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British academic life, an on-going story of hardship

Brian Leiter

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The sheer amount of work  seems to be increasing exponentially, and not just in terms of scale but the number of vectors it’s all happening on too. It is impossible to be a top-line manager and administrator and mentor and researcher and writer and outreach officer and IT expert and online instructor and pedagogical innovator and recruiter and teacher and marker and external examiner and press pundit and grant bidder and editor and look after your own wellbeing. No-one can do that. Yet that’s what is often asked. 

What we’re really doing overall is running down our social capital, toiling away in a failing system that calls to mind nothing more than the late Soviet economy (far more similar to ours than we’d like to admit). When the money coming in continuously declines, organisations sweat their assets, and as they do so increasingly wear away their own foundations. What that involves is constantly whacking our own creativity, and capacity for ideas, against the brick wall of funders’ and employers’ indifference. That’s a losing game. Small wonder a lot of lecturers come to feel – or be made to feel – like losers. 

Beyond the line of hours worked, soaring ever upwards, and our own inability to actually come up with anything new, we have to add a third point – in most ways the most important of all: It’s a lack of money. When the ship’s afloat and running before the wind, change and movement can feel exhilarating. When it’s run aground, and it’s not so much stationary as lurching from side to side, that rush turns to nausea. Money is a great problem-solver and solvent. As the cash drains out of the system, all the nasty and gritty realities become nastier, gritter, more unpleasant. 

Curious whether this rings true to UK academics.

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21 responses to “British academic life, an on-going story of hardship”

  1. Steven Hales

    I got to be friendly with the chief book and manuscript conservator at Cambridge. A couple of years ago they advertised for an entry-level conservator. This is a position that requires a great deal of specialized training–you don't let just anyone loose on the medieval treasures held at the colleges. I asked my friend what salary they were offering. £25k per year. Can you even live in a cardboard box in Cambridge for £25k? How poor must the less elite UK universities be?

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  2. Michael Weber

    Rings true in non-flagship state universities in the US. Will only get worse, I fear.

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  3. Charles Pigden

    So what is the usual starting salary for a junior lecturer and what are the pay-rates for a full professor?

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  4. Phil

    Charles – a full-time Lecturer starts somewhere in the high £30Ks, with progression guaranteed (if you don't screw up) to somewhere in the high £40Ks, in a series of small annual steps. The title of Professor in the English system has historically implied a Chair; their pay isn't publicised, but Readers top out in the £60Ks, so I guess a bit more than that.

    Bear in mind that very few people actually begin their academic career as a Lecturer. I'd been a working academic for five years when I got my first permanent post, and it was another two before I got a full-time post – and I think seven years from first appointment to Lecturer is reasonably good going.

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  5. LK

    I work at a fairly reputable Russell Group university, so while some have it worse, others have it better. Overall, this description aligns closely with my experience. A crucial point to consider isn’t just the scale of academic job losses but also the departure of many professional services staff. Their responsibilities aren’t disappearing—they’re being shifted onto academics. With teaching demands also increasing, research is inevitably the area that suffers most. It’s no exaggeration to say that the time when many Russell Group universities can no longer credibly call themselves “research-intensive” is fast approaching—if it hasn’t already arrived.

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  6. Andy

    There's supposedly a nationally-agreed single pay spine: https://www.ucu.org.uk/he_singlepayspine

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  7. anon

    I'm currently at a mid-ranked Russell Group uni in the UK, in permanent post for about 8 years, and this rings absolutely true to me. My informed impression is that things are better at a fewer higher-ranked institutions, but the same or even worse elsewhere.

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  8. Charles Pigden

    Thanks to everyone for their interesting replies to my question. Here are some details from New Zealand which may be of interest as points of comparison. The first thing to point out is that in New Zealand too, Higher Education has been facing a crisis of chronic underfunding. My own university (Otago) has suffered staff cuts of around 10% (not quite literally decimation, since those fired were not executed). Philosophy got off lightly since one of my colleagues took early (but not very early) retirement, bringing our staff numbers down by 12%.) I should add that, as in the UK, the life of a young academic is often characterised by precarity of semi-precarity. (My daughter, a teaching fellow in another department, has a half-time permanent post but the other half of her income has been derived from relatively soft sources.). As in the UK the title ‘Professor’ used to be confined to the official Chair but is now common among senior but successful academics. [There are service and teaching components in the promotions process but research output is probably the key.] In my admittedly rather senior and well-published department – only one of us is under fifty and we all have hundreds or even thousands of citations, – only one of us is NOT a full professor, and that one is an associate professor, the next rank down. This however is unusual. (The career grade – what you get if you don’t stuff up but don’t do anything remarkable – is ‘senior lecturer below the bar’). Okay, so much for context now for the cold hard cash (as of 2024).

    Starting grade teaching fellow: (usually a PhD but no research duties:) NZ$73,166 = £33,184. Rather less than the ‘somewhere in the high £30Ks’ for a junior lecturer. I don’t know how it compares with the salaries of tutors, instructors and the like.

    Starting grade lecturer (teaching plus research duties) : NZ$94,084
    = £42,688 which is a 3K or 4K t more than the ‘somewhere in the high £30Ks’, that Phil suggests.

    Starting grade ‘Associate Professor ‘ (more or less the equivalent a ‘Reader’): NZ$148,699 = £67,478, which, if Phil is right, is roughly where readers in the Uk ‘top out’ .

    Starting grade full Professor NZ$169,586 = £76,942. No information about how this compares, but if Readers ‘top out’ in the £60ks, which is where the full professors begin, then this suggests that New Zealand professors are better paid.

    The highest paid (non-medical) professors get NZ$204,469 = £92.76

    So, tentative conclusion: New Zealand academics nowadays are better paid than their British counterparts. And that’s bad news since New Zealand is not a country noted for its high salaries.

    It would be nice to get some better stats and to do a compare-and-contrast with other countries.

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  9. Charles Pigden

    Additional comment after a chat with the aforementioned daughter (we share a house): The above figures may be a bit misleading since in the Uk a pound goes further than 2.19 dollars does in New Zealand.

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  10. Attila Tanyi

    Yes, but of course these salaries should be put in context: how generous is the state wrt welfare payments (health insurance, childcare etc), how easy it is to get loans (incl mortgage), and of course generally how expensive life is (incl housing). This makes any such comparison rather difficult between countries (esp since the situation, as in the US, can differ from city to city, state to state).

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  11. Nick

    The pay Phil mentions is quite a bit lower than at my Russell group university, where the bottom of the lecturer scale is £49,559, and the normal top of the Reader/Senior Lecturer is £77,386 (this is what one would reach through normal annual increments; for better performance the top is £85,077).

    These sums are typically (but not always) increased a bit each year because of inflation.

    UK salaries across all professions are markedly lower than in North America. E.g. compare police pay in the UK to Canada, or doctor pay to Canada and the US. In my view this is not really a bad thing, as it just means a flatter society. That said, this does not prevent me from wishing I were paid more!

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  12. Nicholas Denyer

    To answer Charles Pigden:

    In my college (and we're rather rich) the basic annual stipend for "a 12-hour lecturer" (i.e. a teaching fellow without a university post) ranges from £53,734 for the most junior to £72,998 for the most senior. This basic is adjusted upward or downward if the lecturer teaches more or less than twelve hours a week in term. There are further payments for taking on other duties, and various benefits in kind.

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  13. Charles Pigden

    To Nicholas Denyer
    Well I am not sure how valid the comparison is, since Trinity College is one is one of the ritziest colleges in one of the two ritziest universities in the UK, while Otago is more like a middle-ranked, Russell group university, But if we take 12-hour lecturers as the equivalent of teaching fellows, then the salary range runs from NZ$73,166 [= £33,278] to NZ132,796 [=£60,386] which is a lot less. However, my guess is that Cambridge is a much more expensive place to live than Dunedin. My evidence is indirect but when my late friend Josh Parsons got a proper job at Oxford, (a college fellowship, the works) I was astonished at the shoe-box in which and his wife (both earning) had to live. I suspect that Cambridge is much the same.

    To Attila Tanyi
    The fact to remember about Britain, New Zealand & Australia (and I have lived in all three countries and I have close relatives living in all three) is that they all have publicly funded health services, created by Labour Governments which have been gradually undermined by neo-liberal scrooges. However what this still means is that staff can mostly get by without private health insurance. It’s not an added cost.and it does not have to be part of a salary package. Hence to that extent these countries are comparable. This, of course, does not detract from your general point that country to country comparisons are generally pretty dodgy because of the complicating factors that you mention.

    That does not mean that more facts and figures might not be useful.

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  14. Attila Tanyi

    In Norway one can’t really make more than 100000 GBP. But then pretty much everything is free, childcare, healthcare, education. Mortgages and loans are easy to get, a significant part of the interest payments are deducted from your taxes, in December we don’t pay taxes, in June we pay only half of our taxes. Work conditions are good and generally relaxed, labour relations are fine. But, yes, ultimately, as pointed out above, the supposed advantage is the equality that results with all its consequences and of course other factors such as public trust and so on. Ultimately, if one is in it for the money (but then why become an academic…), one goes to work elsewhere.

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  15. Attila Tanyi

    And let’s not forget the exchange rate factor. The krona lost almost 40% of its value in the past 10 years. So this figure would have been 140k ten years ago….

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  16. Charles Pigden

    It sounds wonderful Attila, No wonder you enjoy working there!

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  17. Attila Tanyi

    Apparently, I gave Norway a better marketing than I intended. I was only focusing on the points of comparison we have mentioned. It remains the case that one doesn't get particularly well paid in Norway esp considering how expensive the country is. It is still more of a standard welfare state: if you live here all your life, the state takes care of you, so overall, you profit also financially (and of course, the 'locals', because of Norway being a petrol state, profited enormously with each generation getting richer than the previous since the 60s – as with all petrol states, though, this does not hold for outsiders). But if you come here mid-life, then of course the advantages are much less. (And there are also budget cuts here, more work is dumped on academics and so on. As someone wrote recently: Norway – the country where all bad ideas come to die…) So, I'd say, one moves to Norway in philosophy if a welfare state is more in line with one's values (fairness, equality, public trust, well-functioning transparent state, decently working democracy, good labour relations and work environment) other things being equal. You don't move here to get wealthy or just to be well paid.

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  18. Jonathan Head

    In terms of academic pay in the UK, your spending power of course depends a great deal on where you live, but regardless, it certainly has been degraded considerably since the 2008/9 recession (something like 25% in real terms according to one of the unions). I think a couple of other factors are worth noting too. Many universities have significantly reduced internal funding schemes or cut them altogether, and so paying out of pocket to go to conferences, visit archives etc. is much more normal than it used to be. (As a side note – if you are organising a conference in the near-future, try to invite speakers from institutions that are relatively under-resourced, as this may be the only opportunity these academics get to go to such events!). In addition, I would be interested in seeing historical data on promotions from lecturer/assist prof. upwards: my sense is that being promoted and accessing higher bands of pay is much more difficult at many institutions than it used to be.

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  19. Nicholas Denyer

    One more figure: today the University of Cambridge advertises for an "Assistant Professor" at £46,485-£58,596.

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  20. Charles Pigden

    To Nicholas Denyer.
    Well I am guessing that this is equivalent to what used to be a Lecturer, with the title readjusted so as to attract North American talent. £46.485 = NZ$102,605. The starting salary for a ‘lecturer’ here is NZ$94,084. I suspect that in real terms there is not the much in it, since the cost of accomodation is probably considerably higher in Cambridge than it is in Dunedin. But what we really need is statistics for starting and finishing salaries at slightly less elite universities. The union’s ‘spine’ figures, linked to by Andy, were a bit difficult – at least for me – to interpret since it was not clear which ranks the Spine numerals were supposed to represent,

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  21. Nicholas Denyer

    Yes, Cambridge now says "Assistant Professor" where it used to say "Lecturer". (In my day, one could look up to professors. But by the time I retired, professors were so commonplace that even I could have been one for the asking.)

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