Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 7680

WTF is going on in England?

Tution increases by 300% and the major complaint is "Where's my raise?" Nice show of solidarity.

quote:

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As U.K. academics fight for raise, grades suffer
By Alan Cowell The New York Times
FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 2006
http://iht.com/articles/2006/06/01/news/britain.php

LONDON Hundreds of British college lecturers borrowed tactics once reserved for their students on Thursday, demonstrating with bullhorns and banners to back demands for higher pay.

The protest was part of a sharpening dispute in which academics are refusing to grade final examination and course work papers unless employers increase a pay offer after months of stalled negotiations. The dispute could rob the class of 2006 in some colleges of its final degrees if papers are not graded.

"The money's there," some protesters chanted as about 500 lecturers gathered in leafy Tavistock Square on Thursday. "Give us our share."

With tens of thousands of college seniors approaching - or midway through - their final examinations, the dispute has left many lecturers saying they are torn between their students and their pay checks.

"I would like to be back helping my students graduate this summer, and the vast majority of my colleagues would like that too," said Gavin Reid, a senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Leeds in northern England. Instead, he said, he was taking industrial action, refusing to grade student papers.

"We have got to stay out," he told cheering protesters. "There'll be no marking, not today, not next week, not ever unless this lot come back with a better offer," he said, referring to the employers.

The dispute is convoluted in its arguments and patchy in its impact. But it has raised widespread concerns that degrees this year may be seen by employers and others as devalued. Under the British system, degrees are awarded in categories such as first-class and second-class, with subdivisions such as 2-1 and 2-2. The grades being withheld by lecturers determine what level of degree students receive.

Passions have intensified as colleges prepare to raise tuition fees - low by American standards - from roughly $1,870 a year to $5,430 a year next September. Lecturers, currently paid on a scale between roughly $44,000 and $84,000 a year, had been hoping to receive substantial pay increases.

"Nobody wants - least of all the academic staff - the students to be in a position where they can't graduate at the end of their courses," said Ralph Levinson of the University of London, who took part in the demonstration Thursday. "On the other hand, academics have had bad pay deals for 20 years."

The dispute affects more than 100,000 higher education instructors and staff members grouped in a new union - the University and College Union - which came into being Thursday after a merger between the Association of University Teachers and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, known usually by its acronym Natfhe.

Many college teachers say the merger has produced an unusually stubborn militancy among union leaders vying for position in the new body. The new union says 200,000 undergraduates could be affected by the dispute. Examinations have been canceled or postponed at many universities.

Until Thursday, several lecturers said, their students had supported them. But now there were signs that undergraduates were becoming divided.

Students feel that "their futures are being held to ransom by lecturers," said Emma Powell, a student leader at Kent University. "We don't want to be used as leverage anymore."

But Kat Fletcher, head of the National Union of Students, said: "No one has an interest" in resolving the dispute "as much as those who teach and those who learn, and that is why we have to stand together."

The employers insist that, despite increased government spending and tuition fees, they cannot afford to increase their pay offer, and they accuse the lecturers' unions of shifting ground.

"We have responded constructively to every request they have made in the course of talks and negotiations over the last weeks and months. But each time we do so, they move the goal posts," said Jocelyn Prudence, the chief executive of the college employers' association.

Employers say the largely state-financed universities have competing spending priorities after years of under-investment by the government.

There are indications that the dispute is troubling the government, which wants to increase the number of high school graduates going on to a college and can barely afford campus chaos at a time when it is embattled on so many other fronts.

Bill Rammell, the minister for higher education, said the lecturers appeared to have rejected "out of hand" a slight increase in the employers' offer last night - from 12.6 percent over three years to 13.1 percent over the same period.

"I am extremely concerned at the impact of this dispute on students, and I strongly urge the unions to put this to their members," he said.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

I didn't know that the ability to charge that much had gone through.

The academics, at least in decent subjects where supply of really good people is scarce, should get more money; as it stands, most of the people that are concerned much about money come to the US. If there's more money coming in, and given that the strength of a University is largely the quality of its staff (or is correlated with same), it makes sense to invest it in them.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 4501

Why would they want to come here? The pay sucks here, too. And without knowing the individual political situation of each state one applies to for work, we, as well as foreigners, can get totally fucked over.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

Pay doesn't suck at all universities here in the US. Full professor (ie, about 12 years in) is going to earn 120 grand or so at a well-funded research university, which isn't too shabby. There's a national pay scale in the UK that tops out at 80-odd and the cost of living is higher in the UK, too. A handful of top-ranked professors (which is a different title in the UK) can earn the big dollars, but the rank-and-file won't come close to the standard of living that US academics get.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 24302

Our friendly neighborhood log-roller should be more worried about the ol' knee in the package I think.

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Registered: Apr 2004
Location: Den
Posts: 10984

Why the fuck would an academic worry about wage?

The idea of monetary prestige is a plague in the education system. At least in Denmark, it's a system where a fucked up slacker like me can make decent money on 10-20 working hours a week. If I had to do science and studying too, I wouldn't have time to use that much money.
It's a curse from birth: Get an education so you won't get poor.
Show me an academic who cares about improving society, and I'll show you an unemployed weirdo.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Takes a long time to reach full professor, but point taken, smug. Most of the faculty I know in various places make more in the $30k-$50k range.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: A New England
Posts: 9166

Sounds like you work in a community college.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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Starting salaries for assistant professors are over 50k at a well-funded university, at least where there are research dollars to be had. You can compare the salary of a Physics professor to what that person would have earnt in the Private Sector and it come up short, but that's the nature of career choices. Don't know how a Professor of English does, but their salary should be compared to McDonalds crew member or streetcorner whore to work out what their skills could command in the Private sector.

12-15 years from first appointment as Asst Professor is the normal time to make full Professor (and Assoc Prof in 5-6, with a salary pushing towards 100, I guess).

It's true that faculty don't earn that much everywhere; in particular, research dollars are important in that, I think. If your field isn't attracting research money and it's living off the teaching, I doubt there's much money in it; some faculty at the local SUNY campus, for example, don't make all that much, so far as I can tell, but those are mostly teaching, I believe.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
If your field isn't attracting research money and it's living off the teaching, I doubt there's much money in it

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Registered: Jul 2000
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The last professor I spoke with, who was willing to share her salary, began here as an assistant professor, at $45k. She had served 2 years previously, at another university, but was underwhelmed by them. She just transferred elsewhere, and was able to command more. Most of our faculty have received grants, and all have published extensively; a few of the full professors are up in the 6 figures, but most people don't make it to full, because of the teaching demands. :- )

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: in colorado somewhere!
Posts: 25592

Oh shit. We already have enough fucking Mexicans coming here. Now fucking Englanders too.
The only answer is that the USA must invade England....yea.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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quote:

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Originally posted by bunkum
The last professor I spoke with, who was willing to share her salary, began here as an assistant professor, at $45k. She had served 2 years previously, at another university, but was underwhelmed by them. She just transferred elsewhere, and was able to command more. Most of our faculty have received grants, and all have published extensively; a few of the full professors are up in the 6 figures, but most people don't make it to full, because of the teaching demands. :- )

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Registered: Aug 2001
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At a well-funded research university, they probably teach one course a semester and the rest depends on research. Those research grants are pretty big (with university overhead at about 50%+, which is where the university makes the money) and are needed if the academic wishes to be paid for the Summer months. I don't see how English Professors are going to pull in multi-million dollar research grants all that often, though*, as I can't believe that there is the same amount of funding available overall. Theorists publish quite a lot (10+ papers a year into decent journals for eager tenure-track professors, but you'd need at least 6 a year good papers, to be confident of tenure).

*Even a theoretical science grant application can reach this, although it'd probably have 3+ faculty on the grant application.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Ah, two courses a term here ("Just be grateful it's not 4, like some univs!"), hold 6 office hours per week, and get frowned upon during merit review if they don't serve on enough pointless committees (take minutes, and waste hours), sit on a bunch of thesis/dissertation committees, etc. Oh yeah, and publish a bunch.

You're right, though -- since grant funding is based on things like staffing needs, equipment, travel, and other such resources, a standard Humanities project may involve a research assistant or two, some travel (if texts are in a different country's libraries or archives, and cannot be sent here), some computer funding, etc. One of the biggest grants our department received was a mere $50k to staff a mobile laptop cart to help more classes have access to computers, since we don't have enough labs.

However unfair, the concept of the author is different for us. If we collaborate on an article, most universities will not honor it during tenure/merit review. We're considered to be doing about right, if we bring out one or two articles per year (these tend to be 25-40 pages each) in a competitive journal, or a book every other year (these are esp. honored, but univ. presses are broke, thanks to the economy, and don't take as many as before).

I certainly do know faculty who are not at all concerned with the merit review, since they have tenure, and are financially secure. They can be choosy about their projects, about what students they'll work with, what committees, etc. They tend to put in 30-40 hour work weeks; those who are actively publishing, teaching, and serving, however, tend to put in 10-15 hour days, and don't rest much during the breaks. And I do know some who do very little more than show up to teach, but they receive unwanted attention from deans, provosts, department chairs, et al, to shape up or retire early.

It's probably the same workload in the sciences, at least from what I've seen for my friends in other departments. One really big difference, though -- we have very few post-doc positions in English. What tends to happen is newly-minted grads hit the market, and get stuck working for sub-pay at several community colleges, just to make rent and loan payments. They are lucky if they can put together enough to receive $25-30k a year, with little commute between the colleges (or ... better yet ... teaching 5-6 classes at just one college, with benefits included).

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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The tenure-trackers I know are doing 60+ hour weeks, but mysteriously, a lot of the tenured guys still do that, too. Of course, if you're going to do the teaching (+prep) and the admin and put grant applications in and be on the committees that you couldn't get out of and then still do research, it's going to take a lot of time.

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