Looking for academics/lecturers for advice!

[ChilliPepperPlant]

Hello! I wonder whether there are any academics/lecturers out there who might be able to help with my dilemmas? I will try to put it in a nutshell but it's a bit complicated. Anyway, here goes:

I had a previous career, but have just got a Phd. I'm currently on maternity leave but would really like to remain in academia. The thing is, all the jobs out there (that I've seen so far) are full-time and I'd really prefer to work part-time. So first question is, is my best bet to apply anyway, and in the event that I got a job, negotiate to PT at some point following this?

The alternative for me is to try academic life again once I'm ready to work FT. The thing is, I'll be in my late thirties by then, which seems a bit late to start a new-ish career! I don't know how this would sit with potential employers?

Final question (if you manage to read this far) is this. My understanding is that as an academic you work hard but have a reasonable level of autonomy over how you use your time? Is that still true? With school age children, are you able to spend at least some of the holidays with them? Or am I dreaming!?

Thanks in advance - I know this is a relatively obscure and long post, but any thoughts would be very welcome.

Firstly , well done on getting your PhD. I have to be honest and say that part-time jobs are quite difficult to come by ime - however, the job is as you say hard work but as long as you fulfil your teaching requirements which can be timetabled around school times, is fairly flexible. It is hard to get back into it - and many academics with small children often find that rather than give up until the children are older they continue working however their research and publication output is often restricted. Good luck x

I agree - ime a full time academic in reality teaches around 10 hours a week, if that. As long as you can get this scheduled to suit you (be VERY nice to the admin slave who does the timetabling ) it should be possible to have a full time contract. However as Jazz says your research output will be the difficult thing to do (but entirely possible in holidays/eveings/weekends). Alternatively for a year or two you could get a non research active contract? Now the RAE's done and dusted might be easier?

Actually if you're new to teach you'd probably only do 6 hours a week teaching as a probationer, but you'd be expected to do the teaching qual in place of the extra teaching.

Oh and apply to a pre-92 institution - they usually have smaller classes so less makring!

Gosh, I would have said I know a lot of academics who on paper work part-time, but in reality it's a full-time because of the extra hours they have to really put in to do the job properly.

I knew someone who worked (as a research assistant) a part-time contrct by working only weekdays term-time, but the hours were arranged with her immediate supervisor.

And looking back on it, her supervisor (a childless) was sometimes pretty unsympathetic if this woman had a child-related emergency.

You should (offically) get 6 weeks leave in addition to whenever the institution is officially closed, but whether you can take that time and still get the job done, may vary...

You could try sending your CV to people advertising for FT jobs in your area. Say that you saw the job on offer, you really like the look of it but you'd prefer a part-time job if one comes up, could they please keep your cv on file? It can't hurt, and you may get work that way if you have the right skills. Academics are always getting little pots of money (not enough to employ anyone full time) for research that needs doing, or they need voer just for a particular course that needs teaching while someone else is on maternity leave/sabattical, etc.

Good luck.

urk! "voer" should be "cover".

DH has found that over the last decade or so the 'autonomy' of a lecturer's working life has reduced massively. He works insane hours to fulfill the teaching, admin, and research aspects of his job. It has been soul destroying. It's certainly not the family friendly career it used to be.

10 hours a week teaching As a lecturer in a post 92 uni as a full timer my teaching commitment was about 18 hours a week! Plus admin, research, committee commitments, tutorials, sorting student problems, open days etc etc I could easily have worked a 50/60 hour week. I am now part-time and my work load is proportionately heavy (infact worse in a way), wouldn't say I have a high level of autonomy. We get 7 weeks (35 days) annual leave and you use that how you wish, main problem for school age children is half terms.

Hi ChilliPepperPlant and congratulations on the PhD. I think that the answers to your questions will depend on what subject area your PhD is in (you may not want to say exactly, of course, but loosely Arts or Sciences might make a difference) and also on where you see yourself ending up work-wise (i.e. are you aiming for a job in a research-intensive university or happy to do more teaching and less research in a post-92 institution?).

Just so you know where I am coming from, I am in my (very) early 40s with two dds who are 6 and 7. I am a Senior Lecturer and Head of Department in a small department in the Arts Faculty of a Russell Group University. (God, that sounds poncey... sorry... just so you know how relevant or not my experience is to your own.)

I have never ever seen an academic job advertised as a p-t post. However, my understanding of the relevant legislation is that if you got the job and then asked to work part-time the institution would be obliged at least to consider it and would have to have a VERY good reason for turning you down. We currently have a post-doctoral research fellow who is works part-time, but it has been easier for her because she doesn't have teaching and admin duties to fit in.

I did consider working part-time temporarily after I had dd2. However, I realised that my department (not where I am working now) would simply rearrange my teaching so that it was all on 3 days, would reduce my admin load slightly, but would basically expect me to continue as normal in the days when I was officially 'there', and then instead of having at least one day per week for research, I'd have no time for research, the same workload as before and half the money. At that point, I decided to go back full-time. Actually I did also consider changing to a teaching-only contract (because I wasn't confident of being able to fit in any research around a heavy teaching/admin load and two young children) but I was advised that that would basically be 'career death', so I decided not to.

So, basically I have worked full-time throughout the time my dds have been small. I went back to work after 18 weeks maternity leave both times, though I did manage to extend it a bit by timing my births carefully and using the summer vacation as extra leave! Dh didn't have a proper job till after dd2 was born (he was a PhD student and then was doing bits of part-time work) so it was essential for me to go back quite early in order to pay the mortgage.

If you decide to wait until you're ready to work f-t, I think that there are various issues to consider. I don't think that age is a major issue. Apart from being illegal to discriminate on the grounds of age, my experience is that departments genuinely want the best person for the job, regardless of age. However, you'd need to consider the gap on your CV between finishing the PhD and applying for f-t jobs. It's not that people will discriminate against you as such for having had a 'career break'. That would again be illegal. But it's that you'll be competing against people who've had time to gain more teaching experience and to publish between finishing the PhD and applying for whatever job it is. So, if you decide to wait, it would be a good idea to consider how to use the intervening period to make yourself as attractive as possible job-wise. This, in my field, would mean concentrating on getting stuff published. I'd think about publishing the thesis as a book or series of articles, but also about preparing to move into a new research area - which might be an extension of or development from the thesis - to show that you're thinking about the future. You could also gain teaching experience by doing hourly paid work if it's available. Again, this may depend on subject area, but in my area there's always a need for p-t teachers. You could 'manage' this, so that you did, say, a couple of hours a week, but only on a Monday, so that you wouldn't need to leave your dc for too long. If this looks feasible, I'd be looking for experience of giving the odd lecture (even if it's just one or two as part of a course managed by someone else) as well as seminars or other small-group classes. You want to show a potential employer that you are capable of teaching at all levels and in all formats that are relevant to your discipline (which may involve lab work or whatever... but science is a closed book to me!).

In answer to your time-management question. Yes, it is possible to have a certain amount of autonomy over one's time as an academic. That doesn't reduce the amount of work to be done, but it does mean that you can decide when to do it. I have one day/week when I work from home, even in term time (excepting occasional meetings... but I am HoD and go to more meetings - for my sins! - than I did when I was a Lecturer!). On that day, I don't have childcare and I try always to pick my dds up from school myself. I rarely work during the day at weekends (which I used to do all the time before I had kids). However, I work most evenings. My situation is particularly odd, as dh works shifts and often doesn't get home till about 9.30 p.m. We always try to eat together (otherwise days can go by without us actually speaking!) so that means that I usually work in the evenings between about 9.30 and midnight or 10.30 and 1.00 a.m. I am rarely in bed before 1.00!

I am not as research intensive as I'd like to be, and my research output definitely suffered after I had my dds. However, that was taken into account (somewhat!) by the last RAE (I submitted 3 items rather than 4) and hopefully will be in whatever replaces it. (HEFCE's latest on the REF does mention various equal opportunities issues. It's rather vague, but then the whole document is vague, so I'm not necessarily holding that against it!). Also, the facts that (a) I moved jobs when dd2 was 18 months old, and therefore had a whole lot of new teaching etc to prepare, and (b) have taken on a management role, have exacerbated the research situation. I could have made life easier for myself!

OK... I've written an essay, and I now have a student waiting to see me, so I will stop there. Hope this is helpful. Sorry it's so long. Get back to me if you have any more questions. Oh, and good luck!

BTW my time-management issues would be improved if only I could find some way to cure myself of my MN addiction.

It depends what you mean by 'academic'. I think it might be possible to get short term employment as a research assistant/teaching assistant but if you mean a job with full tenure (but only part time) that could be much harder - most in that situation were established in tenure prior to the children and the maternity leave. Why not apply for posts anyway and see what happens? We have trouble filling posts at times but than in law, all the money is elsewhere so academic life is not tempting for many

Hi ChilliPepperPlant, I?m in a similarish position to you but a bit further down the track (and have name changed as it will be blindingly obvious who I am to anyone who knows me). DH and I are both academics at a ?traditional? Uni with a very strong international reputation for research and teaching. I have just returned from maternity leave and have come back PT for the rest of the academic year and will then be FT (PT was a temporary concession as they wanted me back and I wanted more time off).

On the positive side it is a fantastic career. There is nothing like being paid to read, write and spout about something you?re interested in and (ime) the flexibility is great, certainly compared to my previous jobs in the ?real world?. DH and I currently aim to both be home by 5/5:30 to have dinner with DD and put her to bed. The flip side of this is that we both work (or MN!) from as soon as she goes to bed until we go to bed. This is not just because of DD, we have always done this and as far as I can see all my colleagues do too.

The problem is getting into the career and staying in it. We have a large group of friends who were graduate students with us (all of whom have finished 5+ years ago) and wanted to be academics and DH is the ONLY ONE with a permanent academic job. These are people with outstanding academic records, several of whom have won prestigious prizes for their research. This may be a particular feature of the kind of institution that we are at but ime the Uni only works because a vast army of wannabe academics are willing to do teaching, research, examining etc on temporary/short-term contracts with poor pay and conditions. A lot of friends have given up because they want to buy homes, settle, have children etc and temporary posts have no certainty. There are only a few ?prizes? of permanent jobs so loads of competition for them. If you have let your research slip because you?ve had children the reality seems to be that there?s little chance of getting one of these jobs. None of my friends who had temporary jobs when pg are still in academia. I don?t mean to put you off entirely as it is a wonderful career, but if you want to go to a top, research-based university then it is tough.

Oh and my dilemma (I thought the post above was long enough already!) is similar to you but a bit further on so here is my position and thoughts as it night be helpful.

I am just back from maternity leave and don?t particularly want to work FT as I want to spend time with DD growing up (and future children too). I am on PT for this term only and I am effectively doing all the teaching/admin/student contact that I would do FT and have little time to research. I find doing research PT difficult because I need the continuity to ?get into? what I am doing and think about it properly. For this reason I think PT would be career death, certainly at a place that places a high value on research (everywhere?) and certainly if you don?t have a tenured position and so will be looking for one in the future. As it happens, I am on a fixed term contract but it's quite unusual and has the best terms of any I've come across, in particular it is the longest term I've come across, so my research record is decent. The post is, however, running out in a year or so. I?ve been down to the last couple of people for some permanent jobs and the reason that I?ve been given for not getting them is effectively that my research has slowed down because of maternity leave (phrased in a way that just possibly scrapes into being legal!) ? other people can demonstrate more recent work where as mine is just a plan. If I want to stay in academia properly I will have to work my a* off for the next year or so, not spending the time with DD that I want to with the vague hope of getting a permanent job?

? so I?m thinking of resigning and spending time with DD and doing a bit of teaching/research to keep my hand in and because I enjoy it. The advice I?ve got from more senior academics is that this would probably be career death too, certainly at a research-based University. So in resigning I would be assuming that I would be waving my career goodbye but keeping a glimmer of a possibility of returning alive. I would not do this if I had a permanent job but I don?t want to lose time with DD for the possibility of a job.

I hope my experience is not too depressing. I?m not depressed by it. I love my job and think it?s one of the best I could imagine but it?s just been distorted by RAE pressure to publish constantly. Most of the senior women I?ve spoken to (who now have grown-up children) did little research when they had small children and cranked it up as the children grew. That was another time though. Also, I think my position may be made more difficult by the fact that I am geographically restricted to applying to a couple of universities (DH would not want to leave his job) and by the very research-intensive environment that I?m in. Perhaps your experience would be more positive at a different place or in a different subject. I hope it is!

AnAcademic, you put some of the problems and dilemmas facing women who want to be mothers and academics brilliantly. In your specific situation, can I suggest that you try to hang on in there for a little while?

The job market has been horrifically tight in many many disciplines recently, and has also been distorted by RAE pressures. Before the RAE deadline, you had to have an exceptionally strong submission to get a job since it, no one has been hiring. In a year or so, things will loosen up again. I am old and wizened enough to have seen this cycle go round twice already, and there will be more opportunities coming over the horizon.

To the OP: AnAcademic and Ellbell have given you brilliant advice. But a huge amount does really depend on your field - in a field such as economics, law or education, where there aren't enough job candidates to go round, you could probably negotiate a part-time lectureship much more easily than in, say, history, where there are masses of very highly-qualified people lurking in those holding pens AnAcademic describes. Come back and drop a few more hints about what you do, and we'll try to help more...

Congratulations on your PhD!

I was a Lecturer in a pre-92 Russell Group university department for a year before having DS, now nearly 6. I went back when he was 12 months old, in order not to have to pay my maternity pay back - by when I was already pg with DD. I left following my second maternity leave. Nothing on earth would have possessed me to return to academia.

My experience is not necessarily representative of all experiences of university teaching. But there was not, and would never be, any autonomy. Family life would be non-existent if I had stayed.

When I went into it, I envisaged a career that would give me enough autonomy to combine a job and a family. Plus I had great dreams of Making A Difference, Enthusing Students About Literature, Having Interesting Discussions etc, etc, etc - and was shocked and horrified by the reality of it (and am still shocked and horrified when I think of the gap between my ideas of it and what it was in reality).

I was working around 100 hours per week (full time, following a part-time post where the hours weren't that much different). Thanks to the RAE, research is judged by quantity, not quality - and believe me, you really don't feel like doing research after your 100-hr working week (most of that 100 hours having been spent on paperwork, fatuous meetings about paperwork, and writing up the results of fatuous meetings about paperwork). Research is mostly done at midnight, and the pressure to produce mountains of research is intolerable - especially if you do actually want to see your children occasionally. One could expect to get a couple of weeks of research done in the summer vacation, but the rest of the vacation (which gets shorter by the year!) is taken up with re-sits, Admissions, and further fatuous meetings about ... well, I never understood why we had to have Departmental meetings throughout the vacations. We were expected to be available and visible in the Department (email was not adequate) in case of customer (sorry, student) enquiries - so the time I had hoped to spend with the children was non-existent.

Others will have had a great experience of university teaching. Two of my (single, male) colleagues thought it was fantastic; they loved burning the midnight oil and competing with one another to be top dog. A part-time post - if such a thing were available - would almost certainly mean a similar workload for half the pay.

I'm sorry if this is all very gloomy. This is just my own experience, and yours could be very different. For me, resigning was one of the best days of my life. I still do freelance translation work (when the children are asleep), and have not regretted my "career death" for a single second.

Whatever you do, good luck with it!

Thanks for your message Zazette, I might stick it out for a bit longer but I have this horrible feeling that I will turn round, find that my baby is now 2 and I've not noticed and suddenly I'm at home with no job and all I have to show for it is bunch of papers that no-one will ever read with my name at the top! I do enjoy the job though so am undecided.... equally I don't want to be going on to my poor DD when she is 14 about the life that I would have had if only...!

Seems that the RAE has distorted the job market so that people don't feel safe to take the long view on someone, instead - as nellyraggbagg has said - it's a numbers game.

Oh and Chillipepperplant, one thing that you might want to look at (if you fit into the area - essentially a scientist or engineer) is a Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship. here They really are designed to meet the problems that have been mentioned here. They are very flexible and are aimed at helping people in exactly your position to stay in academia.

I'd definitely advise you to hang on in there a bit longer, if you can bear it AnAcademic.

Without doubting for a moment the validity of nellyraggbagg's experience (parts of which definitely ring bells with me), I'd like to suggest some of the advantages.

I really do spend a significant proportion of my time Enthusing Students About Literature. I have even been known to indulge in the odd Interesting Discussion. I get to talk about books and about stuff that I am really interested in. I get to mix with young people and to see them learning and maturing and Understanding Stuff (about the world in general as well as about my subject area). I have a huge amount of autonomy, and not just because I am HoD. As HoD, I wouldn't dream of telling any of my colleagues what they should be including in their modules (apart from a basic level of number of contact hours for 20 credits, etc.). We all teach, within reason, what we are interested in. I can't pick my own hours, but I've managed to get the teaching hours of everyone in my department onto three days/week, which supposedly leaves 2 days for research. (I tend to have only one because of the managerial stuff.) I take my dds to school in the morning most mornings (I miss about one a month because of an early meeting) and I have the flexibility to leave at 4.30 if I need to to pick them up from the c/m (or sometimes I stay later and dh picks them up, depending on his shift). I work late and I work hard. But I love what I do. I'd rather be doing this than a 9-5 job that didn't stimulate me. I find it hard to find time for my research, but it excites me as much as it ever did. And one of the best things I've given my dds (for me; maybe not for them - yet... but maybe they'll appreciate it in time) was to dedicate a book to them. In the vacation, I go into the department once a week or so (some go much less than that) and we rotate summer duties such as clearing and resits, so that one person deals with them all ... but each person only has to do it once every 6 years. Even the RAE (which I hate as much as the next right-minded academic) did have safeguards built in to protect those who'd been on maternity leave. They weren't robust enough in my view (because they only took into account time actually on maternity leave, not the effects on research productivity of the time after that when you're still not sleeping, etc.), but they were there and institutions should have promoted them and made sure that eligible staff took advantage of them.

It's a brilliant job. It's not an easy one, but if you've 'survived' a PhD, you presumably know that already. But it's absolutely worth doing. It's fun! I can't say I have fun all day, every day (any meetings involving finances are a particular low-point for me!) but I do have some fun on most days. How many jobs give you that? (I think I might possibly enjoy being a restaurant critic a teeny bit more, but only a bit!)

OK... I'll stop again. I don't want to come across as excessively Pollyanna-ish. It's not easy. But it is IMO very definitely worth it!

Ellbell - I wish you'd been my HoD! My HoD scheduled a departmental meeting for my DS's first birthday to "test my committment". Before every meeting, he would tell me to "toe the party line, or you will be very firmly sat on". My modules were all returned by the Module Committee because my views weren't exactly the same as those of my colleagues. They were only accepted once I had adopted "Best Practice" in every respect ("Best Practice" soon became my most hated phrase). In the vacations, we were all expected to be in the Department; even if there was nothing specific to do, we were supposed to be bonding with our computers and Being Accessible.

But all departments (and HoDs) are different, and Ellbell's experience is obviously encouraging to anyone thinking of entering the profession. Maybe departments headed by women who are mothers themselves are a better bet?! My HoD and Head of School both had young children (who spent all their waking hours in day-nursery), and expected all women/mothers to have the same mentality as their very career-focussed wives. To my mind, freelancing is a better bet if your particular field lends itself to it - that way, you get the good bits without any admin, and without horrible bullies telling you what to do!

Wow! Thanks so very much everyone for these amazing responses. I am dealing with a very crotchety baby today, so am going to have a re-read soon (just skimmed now) but didn't want to seem like I'd disappeared!

Just quickly though, it looks like it might be hard for me to develop an academic career almost from scratch and achieve the holy grail of so-called work-life balance! It's such a dilemma, I went back to academic life because i didn't want to spend the rest of my working life feeling unsatisfied. It was not a clever decision financially but I haven't regretted that side of things. Now, with a baby, things are different again.

A bit more info about me, I do a social science, have a pretty OK academic record and was offered a job at a Russell Group uni previously (turned it down due to circs at the time!), so am hoping I'm vaguely employable. I think the answer might lie in what comes up and when. And where! And whether I can get it. I'm up north ... can't really move due to DH's job, so fairly restricted as to where jobs might be available. Aaaargh - baby telling me to get of MN! Thanks so much again, sorry not to respond to individual ideas etc! I will revisit later when baby hopefully asleep!

Chilli - you are very welcome. It may be that your perspective would be different from mine, as you've had experience of a different career beforehand. I went straight from an undergraduate degree into a PhD, then into university teaching. My academic record couldn't have been more impressive, but I'm not sure that it necessarily did me any favours when I had a job. I never appreciated that having a job required all kinds of other skills (which I'd never developed), and was probably naive when I went into it in the first place. You would presumably be less so!

I do think you'd find that your vacations were more than accounted for once you'd done whatever extra admin plus research. Your annual holiday time would probably be pretty similar to the kind of holiday times you'd get in a "normal" job - but the problem with university teaching, even in a nice department, is that it is part of your life. You can never really switch off and think: "right, I'm switching my phone off for two weeks while I'm on holiday." As so much of your work is in your head, you never really escape from it!!

But good luck, whatever you decide to do. And enjoy your baby!

Ah, yes, nelly's right about never really switching off. You have to care about it enough not to mind that, I suppose.

Hello again!

Ellbell - Yes, where I'm located actually is in between quite a few institutions which could be within commuting distance, so not as restricted as all that I guess.

NellyRagBag - Only less naive in that I know that no job is perfect, and that for me, working in a job for which I have no passion makes that fact even harder.

To be honest, I don't know if I'm passionate enough about my subject to make this work in face of the relatively (only relatively!)easy life available in previous career. I guess the only way to find out is to give it a go.

Anyway - so much to consider here. Thanks so much for all your information and advice.

Coming to this late, but can I give you the benefit of advice from a post-92 institution?

I am FT and have been for ten years. I am a course leader so have quite a high admin load. I would never go PT because, as several people have commented, what the university tends to do is give you all your teaching in a three day week and then assume that you will do marking and research and preparation in your own time.

I think it can be a very flexible job after the first few years. When I started teaching it was a heavy load because of course I was writing whole modules from scratch. Now it is lighter. I also do quite a lot of distance-learning teaching, which can be done at home. With the advent of the Internet quite a lot of stuff can be done out of the office, so you can be flexible at certain times of the year (ie yesterday I took my son to a medical appointment in the afternoon and there was not a problem because we have finished teaching for the year). However, when you are teaching things are a lot less flexible (the two-week autumn holiday is a nightmare for us because DH is an academic as well).

To sum up, I would apply for a FT job and do it FT, at least for the first few years.

Just to add - the seven weeks holiday looks attractive, but both DH and I spend most of ours researching, writing and going to conferences.

Last year we spent the entire summer holidays tag-parenting as one or the other of us flew off to a conference, which might sound glamorous, but gets less so as the weeks wear on. Good childcare is essential.