Science exodus: Alarm bells sound at British universities as more than 50,000 UK researchers are ready to quit academia
Science exodus: Alarm bells sound at British universities as more than 50,000 UK researchers are ready to quit academia
23 comments
Not just University, FE is losing lecturers faster then they can replace them due to the lack of payrise, unsustainable workload, bullshit CPD expectations, lack of support from management, abuse by management.
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My FE College alone has lost almost an entire department in the span of 3 months as staff don’t want to work in a place that refuses to actually care about them. Not to mention this is happening to *every* department right now, the staff exodus is insane and HR are so fucking slow that job postings take upwards of 6 ***months*** to get out for the roles currently being left empty.
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Fuck even the none-teaching roles are currently being shafted, a position here is currently paying on average £7k less then every other college in the region. And when staff are going for interviews their seriously being asked “if you got that job would you actually take it” and management are getting pissed when they reply yes.
I quit academia after funding fell through because of brexit. AMA
not surprising, academia is an incredibly exploitative environment… like any job of passion, it knows there’ll always be more job demand than supply
take PhD students, far too many are encouraged to pursue one despite negligible benefits for most (and 3 years lost in terms of climbing the ladder in more traditional industries), I think something like 2% actually stay on and end up professors, the atrophy rate is incredible… but they’re the engine room of the department, conducting the bulk of the research, often doing undergrad marking (with little to no training) and leading large parts of the teaching – so gotta keep people applying
then, if you make it through that stage and still want an academic career, you’re forced to take fixed term contracts with no long term job security, often having to move across the country, or even to different countries/continents to remain competitive… which is incredibly detrimental to broader life goals like settling down, starting a family etc
don’t get me wrong, I loved my PhD… but ‘post-docs shouldn’t exist’ is a hill I’m willing to die on… if you have a PhD the next step should be stable employment or nothing
I already know friends who are quitting their PhDs here to do them in Europe as the funding/pay is substantially better.
I’ve looked at jobs in my potential field and it caps out at 40k over your career. I could do the same job in Germany and get 80k+
All part of the decline management programme being rolled out by our government.
Well yeah, this country doesn’t really like experts.
So more jobs will soon be available then for others?
Not a surprise. Academia is an incredibly toxic, nepotistic industry and science workers are exploited thanks to the way academia is set up
Why would we invest in education when we have a decades-long history of just importing educated expertise from other countries!?
remind me again how many people have applied since brexit to our fast-track immigration route….
6 years ago I was offered more £££ as an intern in the private sector, without a PhD, than I currently make now at a University with a PhD….
Shit like this is why the UK is lagging behind in terms of tech innovations. The major tech innovations are coming from the US and Asia and I won’t be surprised if countries in Africa start to overtake us as they develop as well. We need to sort ourselves out.
I’m in the final year of my PhD, and I’ll be swerving hard into industrial R&D/startups rather than staying in academia. I don’t know anyone in my PhD cohort (or the years above/below) that wants to stick about as a post-doc or try and make an academic career for themselves… Of the few hundred PhD students that have gone through my doctoral training center in the last 10+ years, I can only think of one that’s stayed in academia…
Yeah, I’ve been a postdoc for 5 years on fixed-term contracts. I think it’s mainly Stockholm syndrome that keeps me in it – it’s the only job I know.
For the way that staff are treated by the upper echelons of the university hierarchy I don’t blame them. Stagnating wages, expectations to work more than you’re paid. I’m doing what I need to do and getting out, everything is a business model and nothing to do with the way students are taught
If it is one thing it seems as though the Pandemic has done is allow folks to see or come to realize how badly treated they are by their “employers”, how badly they are exploited, how the rich and connected shit on the rest of us, and they do it gleefully expecting us to keep our mouths open for their ‘generosity’ … this exposure was necessary but more importantly, it should have consequences for those “lording it over us” to be called into account and this shite changed or Parliament gets to live with the bloody results.
Plenty of other countries would gleefully hire University faculty away from the UK.
I visited a mate in Belgium, he’s taking home €2400 a month compared to my £1500. He has much cheaper living and travel costs too, so it actually able to save up for a deposit on his PhD stipend.
How much of this is actual useful research and reports as opposed to comparative studies of feminist underwater basket weaving
Some roles have 100+ applications for one position. In my department we have Oxbridge PhD grads with years of experience working 12 month precarious contracts. Less than 35%ish of PhDs ive seen graduate before me have managed to get a job in academia despite applying relentlessly. There’s no shortage on the horizon.
I left academia (chemistry) 6 years ago after my PhD. Like hell was I going to chase grants for god knows how many years as a post doc.
This year I left r&d altogether. I have a 1st class chem degree from Warwick and a PhD from Cambridge so should be plenty qualified for a good role in British r&d or academia. But if they don’t make it worthwhile, I’ll go elsewhere
I am in my 3rd year of my PhD. I was hoping to start writing up my thesis at the end of this year but I have lost a lot of lab time due to lockdowns and social distancing measures. Worse still, my funding was only extended by 3 months even though realistically I have lost at least 6 months of lab time. Savings made from my stipend have been minimal as I only get £1300 a month. I don’t understand how anyone who goes through this crap would want to carry on into academia.
What a fucking surprise. Even more worker exploitation. No wonder people are fed up. Pay needs to go up across the board
Probably because of how work university’s have become
Good. This country has had enough of experts. Brexit means Brexit. God save the Queen, Heil Farage and Rule Britannia!