Anyone work for a uni? Looking for advice

[Nowheretogo1985]

Hi I'm just wondering if anyone works for a uni? Particularly student support roles but generally like to hear from anyone working in this field. I work in a secondary school as support staff but looking to make a move to higher education in student support if possible. Pay and conditions (pay scale and room for promotion plus hybrid working) are attractive but quite concerned i might have a "grass is always greener" mentality ! No room for promotion or wfh in my current role and I'm stuck on a poor salary.
If you work for a uni do you like it? What challenges are there in higher education? Have you been able to develop and be promoted? Any other advice or information helpful!
Thanks xx

I’m not support staff but I do work in a uni. My uni is a great employer and staff are valued. The workload is not unreasonable (apart from the usual pinch points) and there is more money, so services are not so stretched as they might be at a school. Problems will be different. You will not usually be engaging with parents. There are a lot more mental health problems since COVID and a lot more poverty due to the cost of living crisis. There will definitely be more opportunities for promotion- there will be a whole student services department, likely employing dozens of staff - so you could move round sections. I think you have nothing to lose and would recommend it to you.

Thank you so much! This is really helpful. I'm not feeling it working in a school anymore, I've done it for 13 years and my salary has barely changed and the room for promotion and development professionally if you are not a teacher is limited/doesn't exist! I am term time tho so if I do make the move I will lose the holidays and time off with my children but I can't continue like this plus plenty of ppl don't work term time and manage a FT Job.
Everything you have mentioned sounds very attractive. Thanks for your advice xx

Your best option is to look at some postings and go for some interviews. I think unis will vary. Ours is a smaller one and does not have dozens of staff, however opportunities to move around certainly happen.

I'd say you don't have anything to lose. I don't think ours are especially well paid but it depends on the role.

Jobs.ac.uk will give you an idea.

Thank you really good to hear all of this.
I have applied for a few roles in higher Ed but not been successful at getting an interview as I don't have any higher education experience which is on the essential criteria of the uni I'm looking at. I apply, don't get an interview then leave it for a few months as scared I might be making the wrong decision moving accrues to higher Ed 😩
Il keep trying!

Uni admin is cut to the bone due to funding cuts and academic staff can be a bit entitled but they are a minority. Expect to work hard and be aware that uni's are having to adopt more and more flexible approaches to students' needs and student services are often now expected to be on rotas covering a 9am to 7pm pattern.

Overall, however, there shoukd be more opportunities for promotion than in a school. If you are within the M25 the London uni's find it hard to recruit due to higher pay and competition from central London. Jobs there are usually quite plentiful. In other parts of the country university admin jobs are closer to gold dust as the the universities are regarded as Employers of Choice.

Annual leave on the lower grades is usually 25 days, plus Bank Holidays plus a Christmas closure of about a week or more. Some also offer a couple of extra days at Easter. On higher grades a/l increases up to 35 days.

Benefits are: annual increments to top of scale, annual cost of living awards (often stingy), good pensions, generous A/L as aforementioned, generous sick pay and a brilliant pension although this is likely to be watered down in the next 3 to 5 years due to the valuations and employer costs.

Read the person spec carefully and address all items on the application form. Think carefully about scenarios you will be asked to answer which are likely to be around: prioritisation, volume management, dealing with a difficult or demanding team member or academic, etc. Focus on using outlook reminders and daily spreadsheets rather than sticky notes on your desk! They may also throw in a safeguarding question such as what would you do if a student told you in absolute confidence they were suicidal. You would tell them that due to the gravity of the disclosure you had to report what they had told you and refer it to your line manager or a named safeguarding lead.

There's also likely to be an in-tray test to check your basic literacy and numeracy so make sure you can convert a fraction to a percentage and work out both and mug up on your excel skills - simple data manipulation shoukd do it and make sure you can add up columns.

Good luck!

I work at a uni but not in a professional service role. I do know there are no opportunities for promotion, to go up you have to apply for roles as they come up at different grades so people often get stuck for decades essentially waiting for people to retire/die.

The he sector is also in a mess and the first roles that are on the redundancy list are the support roles so it's certainly not a certainty in terms of job security.

@Slanketblanket that's cheerful 🙃 strange as not what the other posters are saying. What role do you do of you don't mind me asking? Are you looking to get out?

I worked in a professional support role in Higher education for 25 years in two different red brick Universities. One was a better employer than the other. When I left a woman with a Masters level qualification had my old job.

It has changed a lot over the years I still see a few people I used to work with. Most of them like me went for early retirement if they could afford it. But this is probably just the world of work anyway and not exclusive to HE.

I am looking at it as someone who was there for the last golden years though so probably biased.

If you did not have a degree the last University I worked in would not give an interview for even a junior admin role. Just asked DH as he is still working and is a University head of dept and all his admin staff are educated to degree level.

That is Blair’s doing, I worked with people who didn’t have a degree and worked their way up, impossible as a brand new starter now.

@Slanketblanket in my experience the first uni jobs to go are academics whose disciplines are no longer attractive to students with ratios of less than 10:1.

Many universities have rationalised their support staff across a variety of areas: maintenance, cleaning, IT, Finance, etc. However, with the increase in international students there are often more intakes throughout the year than in September, more short courses, etc, and these things require additional rather than less admin.

I agree with @Slanketblanket about promotion. I'm on a Professional Services contract at a Uni in a very niche role. As there are no posts doing this work on a higher grade I've been stuck for years and years. The only option to be promoted is to apply to have my role re-graded (doing that now) but it's a really tough process that often gets rejected.

The other way to move upwards in Professional Services is to move departments or apply for a different role. I can't do that as I'm qualified for something very particular, if you have more general skills then it's easier to jump from one area to another and so move up.

I'm in a department in a recruitment/admissions role and I love my job. It's a nice balance, from working closely with central teams to more student facing stuff. I sometimes WFH (may be one a fortnight or so) but I choose to be on campus as i like being around others.

I have been been able to work my way up from administrator to manager of my team, so have in effect been promoted. @Slanketblanket is right though: unlike academics roles, usually pss staff have to leave their jobs and move to another in order to work their way up the scale.

Money is tight right now. At my place, we are not recruiting pss staff at all, unless it can be proven there is an essential need. I was given permission to recruit a new admin just over a year ago, and that staff member has now moved on out of HE. And now we can't replace them - even though we're in student recruitment which I would say is pretty essential! So, hard times right now.

But, if you get into a good department/ team with great colleagues then it can be a very inspiring place to work.

Good advice from @RosesAndHellebores - totally agree with it.

Exactly this.

My role has been successfully regraded twice in 6 years, and I know that's quite rare.

I recommend finding a temp role, or several, and get your foot in the door that way. Then you might be working in a department when a role comes up and as you're a known quantity you'd stand a decent chance.

Otherwise, if you can afford to, go for the lowest rungs on the ladder where you're not necessarily expected to have experience and work your way up. In a big uni you can apply to jobs in other departments if there's not much job wise where you are, and you'll be at an advantage because you know their systems already.

Read up on current higher education issues and find a way to express in the application that you have an understanding of them.

In your application give lots of examples of what you're talking about - you'll score more highly for each relevant one you give. Be specific, not vague.

If it's an application that asks you to write about your experience in reference to the person/job specification, work your way through each of them and give each section the heading of the skill etc you're referring to. If you skip any out you'll lose points! The person reading it will thank you for making it so easy to read.

In my experience universities are very good employers and pay decently in comparison to the same job in other sectors.

Your advantage is that you have been in a support role - work all the similarities! If you were a teacher hoping to move into Higher Ed admin you would be less lucky.

Oh and ooze enthusiasm 😂
Paint a picture of this person with transferable skills and lots of excitement at the thought of working in HE 😂

Big up how you've been part of team, a time this worked really well, a time it didn't and how it was resolved or what learning you took from it.

Last thing...this applies to any job, make sure you talk about things you've done, say I not we.

Good luck 😊

I’m an academic and agree with the others on here that all admin staff even the most junior have degrees.

A friend of mine is an experienced PA of 20 years and is writing good applications to try and join Professional Services at my uni and is always unsuccessful which I suspect is down to the lack of a degree. She’s been passed over for someone straight out of uni with no experience. Seems bonkers to me.

Yes, people do get promoted to more senior professional services roles.

Thanks for all your advice this Is really helpful. It's just a step into the unknown so comments and reflections like these are really helpful and gives me an insight into the pros and cons. It's a very different set up to working in a school so need to know what I'm getting myself into. Last thing I was is to regret making a move as this will imosct my time with my family so I need to make sure its the right one.
I have a degree so should be fine to get in.... one way or another!

I'm an academic (prof). Part of my role is to support staff progression, including PS staff and getting opportunities to go up is the key sticking point. We work with the junior staff with mentoring opportunities etc but ultimately they have to move out of our department of they wanted to get more senior.

@RosesAndHellebores I used to work for an institution where PS roles were slashed as the first round of cost saving. All PS was centralised removing all the departmental/faculty support roles so your 100+ programme managers in the departments were replaced with much much smaller team at central level. They did this for several years before starting to get rid of the departments that weren't recruiting high enough student numbers.

@Slanketblanket yes I've seen that too but fairly light touch through voluntary redundancy and natural attrition. It all goes round. Centralised for a few years, new VC or COO and it goes back to the faculties and on the merry go round goes. I would say though that verynfewnpeople who are good-natured the job and out their backs into it go unless they elect to.

One big positive to working at a Uni is the availability of further training. We have access to a lot of online training and can apply to go on relevant courses run either by the University or elsewhere. On certain fixed-term or permanent contracts you can apply to do a degree course and it's free.

Also, once you're in then a lot of jobs are advertised to current staff before being advertised outside the University.

I’ve just finished a year role at a famous Uni. It was the most horrendous workplace ever and the leaders in my area of work were nothing short of incompetent. I hated every minute of it but when I left, so many of the staff I worked with from all depts said they were also desperate to leave and to think of them if I see any roles for them externally. Was shocking

This is my experience.

There's no money, staff are overworked (in my uni) often doing several people's jobs. Hiring freeze.

I would say it's a bad time to get into HE.

I work in a college (FE) in support in an administrative role. Generally I enjoy it, however line managing 70 staff between two of us is a bit much. Would also like to know more about roles in HE.

Thanks. Lots of helpful information on here with a variety of differences in experiences. I think it's worth the leap if I'm honest, I am ready for a change and not happy working in a school environment. The lack of progression and feeling stuck is frustrating. I get this is not guaranteed in HE from what some of you are saying but feel there would be more opportunity to develop if I find the right university.

I work in PS. The whole sector is really struggling Finance wise due to the cap in tuition fees which has not been increased in years, despite inflation and other costs. Uncertainty due to General Election looming and not knowing his this will affect university funding. Professional Services are constantly being be restructured to cut costs, resulting in redundancies and overworked staff.

Also several unis now employ PS staff through a sub company (which may not be immediately obvious) but means poorer Ts and Cs, like pension. Be sure to check that out!