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Where have all the lecturers gone?
18 March 2010
By Matthew Salois
Many of the blogs written here have noted that the number of post-docs and other fixed term contract researchers far exceeds the number of available lectureships. Mashhuda most recently pointed this out in her blog “9 Reasons Why I Decided to Quit My Job."
But I want to ask a rather naive question -- why aren't there more available lectureships? More specifically, why not hire more lecturers than contract researchers? Also, why not promote more of the current pool of contract staff into permanent lectureships?
I get the fact that by hiring research staff the university is limiting its human resource commitment, but what are they gaining from engaging in this strategy? Research staff presumably cost roughly the same in terms of salary as a starting lecturer, which I think is fairly uniform across the disciplines here in the UK (though in the US there is a great divide).
For example, a new post-doc roughly starts in the range of £29,000 to £31,000 annually while a new lecturer starts roughly in the range £33,000 to £36,000 annually, depending on experience and degree stature. This is not that big of a difference in my opinion. And when you look at contract researchers with 5 to 10 years of experience (or more), their salaries often exceed the starting salaries of new lecturers.
Moreover, if universities allocated or planned to roll over a greater number of contract researchers into lectureships then they would also benefit from a greater capacity to teach and instruct. This is, after all, the core purpose behind all universities (in addition to research output). Then universities could offer more classes, expand their programme offerings, and gain from the additional funds brought in by tuition fees from more students. Students would gain from the additional offerings and better student to teacher ratios.
There certainly is a demand for university education and in times of economic hardship this demand increases as people seek to expand their human capital. Why not meet this demand with the needed supply?
I simply do not understand why UK universities do not take greater advantage of the well-skilled labour they have available in the pool of post-docs and research staff. Why not transition more of them into permanent lectureships through some well-defined promotion process? This seems to me to be a common-sense strategy.
What am I missing? Are there any other thoughts or ideas? Does anyone know of a good website to obtain time-series statistics on details of academic staff employment?
Hannah Dee19 March 2010 at 07:27 AM
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Matthew - I think the main problem here is funding stream. Lecturers come from core funding, researchers come from soft money. Getting rid of one of us is easy (all they have to do is wait!). Getting rid of lecturers is hard. And of course, the UK HE system is "In turmoil"; "In meltdown", "Budget cuts threaten class sizes"; "Fiscal curbs loom for academic institutions" ... just looking at the headlines from yesterday. It's not a good time for us, right now.
Matthew Salois19 March 2010 at 09:34 AM
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Hi Hannah, Thanks for your thoughts. While your points are right on, I believe think that the reasons you state are not sufficient conditions for not staffing more lecturers. Let me elaborate: First, I understand that funding for post-doctoral salaries mainly comes from grants and so does not burden the university budget like full time lecturers. However, I also understand that grant money is highly sought after by universities both for prestige and of course for research output. But who brings in the grant money? As noted in other blog posts, while research staff do occasionally submit grant applications, the bulk of the research grant money comes from full-time staff (lecturers, readers, etc.). So wouldn't staffing more lecturers and less post-docs imply are greater propensity to attract and obtain more grant funding? Second, rather than the research councils fund grant after grant (which has the tendency to be short-minded in research output, as noted in Mashhuda's blog), why not fund a continuous and permanent research direction? For example, rather than fund so many individual grants every year, I suggest taking some of the money that the research councils have available and permanently endow a number of new lecturers (or other staff members) to direct a specific course of research. I think the quality of research would be much improved by not only the permanence, but a better structure for accountability. Third, while "times are not good," I believe that rather than using the financial crisis and the so-called Great Recession as an excuse for cutting budgets and trimming staff levels, I believe this is momentum for even smarter staffing decisions. By using critical budget levels to fund short-term contracts and avoiding permanent staff commitments, universities are hurting themselves in the long-run. This is a lot like spending all of your pay-check every month without saving and investing -- it makes the present feel more rosy and the future more bleak. A better decision would be to smooth consumption over the lifetime. This means rather than hiring 10 contract researchers, hire 5 new lecturers (though in reality I do not believe it has to be such a zero-sum game). Lastly, while there are a number of headlines that inject fear and feelings of turmoil, there are just as many headlines describing the increasing demand for educational services and the lack of sufficient supply of academic staff. Here are just a few: 1) We need more lecturers, say FE colleges (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/13/further-education-shortage-lecturers) 2) Ageing professors leave a vacuum (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/may/29/ageing-professors-overseas-scholars) 3) International shortage of medical academics (http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a917989333&db=all)
Hannah Dee19 March 2010 at 09:52 AM
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Matthew - I agree with everything you say:-) Unfortunately, we're not the ones making the hiring decisions though. As I've mentioned before there are a few places who take a much more long-term approach to researcher recruitment (e.g. Bristol - http://www.bristol.ac.uk/personnel/ftc/ordinance26.html ) but these institutions are few and far between.
Sarah Davies19 March 2010 at 05:28 PM
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Fantastically argued, Matthew - though I think Hannah's right that you're probably preaching to the converted here. Have you thought about trying to put your ideas into an article or an open letter? You could pitch it as a comment piece to the THES, say, or write to whoever's now in charge of universities within government (I lose track). These are issues that concern us in a very real way - in terms of where the next pay check may come from - and it would be incredibly nice to see them being discussed more widely...
George Whale20 March 2010 at 04:18 PM
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Matthew, I agree with your points. This business of going from one short contract to another can become farcical. Some of the contracts are so short (6 months, 4 months) that no sooner have you got your feet under the desk than you've started sending out applications for your next job. So much skill and experience is just wasted when researchers acquire a level of mastery in a particular field and then have to move onto something different. There is also the problem of unemployment. It should not be assumed these days that researchers can always move effortlessly and seamlessly from one post to another. I've had two long streches of unemployment in the last 7 years, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I suspect that your proposals for expanding the lecturer pool would meet with resistance from academics. There may or may not be good reasons for that, as well as good old-fashioned protectionism. Your points are important and deserve to be heard and properly considered by those in positions of power and influence. I'm not convinced that an article in THES would achieve that. There needs to be a better mechanism for contract researchers to meet academia and the funding councils with positive proposals such as yours (and others raised on this blog). We can talk to each other until we're blue in the face, but it's just letting off steam (I sometimes wonder if the primary function of vitae isn't simply to act as an escape valve). Would it not be possible for us to select some representatives to meet up with them formally, and put some of the points that have been raised on this blog? Would others support the idea, and if so, how would we go about selecting representatives and proposals?
Matthew Salois21 March 2010 at 03:55 PM
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Hannah, thanks for the link. I wish more universities were as progressive as Bristol in their view of fixed term contracts. I espcially enjoyed the statement that says: "Where a post has been created as a fixed term post, but the University decides that it will become permanent, the fixed term post-holder will be awarded the permanent contract unless the fixed term post is (1) to be replaced by a permanent post with responsibilities that are substantially different to those currently being undertaken by the fixed term post-holder and (2) after discussion with the individual and/or their representative, the University considers that it is appropriate to open the post to competition. You are absolutely right Sarah, as I know that generally we all feel the same way. Tell me though, who does one "preach" to in the UK? I know in the states writing to your congressman or the state education comissioner would be a start (although probably futile). Who is the appropriate authority in England? What is Universities UK?
Matthew Salois21 March 2010 at 04:06 PM
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Hi George, thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. You are quite right -- there must be some "good" reasons for the protectionism. Though anyone who has taken at least a year of coursework in economics would know that protectionist policies are never optimal! I would be curious to know what are the REAL reasons behind the strong reliance on research staff in UK universities. I appreciate you feeling that my points deserve any attention, because you are right -- in many regards I am letting off steam. Is there a central head of the research councils? Is there any voice for university policy and research staff in the UK that is actually strong enough to be heard? Since my brief involvement on this blog I have learned about Vitae, the UCU, and the newly formed UKRSA. Is there a formal influential lobby in the UK that fights for the university and the university staff and that has the attention of people in the right places? You may have a good point in the republican style of representatives. Maybe a meeting with the key figures of the research councils would be a starting point. Do they and will they listen? If I were in the states, I would write to my congressman or to the governer's office. While it may or may not result in any actual change, it would at least be an action. And we all know that actions DO speak louder than words.
Simon Smith01 April 2010 at 05:01 PM
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Matthew wrote: "Does anyone know of a good website to obtain time-series statistics on details of academic staff employment?" Not a time series, but the UCU has some detailed figures for both research and teaching staff, broken down by institution, covering 2007-08: http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3539 The 2009 Careers in Research Online Survey found 82% of university researchers were on fixed-term contracts: http://www.vitae.ac.uk/CMS/files/upload/CROS_2009_October.pdf.142891.download Numerous reports have recommended that both universities and funders take steps to give researchers clearer career pathways, more independence (e.g. more scope to apply for grants, or more use of fellowships instead of grants), smoother transitions from PhD training to independent researcher status, as well as more palatable opportunities to cross back and forth between academia and other sectors (which clearly relates to the 'impact' agenda as well). See for example this Council of Science and Technology report: http://www.cst.gov.uk/reports/files/science-government/cst_pathways.pdf
Andy Humphrey06 April 2010 at 01:27 PM
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"a greater capacity to teach and instruct. This is, after all, the core purpose behind all universities". How sad that this raised a smile of irony from me... Perhaps I'm just an old cynic, but these days universities are BUSINESSES, run by people with business degrees, using the mentality of the business marketplace NOT that of the academy. UK universities no longer fall under the purview of Education, they are now part of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. And that, I think, is at the heart of why things don't change. Monetarist capitalism is a system that is primed to look after short-term interests. I think the global financial collapse demonstrates that this is no recipe for long-term success, but as long as our senior managers are drawn from the world of business and are talking in the language of monetarist capitalism, this is the system we're stuck with. George's idea of getting the chief policy makers together with some of us to listen to the issues and suggest solutions is one that appeals to me. We've talked about this in researchers' meetings at UCU. I'll be interested to see if it could be achieved.
Simon Smith06 April 2010 at 06:19 PM
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"as long as our senior managers are drawn from the world of business ..." Shockingly, I think the vast majority still have an academic, not a business background, but they do seem to have that chameleon-like capacity to change their mindset when jumping from the scientific to the administrative career ladder ;-)
Matthew Salois07 April 2010 at 10:04 AM
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Simon, thanks so much for the links. Two things are quite striking to me regarding the percent of researchers and teachers on fixed term contracts. First, is the large differences the exits between universities in the percent of researchers on open vs. fixed contracts. Some, like Cambridge only have 2% on open ended contracts but 98% on fixed term contracts. Then you have UCL which has 94% on open ended contracts but 6% on fixed contracts. Second, is the difference between and within universities in terms of teachers on fixed vs. open contracts. For example, while Cambridge has 2,655 contract researchers, they have no contract teachers. UCL has about a third of the number of contract teachers as they do contract teachers, but the split between open and fixed is more evenly split (60/40). I wish there was a data set that broke these figures down by department! That would make for some interesting statistical analysis!!!
Matthew Salois07 April 2010 at 10:15 AM
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Andy, your comment made me smile in appreciation of your thoughts! I also had no idea that the administration of UK universities was not in the Department of Education, but rather the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills! I do disagree with you when you say "Monetarist capitalism is a system that is primed to look after short-term interests." Certainly capitalism is a system that is profit-driven, but the motivation is not short-lived (for a rational business owner) since then a short-minded business owner would soon find himself without an income. One of the great economists, Joseph Schumpeter, pioneered the idea of "creative destruction" in economies in which poorly runned operations are driven out of business by their better run competitors. Now, I certainly agree that education and universities specifically may not be the best institution to run based on a capitalist economic philosophy. Perhaps what we are seeing right now is the creative destruction concept in process whereby the poorly run universities are struggling to exist and perhaps may be forced to leave the education market by the better run universities. I do not feel that this is a good thing, mind you, as I do not think UK society is made the better off for this, if this is in fact the case. But I do wholely agree with you that this issue, and many others discussed in this blog, needs to go beyond simple discussion amongst ourselves and brought to the forefront of the people who make the critical decisions.
Simon Smith27 May 2010 at 06:01 PM
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HESA statistics released today show a steady drop in the percentage of researchers in UK universities who are on fixed-term contracts - from 88.9% in 2004/05 to 73.9% last year. So maybe we are slowly heading in the right direction? See http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php/content/view/1730/161/
Elizabeth Dodson27 May 2010 at 07:49 PM
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Hopefully so - but the reality for many is that an open ended contract has almost the same level of insecurity - as they are often still tied to specific project funding - with contracts up for review every time linked projects end. I was incredibly relieved to be moved onto open ended terms, but have since found that at any time where funding is at risk, I could be as little as 6 weeks from being unemployed!
Simon Smith28 May 2010 at 05:52 PM
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My Institute's director said the other day, half jokingly, that a fixed-term contract is probably the best place to be in the current financial climate affecting universities!
Matthew Salois28 May 2010 at 08:12 PM
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Hi Simon, thank you for the link. I always like to see things broken down by the numbers. Quite coincidentally with your comment, I received a letter from my HR office today notifying me that my fixed term contract is set to end soon and they are under no obligation to retain me as an employee. I am happy to see the percent of staff under fixed term contracts fall, though I share Elizabeth’s concern regarding the precarious nature of even open ended contracts. I would like to see HESA collect more comprehensive statistics, such as the number of fixed-term researchers and teachers who transition into a permanent staff member, like lecturer. If there is data like this available, I have not been successful in my searches.