Higher Education died in the UK the moment we started prioritising total number of students going to university as a government target, without overhauling the way Universities and students are funded.
Now its just a conveyor belt of degree factories taking fees and pumping out graduates. Universities are supposed to be Research led institutions which get their funding from Government and Private Sector research grants and sponsorship. Universities should not be trying to make profit from students and reducing the conditions and pay of their staff. But it seems now that this kind of model is affecting research-led Universities as government grants and support are reduced, and they expand to take on more students.
I don’t entirely know what the solution is without inadvertedly either excluding poorer people or completely restructuring higher education.
I, along with half (around 20) of my lecturer peers have resigned from higher education into the private sector. This is from a very financially successful department, most of us working in Higher Ed our entire careers.
The ever increasing demands from the institution, dwindling support colleagues and frankly poor remuneration made it clear decision for so many of us.
We all love teaching, love the research, love the principle of it – but we have families to feed, children to play with, and frankly a life to live.
Personally, I now do far less work (a reasonable amount), in reasonable hours (no more 4am lecture writing, or weekend marking), earn more money with actual benefits.
I get to spend time in evenings and weekends with my partner and child. My ex-colleagues whom are still teaching, sadly do not.
If you want to fix it:
* Reduce student numbers massively – keep the ones who would actually benefit from a degree and liberate the rest from a half-lifetime of debt.
* Remove fees – Students should be an investment in our country’s future – Pick those who we want to invest in, with equity not discrimination.
* Restore support staff – They’re frankly far better and far cheaper at admin work than us.
* Increase pay in line with industry – Why would the best talent struggle to research for an institution when they can do the same work alongside industry leaders and get remunerated often 2-3x higher, with FAR less “nonsense”?
* Fund progressive research in a more sustainable way than the current REF processes which require heavy front-loading of workforce, or competitive funding grants that take significant unrelated resources and expertise just to pitch.
For-profit education strikes again. The place of universities is as a forum for a local community to explore academia and share knowledge. An evolution of the monastery system with a focus on the scientific method. Sure some times people would travel to a specific campus to learn from somebody whose work they admired or because that’s the place they studied. But in large it was a community for the larger area.
The transformation in to for-profit education divorced this aspect from the surrounding community. It was no longer about educating people with useful to skills to improve society. But to sell a product to the people who could afford to pay the most. Stepping stones on the way elsewhere. Disjointed from what is actually needed by that community. The ideology of education separated from the material reality that had originally formed the need for it. Then in the pursuit of profit the replication of ideals that even if they were materially useful elsewhere are without purpose in the places they were imitated.
Which leads to further inequality as the pursuit of that ideology divorced from reality requires them to move away from that community that educated them. To another city more appropriate to that pursuit. And London gains another graduate who must pay their entire salary in rent so they can fulfil their dream of buying a CoL banker their second luxury yacht in Italy.
As a PhD student I agree, if things don’t improve by the time I’m thinking about graduation and my next job I’ll vote with my feet and go straight to industry
Wait, so universities charge a fucking fortune to attend, but pay their staff shit money?
Where the hell does it all go then?
And during lock down, they didn’t even get proper lessons. It’s a scandal.
Welcome to tory Britain though, can’t possibly have an educated citizenship, because they’ll see through their shit.
Good on any university staff that goes on strike. You have a lot more support than the shit media let you believe.
Just remember Tony Blair and Gordon brown did this
Universities are supposed to be places for learning and knowledge, not businesses where marketing and total turnover is the priority. Universities do need to make money to remain open, however they should also be doing all they can to produce the best research and you get that from staff who feel listened to and who are less stressed. That means paying staff well and treating them with the respect they deserve, otherwise they will seek that elsewhere.
7 comments
Higher Education died in the UK the moment we started prioritising total number of students going to university as a government target, without overhauling the way Universities and students are funded.
Now its just a conveyor belt of degree factories taking fees and pumping out graduates. Universities are supposed to be Research led institutions which get their funding from Government and Private Sector research grants and sponsorship. Universities should not be trying to make profit from students and reducing the conditions and pay of their staff. But it seems now that this kind of model is affecting research-led Universities as government grants and support are reduced, and they expand to take on more students.
I don’t entirely know what the solution is without inadvertedly either excluding poorer people or completely restructuring higher education.
I, along with half (around 20) of my lecturer peers have resigned from higher education into the private sector. This is from a very financially successful department, most of us working in Higher Ed our entire careers.
The ever increasing demands from the institution, dwindling support colleagues and frankly poor remuneration made it clear decision for so many of us.
We all love teaching, love the research, love the principle of it – but we have families to feed, children to play with, and frankly a life to live.
Personally, I now do far less work (a reasonable amount), in reasonable hours (no more 4am lecture writing, or weekend marking), earn more money with actual benefits.
I get to spend time in evenings and weekends with my partner and child. My ex-colleagues whom are still teaching, sadly do not.
If you want to fix it:
* Reduce student numbers massively – keep the ones who would actually benefit from a degree and liberate the rest from a half-lifetime of debt.
* Remove fees – Students should be an investment in our country’s future – Pick those who we want to invest in, with equity not discrimination.
* Restore support staff – They’re frankly far better and far cheaper at admin work than us.
* Increase pay in line with industry – Why would the best talent struggle to research for an institution when they can do the same work alongside industry leaders and get remunerated often 2-3x higher, with FAR less “nonsense”?
* Fund progressive research in a more sustainable way than the current REF processes which require heavy front-loading of workforce, or competitive funding grants that take significant unrelated resources and expertise just to pitch.
For-profit education strikes again. The place of universities is as a forum for a local community to explore academia and share knowledge. An evolution of the monastery system with a focus on the scientific method. Sure some times people would travel to a specific campus to learn from somebody whose work they admired or because that’s the place they studied. But in large it was a community for the larger area.
The transformation in to for-profit education divorced this aspect from the surrounding community. It was no longer about educating people with useful to skills to improve society. But to sell a product to the people who could afford to pay the most. Stepping stones on the way elsewhere. Disjointed from what is actually needed by that community. The ideology of education separated from the material reality that had originally formed the need for it. Then in the pursuit of profit the replication of ideals that even if they were materially useful elsewhere are without purpose in the places they were imitated.
Which leads to further inequality as the pursuit of that ideology divorced from reality requires them to move away from that community that educated them. To another city more appropriate to that pursuit. And London gains another graduate who must pay their entire salary in rent so they can fulfil their dream of buying a CoL banker their second luxury yacht in Italy.
As a PhD student I agree, if things don’t improve by the time I’m thinking about graduation and my next job I’ll vote with my feet and go straight to industry
Wait, so universities charge a fucking fortune to attend, but pay their staff shit money?
Where the hell does it all go then?
And during lock down, they didn’t even get proper lessons. It’s a scandal.
Welcome to tory Britain though, can’t possibly have an educated citizenship, because they’ll see through their shit.
Good on any university staff that goes on strike. You have a lot more support than the shit media let you believe.
Just remember Tony Blair and Gordon brown did this
Universities are supposed to be places for learning and knowledge, not businesses where marketing and total turnover is the priority. Universities do need to make money to remain open, however they should also be doing all they can to produce the best research and you get that from staff who feel listened to and who are less stressed. That means paying staff well and treating them with the respect they deserve, otherwise they will seek that elsewhere.