I wasn't a lecturer with a mandate to pull in minimum £100-£120k per yr.

Our lecturers have targets of min. £100k/yr, the Profs £200k/yr, the others somewhere in-between. They get excel charts showing where they are compared to everyone else in lots of performance metrics. I can't understand how SG wouldn't have long known the expectations & indeed why his targets wouldn't be a lot higher than ours (at his London Uni, supposed 'First Tier').