This is a complete disgrace

[tintin]

Especially when you read that he was reportedly offered a job by the University as a gas-fitter!

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.j ... wstop.html

As is this - they give Universities little enough as it is...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... altop.html

What is happening to our country?

[Chaucer]

He looks like an alcoholic who was probably shit at what he did and as usual his research will come to naught.

As for the politician....

[tintin]

That was quite funny, and you're probably right!

[mdec]

[s]Chaucer wrote on 09:27, 24th Feb 2004:
He looks like an alcoholic who was probably shit at what he did and as usual his research will come to naught.

As for the politician....


As someone who will be applying for postdoc positions in a couple of years from now, I have to agree that the wages and short term contracts for postdocs are shocking. Particularly in the UK. What is more shocking is that I've got friends who finished their PhDs and went into industrial jobs and are now earning 6 figure salaries, whilst had they stayed in academic research (as they wanted too) they would have been fortuate to make much more than £20,000pa.

That is why so many move to the US, where wages for postdocs do actually provide enough for people to live of.

[tintin]

It is also one reason to support the Lecturers' Strike this week.

[grousefanatic]

[s]tintin wrote on 08:35, 24th Feb 2004:
As is this - they give Universities little enough as it is...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... altop.html

What is happening to our country?


Oh well this unviversity is screwed, as one group of people (those without money) will not be able to afford to live here. So I believe the rent rises could be another example of this university cutting off it's nose to spite it's face (yes I know that I shouldn't anthropomorphise the university)! MWAAHHAAAHAHAHA! Ahem *blushes with embarassment*

[mdec]

[s]tintin wrote on 10:08, 24th Feb 2004:
It is also one reason to support the Lecturers' Strike this week.


At least the lectures have a permanent position and a resonable salary. Think of the poor postdocs...

[Guided By Vices]

A couple of years ago a friend of mine, having finished her PhD, was working as a tutor more-or-less full time but she was still being paid on an hourly rate. The School was threatening (and in fact succeeded) in cutting the pay for tutors and so my friend was very seriously considering quitting her job as a tutor - a job at which she was skilled, experienced and popular with students. The thing was, she was planning to get another job within this university as a gardener. The pay would be better, the work easier and less stressful and she would get holiday money, contributions to pensions etc. Happily for her she got a job teaching at another university but the story goes to show how things are for a lot of teaching and research staff in this university and probably others.

[mdec]

[s]Guided By Vices wrote on 11:10, 24th Feb 2004:
...but the story goes to show how things are for a lot of teaching and research staff in this university and probably others.


it the same throughout the UK.

[General Porkov]

Well, for my 2 Yen/ 2 cents, as someone who started their 1st post-doc stint 1/2 months ago, thank goodness I didn't start in the UK.

Unlike others, I didn't go off to the USA or Europe, I went to Japan and my pay is the equivalent of about £24000 after tax (allowing for currency rates).

Doom Lord General Porko Porkov
Deliverance of Peace Through Superior Firepower and Knowledge

[nova]

Absolutely right, it is a complete disgrace and I think it raises an interesting point. We see students and ex-students highlighting the problem of low pay for staff on the one hand, and on the other we see them moaning about the cost of accommodation and its supposedly poor standards. It is of course, very easy to complain about any and all of these matters on the sinner. Rather less easy to come up with a viable plan for solving all of them, which is of course what the university is having to do on a daily basis. I have just been trawling through the finance section on the university website, and came across this report:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/finance/020 ... port.shtml

While it does not prove a concrete link between staffing costs and the cost of renovating and running residences it does highlight the friction between what are two of the universitys largest annual expenses.

Unfortunate though it is, it also makes it clear that students are going to have to start to decide which areas of funding are the most important as regards their university education before they embark on knee-jerk protests against cuts in univeristy spending on something in which they have a direct and immediate financial interest. True, the costs of higher rents may be hard to swallow, in some cases even hard to bear, but don't the statistics given in the article quoted by tintin also indicate the danger that if the issue of pay for staff is not addressed quickly then the numbers of those qualified to teach at university level will start to fall, taking the standards of teaching with them? Surely in the long-term this will have a far more detrimental effect on the experiences of St.Andrews students than the amount of money they pay for rent over a four year period.

[hr]"I slopped at the corner on cold chow mein and shot billiards with a midget until the rain stopped."

Tom Waits.

[Pussycat]

If the money needed for teaching is taken from the rent of those students in residences then it is hardly fair. The minority of students (those in residences) would therefore be subsidising the teaching for the majority (those who live at home or in the private sector).

It is especially unfair at this university where there is not enough private sector housing for all those who would want or need it. And I highly doubt that it would be something the teaching staff at this university would support.

[Chaucer]

The root off the problem is successive mis-management going back far longer than any of us have any recollection of. It will continue ad infinitum and it is a sad fact of life.

Before anyone climbs all over me that DOES NOT mean I agree with either of the solutions. I am pleased that the University Court have come to a more acceptable conclusion about residence fees.

It's a double-edged sword...The only problem is, both edges are too frigging sharp.

[Guest]

[s]Chaucer wrote on 09:27, 24th Feb 2004:
He looks like an alcoholic who was probably shit at what he did and as usual his research will come to naught.

As for the politician....


That was quite funny, and you're probably right!!

[Guest]

Come on. I feel angered by all the sympathy for these academics. They knew the score before they entered their profession. If money was what they wanted then surely with all their intellect they could have chosen another career path.

[KateBush]

Agree with you there, Unregistered. They plan to disrupt our education and punish us when we students effectively pay their wages. Students protested last week because the rent rises would put some of us below the bread line--think about it--if a full year's student loan doesn't cover the hall fee then how can you live off money you don't have. The academics are protesting because they don't quite have the rise that they would like.

Academics never enter the profession for the money. Anyone who did joined for the wrong reasons! Ask any academic about postgrads and the first thing they'll tell you is how badly paid academia as a profession generally is. BUT it seems, paradoxically, to be a bit of a gravy-train. My Dad works in Bristol Uni (non-academic staff) and seesit all the time. The academics tend to be poor while they're young post doc types, but once they're in, they seem to stay there, and just slide further and further up the pay scale until they get a readership or a lectureship, meaning that they have more and more time to themselves, less time for teaching, and a huge fat salary. oh, and about a 5 month holiday every year. Some of them don't come in over the summer ATALL. Now, if you take that into account, do they really seem so hard done-by?

If people had become this worked about doctors, nurses and teachers with their low pay, we might not have an NHS falling down round about us, and be able to achieve an education system that actually works...

[McK]

What a horribly misguided view.

As for the 5 month holiday you think academics have, it may be true some of them "don't come in" for the summer period, but that is because the research materials they need are elsewhere. Writing papers and books does not necessitate being in 'the office', as perhaps with so many other jobs.

And as for the gravy train of academia, any experience here at St Andrews will show that a large number of academics never make it beyond 'Lecturer A or B' stage, which hardly carries a 'fat salary' as you reckon. Indeed, a friend of mine here in an Arts department has had pretty much the same pay for the last 11 years.

Your lack of sympathy for the academics' strike is disheartening, considering they have student interests as well as their own understandable concerns at heart.

[lol]

[s]Chaucer wrote on 14:16, 24th Feb 2004:
I am pleased that the University Court have come to a more acceptable conclusion about residence fees.


What, in that they are now going to make even more money out of hall rents? Yes, I'd say that was more acceptable. For the university, certainly not students.

[Guided By Vices]

I think the whole 'academics aren't in it for the money' attitude from employers (and it seems from some students) is one of the main reasons why higher education is struggling in this country. It really is just an excuse for exploitation and for asking people to do more and more for less and less. Of course people don't enter an academic career purely for the money (even though some of them apparently get 'big fat salaries'). Like most other people they choose their careers for a wide variety of reasons but they do need to get paid properly and universities need to compete with the non-academic job market for the best people. Although some academic staff probably don't represent 'value for money' (I can think of some I know that don't) in general university staff have done a pretty good job in coping with the enormous demands and changes that they have been faced with in recent years.

[nova]

[s]KateBush wrote on 15:29, 24th Feb 2004:

If people had become this worked about doctors, nurses and teachers with their low pay, we might not have an NHS falling down round about us, and be able to achieve an education system that actually works...


Firstly, since when were universities not part of the education system?

Secondly, if you actually checked to see what people in the sectors you have mentioned earned you might be quite surprised. Admittedly it's no fortune, but there are many primary school teachers out there who earn significantly more money than the highly-qualified university staff giving you your lectures every day. My mother being one example. No offense to her, but seeing as she doesn't even have a degree I hardly think that that points to a fair rate of pay for academics.

[hr]
"I slopped at the corner on cold chow mein and shot billiards with a midget until the rain stopped."

Tom Waits.