All UK universities do this. Not necessarily a bad thing unlike how the article portrays it. PhD students (and depending on the institution, postdocs) in the UK get a stipend that has no mandated teaching hours. Teaching allows PhD students to earn some extra income within the university.
We certainly still have a compensation problem in academia. Bright STEM PhD grads don't want to earn £30-40k as a postdoc when earning £150k+ in big tech or finance isn't unusual. However, PhD students earning a little side income by marking lab reports or programming assessments isn't necessarily bad.
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rwyinuse
It seems that these days academia is mostly garbage for anyone who wants things like money, family or a healthy work-life balance.
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insane_dreamer
is this news? this sounds like every university in the US, which uses underpaid adjuncts to do most of the teaching and underpaid phd candidates and postdocs to do most of the research
not saying this is right -- adjuncts and postdocs absolutely need to be paid more commensurately with the value they provide -- but it has been the status quo for a long time; the bigger problem is that it used to be a temporary stepping stone to professorship, whereas now universities are perpetually and increasingly relying on this cheap labor to cut costs, making the path for academia an increasingly tortuous one. It's highly counter productive because who wants to go through all that instead if you can get a job in industry that values you much more? The result is that you don't get the best and brightest educating the next generation, except maybe at a few universities - Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, etc. - where the prestige itself is enough of a draw.
vr46
I took a position at a prominent London university to teach one of their courses and I did it for the love of it, because it was less than two days contracting for an entire term of lecturing and marking. Forget that coming into college to teach was effectively an entire day of my time for a two hour lecture or seminar, I think I was paid by the hour. This practice goes on everywhere and the real losers are the students/customers.
kleiba
What do you mean "accused of"? This has been the official and government-wanted policy for years in some countries, so much so that there are specific laws that ensure young academics by default cannot expect a long-term career in academia.
burnt-resistor
A reader may also be "shocked and appalled" that research universities like Stanford abused employees by keeping them "part-time" for years at a time to cheat them out of benefits received by FTEs.
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bloomingkales
Higher education doesn’t want to shed its clergy status. It’s like they can’t figure out if education is truly a pure pursuit or just this crazy godly thing that is priceless but somehow has this exorbitant real world price that the clergy seems to value …
They sell indulgences at this point, and I don’t think it’s a false analogy. Holier than thou institution where everyone must pay the price for their product or be doomed as a person. How do you question the price of something that’s equated to a gift from god or certainly using the same language - more or less.
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motohagiography
what do the people who make and manage money learn, and could clever people be taught this skill too? maybe instead of spending their afternoons on the golf course like wealth managers they could pursue research and teach. how difficult could it be?
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Mistletoe
This is the foundation of all academia currently. It’s a nice pyramid scheme while you’ve got it, I just finished witnessing my youngest brother go through it in grad school and his defense is on Tuesday.
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atemerev
So, you will be taught only by people who do not need to earn money to live. I.e., aristocrats. This is by design, I suppose.
All UK universities do this. Not necessarily a bad thing unlike how the article portrays it. PhD students (and depending on the institution, postdocs) in the UK get a stipend that has no mandated teaching hours. Teaching allows PhD students to earn some extra income within the university.
We certainly still have a compensation problem in academia. Bright STEM PhD grads don't want to earn £30-40k as a postdoc when earning £150k+ in big tech or finance isn't unusual. However, PhD students earning a little side income by marking lab reports or programming assessments isn't necessarily bad.
It seems that these days academia is mostly garbage for anyone who wants things like money, family or a healthy work-life balance.
is this news? this sounds like every university in the US, which uses underpaid adjuncts to do most of the teaching and underpaid phd candidates and postdocs to do most of the research
not saying this is right -- adjuncts and postdocs absolutely need to be paid more commensurately with the value they provide -- but it has been the status quo for a long time; the bigger problem is that it used to be a temporary stepping stone to professorship, whereas now universities are perpetually and increasingly relying on this cheap labor to cut costs, making the path for academia an increasingly tortuous one. It's highly counter productive because who wants to go through all that instead if you can get a job in industry that values you much more? The result is that you don't get the best and brightest educating the next generation, except maybe at a few universities - Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, etc. - where the prestige itself is enough of a draw.
I took a position at a prominent London university to teach one of their courses and I did it for the love of it, because it was less than two days contracting for an entire term of lecturing and marking. Forget that coming into college to teach was effectively an entire day of my time for a two hour lecture or seminar, I think I was paid by the hour. This practice goes on everywhere and the real losers are the students/customers.
What do you mean "accused of"? This has been the official and government-wanted policy for years in some countries, so much so that there are specific laws that ensure young academics by default cannot expect a long-term career in academia.
A reader may also be "shocked and appalled" that research universities like Stanford abused employees by keeping them "part-time" for years at a time to cheat them out of benefits received by FTEs.
Higher education doesn’t want to shed its clergy status. It’s like they can’t figure out if education is truly a pure pursuit or just this crazy godly thing that is priceless but somehow has this exorbitant real world price that the clergy seems to value …
They sell indulgences at this point, and I don’t think it’s a false analogy. Holier than thou institution where everyone must pay the price for their product or be doomed as a person. How do you question the price of something that’s equated to a gift from god or certainly using the same language - more or less.
what do the people who make and manage money learn, and could clever people be taught this skill too? maybe instead of spending their afternoons on the golf course like wealth managers they could pursue research and teach. how difficult could it be?
This is the foundation of all academia currently. It’s a nice pyramid scheme while you’ve got it, I just finished witnessing my youngest brother go through it in grad school and his defense is on Tuesday.
So, you will be taught only by people who do not need to earn money to live. I.e., aristocrats. This is by design, I suppose.