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9 Reasons Why I Decided to Quit my Job
09 March 2010
By Mashhuda Glencross
After nearly a decade employed as a postdoc, I have decided to quit a job that I loved and try something completely different! I do this with a mixture of excitement and sadness and would like to share my reasons with people also struggling with similar obstacles and difficult career choices. I apologise (in advance) for my points being biased by EPSRC practices, but I have little direct experience of other funding councils. So here we go, and in no particular order!
1. As I developed my own independent research ideas there were few options to evolve them as my own. With very few lectureships available in my area and my own mobility restrictions, to keep myself employed I pro-actively applied for EPSRC grants with the support of an academic PI. Currently, the EPSRC only accept proposals from academic PIs. While the European Commission does not contract to individuals, in my department I still had to have an academic champion to apply for EU projects. I could apply for independently funded fellowships in my own name, but these are extremely competitive (Typically less than a 6% success rate). Also, there are few options available to postdocs with about 10 years of experience. In fact, there are currently no EPSRC mid-career fellowship schemes available to postdoctoral contract research staff with over 10 years of experience.
2. On fixed term contracts, I could not formally supervise PhD students. In later years provided my funding extended beyond the student's PhD, I could theoretically be involved in co-supervision. In practice, I was really only allowed to be informally involved.
3. When I was granted an open ended contract, I was still not allowed to be formally involved in PhD supervision. This time, it was because my funding was coming to an end and so my management structure on redeployment was unclear.
4. Since my PI was retiring, I was no longer able to apply for responsive mode funds to continue my work. Consequently, I fell onto redeployment in July 2009. The redeployment process applied in my department unfortunately could not directly take into consideration my standing as an Internationally recognised researcher, the income I had previously generated, my esteem indicators, or my career aspirations. I found myself assigned to projects detrimental to my career aspirations.
5. Since academic and research staff are under so much pressure to perform, I am concerned that the integrity of research is being eroded as people are forced to shoehorn their work into shape to "tap" fashionable funding seams.
6. I fully understand that funding councils need to be accountable for the money spent on academic research. However, I am concerned about the practices being established to achieve this. For example, we all know that research that fits strategic priorities stands more of a chance of being funded. This creates boom and bust cyclical funding trends, where large amounts of money is pumped into a fashionable area, when this has little tangible impact the funding to the area is withdrawn after staff have re-trained to be able to work effectively. Also the fact that Individual PIs are rarely held accountable for failed projects, with each new bid considered in isolation, means that people with the right connections can continue to gain funding while consistently failing to have real impact.
7. The peer review process employed by the EPSRC no longer seems to be working very well for people in my community (Graphics/Vision), with very few funded proposals/fellowships since the change-over to general panels. Strong, impressive proposals can be significantly disadvantaged because of a poor review. We all know that there can be several reasons for poor reviews -- for example, un-declared conflicts of interest, inappropriate expertise of the reviewer, a hastily written review, implicit gender/race/institutional discrimination to name just a few. When the EPSRC had expert panels, there would potentially be someone qualified to champion a strong proposal that might have been unfairly disadvantaged.
8. In UK universities, there is no equivalent tenure-track career route for career researchers. This fails to recognise the growth of an individual's expertise over their research career enforcing a strict glass ceiling. We are seen as transient labour and become costly to charge to research projects. Although we have the qualifications and experience, as career researchers we lack the funding stability to build strong research teams and independent research areas.
9. Funding cuts to higher education will have two clear negative effects -- even fewer academic jobs will become available, and obtaining sustained funding for research jobs will become challenging. I am very concerned that research staff may have less clear job protection compared with academic staff, and so redundancies will impact research staff much harder than tenured academic staff.
I hope that these points help others to either right the wrongs of the system, or make their own difficult career decisions.
George Whale09 March 2010 at 03:48 PM
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Mashhuda, this all sounds familiar - "transient labour" is absolutely right. I wish you good luck with establishing a new career away from research.
Mashhuda Glencross09 March 2010 at 05:03 PM
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Hi George, Everyone I speak with says that it all sounds familiar, which makes me think these problems are pretty widespread. We do really need stronger representation in UCU. These practices are counter to the anti-casualisation legislation, and also against the spirit of the research concordat which universities are signed up to. A real shame... Thanks for your kind wishes :)
George Whale09 March 2010 at 07:45 PM
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Yes Mashhuda, you're right, if there is one lesson to be learned from our collective experiences, it is that we have to be much stronger and more determined in defending our interests. The concordat is an excellent starting point, but it's up to us to ensure that employers heed it.
Chris Thomson10 March 2010 at 09:16 AM
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1. I would argue that this is because post-doctoral positions are still widely regarded as training positions, with fellowships being perceived as the “you have made it” post. Clearly there is a problem here with the lack of mid-career fellowships, I guess the rationale is that at this point researchers would be on some kind of institutional scheme (and yes I know they exist for the very few and only in some institutions). 2. As point 1, although I have found in practice that PhD supervisors that I have met are very willing to allow me to take on parts of the supervision role and credit me for my involvement. There are certainly issues with being a main supervisor on a fixed term contract, in particular what if the student does not submit in time? 3. This I think is more troubling, after all many lecturers move around abandoning their students, so I would support you in supervising in this case, after all you seem firmly committed to your institution. 4. This is a very real problem if you are dependent on one PI in your work. I faced a similar challenge (although I’ve not been in the ‘game’ as long as you). I decided to move institutions and disciplines and so far it seems to be working out. I personally feel that addressing this kind of issue falls on our responsibility as researchers to manage our own career, but there certainly can be issues when you are in a small department and only one academic is in your field of work. Though for me this would ring alarm bells and I would want to be sure that I have skills to work in other fields to an equal level of competence. 5. Yes... But is this always a bad thing? For society as a whole encouraging us academics to look at valuable forms of research may be good. There is still funding for fundamental research although of course this is competitive, but this is the same for any business. 6. I think the real issue with this is for doctoral students, if they do their PhD in a certain area it is not uncommon for that area to have evaporated by the time they finish, possibly making publication harder. Once you become a professional (in any kind of job) the world does change and regular retraining will always be necessary, so the funding cycles which are normally stable for several years are not too bad. You also raise the issue of PIs not being accountable, again an issue, but for researchers the issue that failed research leads to poor publications is something that tends to bother me more. 7. There are always winners and losers. My strategy is simple, make as many friends as possible to convince them of the value of your research. 8. Again some institutions sort of have this, but it is very competitive (what do you expect?), research positions will always be on merit. There is not enough funding for every successful PhD to have a academic research career. 9. Note the distinction ‘Higher Education’ and ‘Research’, the funding parcels come in three forms, the teaching block grant, the research block grant (aka RAE, REF), and research grants. Most contract researchers are paid via the research grants, so if funding is just cut to ‘higher education’ aka the block grants we should be ok and the lecturing/central staff will be hit, if research funding is cut then we suffer. It’s too early to tell what will happen. One final note, I think it is unrealistic to move to a position where all of this is solved in one go, but step changes could certainly be made. If you have some suggestions to make I (as one of the members of UKRSA) can certainly share it with others.
Hannah Dee10 March 2010 at 09:56 AM
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Mashhuda - your post echos a lot of things I've been thinking recently. Given the dearth of Lectureships available right now, it's not a good time to be a researcher with significant experience, particularly if you've got ties to an institution or a city. Good luck with your move - do you know what you're going to do?
Mashhuda Glencross10 March 2010 at 10:37 AM
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Hi Chris, Thanks for your comments. Due to personal constraints, I was unable to move for my career until recently. The issues I raised are based on my own personal experience and circumstances. As you suggest, I did make as many friends as possible to help get my research noticed. I published in the top outlets in my area. I made it through several filters to the final panel meeting for an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship (now I am no longer eligible to re-apply, since I am 10 years from my PhD viva date). I had large international companies offering me funded PhD studentships and small grants, but finances are currently very tough, and my institution was unwilling to effectively underwrite my salary and allow me to build up my funding portfolio to cover my salary. The key issue for me really is that transitioning from fixed term to open-ended only ensures security of salary. On redeployment, in practice people gave me mixed messages on this point too -- so I felt very much "at risk". In fact, I felt hugely pressured to do whatever was lined up for me (even if it wasn't really appropriate) because I was afraid of losing my job. I had hoped that transitioning to open-ended would create a positive change for career research staff. Had I been eligible to supervise students, apply directly for grants and build a research team, I would have had a chance at covering my salary and making my post sustainable. I would really like to see institutions put into place support structures and bridging funds to allow people on open-ended contracts to survive between grants, and support them in getting funding for their posts. Arbitrarily redeploying people to short-term funded projects isn't constructive for anyone. This does mean that funding councils need to revise their eligibility criteria to also allow staff on open-ended contracts to apply for responsive mode grants. Surely they must be aware that career researchers do submit their own bids with an academic PI on board. Historically, the transient nature of research contracts understandably meant that people needed someone in a permanent post for continuity. For open-ended contract research staff, this should no longer be the case. I'd also like to see support for a nationally agreed research staff redeployment policy that takes into account track record, aspirations etc. The process (as I experienced it) would indeed work well for secretarial and admin staff, but really isn't suitable in the same form for research staff.
Mashhuda Glencross10 March 2010 at 10:52 AM
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Hi Hannah, I am going to a large international company based in Cambridge :-) In my new role, I will be responsible for a graphics hardware product. The sort of thing that we will see in lots of cool mobile devices in coming years. It sounds like a great opportunity and will hopefully give me stability and a new challenge with genuine career prospects. For me at least, this is the right time to give it a go, because I was finding the stress of the transient nature of my "permanent" job and insecurity over funding too destructive. If you have been concerned with similar issues then I urge you to look around and see what alternatives could be ideal for you.
Chris Thomson10 March 2010 at 11:00 AM
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The kind of situation you describe in your first paragraph has been addressed by some institutions for their top researchers, as you say the rest of us get redeployment which doesn't help to build a research track record. The reality is that any single institution is unlikely to be able to offer redeployment within a specialist subject area, unless the grant comes in, so I'm unsure of how a national scheme would work - as you say many institutions have tight finances at the moment so funding bridging periods maybe difficult. I've spoke with others before about some kind of national redeployment scheme but that would require relocation and causes issues with local politics. What would you (and others) expect to see in a national redeployment policy? (This is probably a UCU thing to work on, but I'd be interested to see comments) On the point about research councils I thought that you could apply on an open ended contract as a PI to EPSRC, although I maybe mistaken?
Mashhuda Glencross10 March 2010 at 12:28 PM
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Hi Chris, I actually meant a national policy that is approved by UCU to unify the practices of the redeployment process nationally. I wasn't thinking of something that operates between universities - as you say relocation and politics would indeed become an issue with something like that. Instead, I was thinking of an agreement defining a process in line with the objectives of the concordat. UCU have an example redeployment process available on their website. This states that researchers careers and aspirations should be factored into potential redeployments. Currently though, there is nothing that legally defines the boundaries of suitable redeployment. For this reason, much is left to interpretation. Given that funding is tight, institutions are less likely to be flexible and accommodating towards the redeployee. I do wonder if a senior lecturer on redeployment might be treated more favourably than an equivalent level senior researcher simply due to the perception that a researcher's job is temporary. Currently, the EPSRC require that the PI on a grant has an academic contract. An open ended research contract is not classed as academic. I did try to clarify this through a number of routes, and was told on several occasions that I was not eligible to apply for first grants or responsive mode grants as PI even with an open ended contract.
Tennie Videler11 March 2010 at 11:27 AM
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Hi Mashhuda, thank you for such a well written post, lots of food for thought, as all the responses show. Personally, I am excited you're coming to Cambridge. When do you start? I hope you'll consider joining CamAWiSE (www.camawise.org.uk) as it'd be great to meet you.
Mashhuda Glencross13 March 2010 at 11:06 AM
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Hi Tennie, Thanks for your feedback. I'd definitely be delighted to join CamAWiSE. I start at the end of May, so am flat hunting! Would be great to meet you too.
Matthew Salois18 March 2010 at 06:16 PM
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Mashhuda, your experiences are comforting to read about, if only because misery likes company! I feel as if it is hard for many of us researchers to consider a career outside academia because somehow we do not feel at home outside the university. I nearly applied for a job at the SAS institute, but in the end felt like it could not be for me -- a decision I regret since I did not give it full consideration. And your experiences are of course not isolated -- so many researchers have written about similar disheartening stories. I wonder if universities will soon find themselves in short supply of both post-docs and other fixed contract researchers as they seek employment in the private sector.
Mashhuda Glencross18 March 2010 at 09:11 PM
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Hi Matthew, It is hard for many of us to look outside of academia, especially when we have invested so much time and energy into building careers at Universities. For me, it came down to a choice to either do something positive or get increasingly depressed at not being able to shatter an extra tough glass ceiling. Although I *really* wanted to stay at Manchester University and build my independent research, I now feel very excited about my new job which *is* in industry. It is fair to say that this excitement is mixed with anxiety about how different it is going to be, compared with a research job in my comfort zone. However, my new colleagues are really smart and enthusiastic, and I'm sure there will be lots of fun technical challenges for me to really get stuck into. Many of my University colleagues are saying they are finding it hard to recruit good postdocs. You could be right in saying that Universities might find research staff in short supply. Sadly though, funding is also in short supply so it may well not matter very much. It never hurts to apply to other things and see what comes up, you might be pleasantly surprised at what the private sector has to offer talented and experienced researchers. Best of luck.