Iniquities of HE
Considering starting a higher education blog - I spend so much time thinking about it and reading about it that it might be useful to formulate some stuff more fully. Especially since the standard of HE reporting in UK newspapers is universally poor (basically, churnalism spewed out at a high rate to feed the hungry commenters on the Guardian, and minimal coverage elsewhere - even in Private Eye - except the THES, which is weekly and therefore effectively useless except for occasional comment pieces).
I could cover various topics - latest that springs to mind is the ever-increasing number of adverts for 'teaching fellows' - see e.g. this one at York: decent salary, BUT you are asked to deliver three different content-driven modules, one of which is a special subject, and provide support for a discussion group, and to deliver workshops on techniques and historiography. That's basically four courses' worth of work to gen up on, and the post is only for a year - no, wait a minute, 9 months (shaving the three months off the end of the year saves costs for the university but leaves the postholder with no salary for the summer - a bum deal). And you have to have a PhD of course, and I imagine they'll prefer candidates with monographs.
That seems to me an awfully heavy load for someone coming fresh to the courses, so perhaps there is an internal candidate, but I would hesistate before applying for a post that required that heavy a workload for courses that I might never be able to teach again. This sort of post basically requires people with excellent qualifications (and fortunately for universities there is an abundance of these at present), who are prepared to move around, and who are prepared to do this sort of insecure work in the hope that eventually they will get a permanent job. But I wonder how long there will be many people prepared to do this sort of work? Will we end up with a cohort of HE teachers who are employed from year to year on nine-months and other short-term contracts, and who take the hit in earnings and security that that involves, or will people simply leave; and what will that do to standards in the sector? Seems incredibly short-sighted.
I could cover various topics - latest that springs to mind is the ever-increasing number of adverts for 'teaching fellows' - see e.g. this one at York: decent salary, BUT you are asked to deliver three different content-driven modules, one of which is a special subject, and provide support for a discussion group, and to deliver workshops on techniques and historiography. That's basically four courses' worth of work to gen up on, and the post is only for a year - no, wait a minute, 9 months (shaving the three months off the end of the year saves costs for the university but leaves the postholder with no salary for the summer - a bum deal). And you have to have a PhD of course, and I imagine they'll prefer candidates with monographs.
That seems to me an awfully heavy load for someone coming fresh to the courses, so perhaps there is an internal candidate, but I would hesistate before applying for a post that required that heavy a workload for courses that I might never be able to teach again. This sort of post basically requires people with excellent qualifications (and fortunately for universities there is an abundance of these at present), who are prepared to move around, and who are prepared to do this sort of insecure work in the hope that eventually they will get a permanent job. But I wonder how long there will be many people prepared to do this sort of work? Will we end up with a cohort of HE teachers who are employed from year to year on nine-months and other short-term contracts, and who take the hit in earnings and security that that involves, or will people simply leave; and what will that do to standards in the sector? Seems incredibly short-sighted.