Tuition fees

[stoatsrevenge]

So we are to expect a massive increase in university tuition fees, as well as increasing interest ib student loans...

Here is the 6 year plan from the LibDem manifesto:

1
Scrap fees for final year full-time students

2
Begin regulating part-time fees

3
Part time fees become regulated and fee loans become available to part time students

4
Expand free tuition to all full-time students apart from first year undergraduates

5
Expand free tuition to all part-time students apart from first year undergraduates

6
Scrap tuition fees for all first degree students

How are they going to square this one?

"u're right. but let's face it, Labour commissioned Browne"

In order to kick university funding into the long grass. Perhaps they would have followed his recommendations, perhaps they wouldn't, but the arrival of government reports whose recommendations aren't followed is hardly news.

tokyonambu - I'm guessing that academia is the same as anywhere else; having a baby (or more properly, two or more babies,) has a greater impact on women than men. Hence in academia, the women who "make it" do tend to either have no children, or have managed to afford serious childcare in some way.

Actually, this thread is making me quite gloomy. I'm nearing completion of a PhD I've been doing alongside SAHM duties for a couple of years, and with limited childcare for a few more. It's been a killer (my PhD was supposed to be a f/t one, with AHRC funding), and I am losing heart. It does feel as though the guillotine waited just for me before falling. (Though I realise that's not true. Just to make that clear.)

I'm a female professor - waited a long time to have a family (2 children - wrote 2 books first) and my non-working male other half does most of the childcare.....just as an example of how it not just the province of the rich or child-free/less. Not particularly inspiring, I know though ...

telsa, it is good to know that it is possible with more than 1 child. However, I do think you are the rare exception. We (dp and I) tried the option where he stayed home and did most of the childcare, but for us, it didn't work. Mainly because I found that having a husband at home is not equivalent to a man having a wife at home (quite a revelation).

There is also the issue that for women, waiting until exactly the right moment for your career is critical. In my case, I was 31 when ds1 was born and almost 35 when ds2 was born. However, having spent most of my 20's studying/postdoc-ing etc, as an academic, your 30's are the most realistic time to start a family, but timing-wise the least convenient. This does possibly apply to other careers too, taking as an example Xenia's case, she was done and dusted with studying at 20, whereas I was still postdoc-ing at 27.

With respect to voting, yes I voted Lib Dem. I had voted for them every time since I was 18. I will not be voting for them again. However, I don't think that having voted Labour is a good defence for the state the country is in now.

I can relate to so much of what is being said here, especially about being asked/expected to do so much more 'pastoral' and outreach work than many male colleagues because I am vaguely able to relate to RL situations. I also find that as senior women are so few in my field/university, I get asked to sit on any number of panels and committees, to 'add balance'. As for kids, I started having mine at 35. Life is tough when you try to balance children and academic work, but when I look at female friends in the law, for example, I am so glad I do this. Academic life makes combining work and family more possible more than many jobs for people with childen (and that's the key, the children have to be and have to be seen to be as the equal responsibility of the father too). But here I am at my desk at 6.30 so it's not easy.

Animala: don't want to add to your worry, but I think the biggest problem for research graduates now is the lack of jobs: it's a very bad time to be looking.

fascinating stuff (& boffin, you're funny).

But Tokyo - Labour don't get off the hook that easily. They introduced fees, they always knew what Browne would recommend that's why they appointed him rather than someone in support of state-funded education.

Animula, don't let us depress you too much! In many ways I think that academia is a great career for mothers in the arts & social sciences (I get the feeling that natural sciences are very different). There is still huge flexibility and you are, often though not always, in charge of your own time management.

In terms of getting a job - It is difficult to get in at the moment, there are fewer jobs and the prestigious jobs are attracting people from higher up the scale (e.g. Readers applying for lectureships/SLs especially in London).

But, ultimately, publications (& funding ...) are the only thing that matter - I would avoid poorly paid hourly teaching like the plague unless I needed a cover from which to write. You may be better off trying to publish from home with something that looks like work (if you can still get e-journal access etc.) than accepting a killer of a teaching job. But they haven't abolished HEFCE which indicates that the REF may well stay and so there may be more jobs in future as departments panic, for people that have published of course ...

Telsa, I hope you're pulling more women up behind you ...

Animula - I agree wholeheartedly with WhoKnew - publish, publish, publish. You are obviously very organised and driven to complete a PhD while SAHMing - getting published will be the easy bit!

Animula, in response to your points:

1. There are more academic jobs now than there were in the mid to late 1980s, in real terms, even if lots of post 92 universities go to the wall. So there is hope.

1. There are also a lot of older men who were originally hired in the 1970s currently retiring, so this is also paving the way for good job opportunities. Even more hope.

1. Oddly enough, it is probably easier for women to thrive under the RAE/REF regime, as this is a more objective measurement of output value. You find a group of bright people to help read your papers, churn out four of the buggers at least two years ahead of the deadline so there's time for them to get into journals, and bingo, you are returnable, and a lot of places are now hiring solely on that basis. Once you have four in the bag, you can sit back a bit and do some 'real' research.

1. Academe is probably the least shit profession to go into, as you can often wangle time off for school plays and assemblies, sick kids, parents' evenings and so on.

1. Yes, you will end up with being forced to be on the committee version of the Lost Property Box at some point, but just put the minimum effort in. I tell my team at work that part of being at a university is sitting in endless silly meetings, it is part of what you sign up to, and if necessary just go in order to partake of the coffee and biscuits. Nobody need know you are not taking it seriously. I save my energies for keeping a serious and very discreet eye on departmental finances, admissions opportunities, quality assurance and so on, because these matter a lot more.

1. The money is probably about as good as you are going to get as an intelligent woman without sacrificing your family or totally exhaisting yourself, unless you have a lucky break of some kind, which frankly nobody should count on.

Excellent advice from BoffinMum.

I would also add that it is important where you publish. Go for the top journals in your field. If you've got a good piece, and you are offered the opportunity to publish it in an edited volume, turn it down politely (unless it's mega-prestigious, edited by a superstar and going to be published by a major university press) and submit it to a good journal instead. If you are thinking about publishing your PhD as a monograph - aim high, and go for the best publishers first.

This is what is getting people hired nowadays.

wonderful

Such great advice boffin & inveterate
loads of my pieces are lost in stupid edited collections. and the editors use them to get promoted.

I agree with peer review. It is not perfect but good pieces get through regardless of your pedigree (though less good pieces also get through with pedigree I've found ...)

In my discipline the Australians have published a list of A* journals. It gives an idea of which ones to aim for.

What field are you in, Animula? Maybe we can recommend good journals and publishers happy to take first books off the back of PhDs?

Agree with advice about book chapters - waste of time writing them at the moment unless you can recycle them as a paper.

Best person I know for recycling papers at the moment is Diane Reay, the sociologist. She's cracked the formula. Minute differences yet different papers in good journals.

I think another thing we can all do is pledge to carry out an act every day that helps another woman with talent achieve her potential, whether that's making a coffee for a stressed colleague, chatting to a postgrad or postdoc to buoy them up, offering to read someone's work, or making a couple of calls to mates to help someone get a bit nearer finding jobs and funding. Who joins me in the pledge?

I join.

A group of women 30s to early 40s went out to lunch last year & resolved to try to act more cohesively. We supported each other when they tried the 'good girl' routine to impose extra teaching, swap promotion templates, read work for each other and sit in meetings strategically distributed in the room. It made a big difference in how we felt as much as anything else.

What women need is to feel supported. It's not so much someone doing you down, as someone talking you up. That's what we have to do for each other.

So if is quite well paid compared say to being a doctor or some other profession? It seems like if you love your subject then it's fun which you'd hope most people would and reasonably family friendly.

Well I wouldn't say it's well paid compared to the other professions. Most people probably peak at c. £50k, but it could take you 20 years to get there (perhaps more if you include PhD years). I am quite happy with my salary, but I have 1 DC and have no burning desire to live in a middle-class part of the city or send my child to private school. If you did, you would be screwed.

It is family friendly in terms of flexibility (although not in the natural sciences, I believe) but not in terms of total hours worked. So you might be able to get home to see your kids in the evening, but you will be shattered from getting up at 5.30am to work, or from a second shift from the kid's bedtime to 11 or 12 at night.

or indeed kids' bedtime

I think the lack of flexibility in the natural sciences stems from the male dominance in most departments. Most of my male colleagues with children have SAHW's and so have that extra support of having to concentrate on nothing but their work. I also don't know about other departments/universities, but in the last couple of years we have had a bit of a shift towards presentee-ism (sp?) and been "seen to earn your keep".

I would say the salary is OK, though I did earn the same as I do now 7 years ago whilst working in industry but was prepared to accept a drop in salary for the at the time perceived advantages of the job, the main one for me being freedom in my research. Unfortunately I do think that this freedom can be something of a myth due to the nature of funding.

"first degree in computing was introduced in, I think, Brighton. It certainly wasn't Oxbridge."

Cambridge University Computer Lab was planned in 1936, formed in 1937, and built EDSAC in the 1940s. Its first research student was taken on in 1947, it started a post-graduate one-year diploma, the first taught course in the world, in 1953 and it started to be taught as an undergraduate subject in 1971.

Brighton Polytechnic was established in 1970.

Xenia, I think a lot of experienced academics are earning in the region of £42k about ten years in (probably the worst amount of money you can earn as you rule yourself out of state support and affluence at the same time). My physio earns that in three days a week, and my GP and lawyer chums in about two days a week, so I don't think we could say it's a well paid profession by any stretch of the imagination, given the training period required. So why do people work there?

In my case, when I started off in 1998, salaries were higher in relative terms (not dissimilar to some doctors' salaries, for example), but seemed to erode rather rapidly while I was training, which was unfortunate. So a lot of us have just had to decide what is good about the situation we are in, and make the best of it. You can't just keep retraining endlessly in the hope of jam tomorrow, and sometimes fate just takes a nasty turn and you have to sigh and be philosophical.

Also a lot of people cleverly tried to set up consultancies, write profitable books and so on, but this is not at all easy unless you strike lucky with a law or management studies text book. And those are not returneable for the REF, so it's catch 22 really. Pearson want me to write a text book at the moment but I just can't make a Boffin PLC business case for it given what I would probably earn against the time it would take out of the REF offensive. Yet is this passing up an opportunity I will regret later? Iit's a real dilemma. (I wish I could think of some more spin off projects to generate funds as I feel quite stuck financially, btw).

So double the average wage but not as good as some other perhaps comparable jobs. One of my offspring earns that within a year of graduating.

I've done quite a bit of stuff over the years with academics who have side lines but as you say that isn't always so easy to organise. I also pay one to do something for me but that's a very modest fee on something I inherited. Most books aren't profitable. I wrote 30 (I'm not an academic) and they never made very much money.

Well, I reckon on the one hand it is double the average wage, as you say, but on the other hand after the equivalent of nine years full-time study and three years as a struggling postdoc, it's actually a poor return financially, espcially for something that is actually quite competitive.

Hindsight, as they say, is the greatest gift.

Interestigly, one of my students was a part time stripper until recently and she was apparently taking home more than me. But to be fair she is rather more attractive

I agree with all of this and I hate the REF. Having spent this afternoon in my 3rd committee meeting this week as the token woman (apart from the ones who took the minutes) I feel tired and pissed off. It's true that this job is fantastic in lots of ways and probaly the best available for women who want to combine family and career, but I think it's very easy to become too grateful and to stop fighting for more money, fewer teaching hours, more women in the academy and so on, especially at times like these when jobs and research money are scarse. I don't feel that I have pesonally been discriminated against as a woman, but the broader context tells a very different story and we do have to keep fighting. Of course, that means extra work in some ways, but it's worth it.