'Research' Allocations

Just in case you're sitting there reading some of these posts, and you're also an academic, you might be saying to yourself 'I don't know what these people are complaining about; research is difficult, time-consuming, and will often require work in one's free time.'  We hear you!  We completely agree with you in fact.  But we're also guessing that a good part of your week at work is spent doing said research; maybe 8 hours a week at worst and 24-36 at best.  A WEEK.  And it was even better when you first graduated with your PhD.  So lest you think that we're just whiny ingrates that didn't know what we were getting into when we entered this field, allow us to explain both what we were promised in our interviews and what we actually get.  In our interviews, we were promised a 60/40 teaching/research allocation. which was completely acceptable to us.  But not only was that promise not realized, we had no idea of all of different things that "research" means to the degree farm (more on that in a minute).  So what *is* our allocation, you ask?  Well...the basic research tariff is 50 hours a year.  A YEAR.  And we're on 12 month contracts, not 9, so many of us are teaching 3 semesters a year for the same pay as those who teach just 2.  To be clear, 50 hours a year is about 1 hour a week allocated for research.  Anyone who has published a 3 or 4* paper knows how easy THAT is to do on an hour a week (though our Deanery could put out a 4* every week if they wanted...they just don't seem to want to).  So that's the tariff is you haven't published.  You're already coming from behind because how are you to publish ANYTHING on an hour a week?  If the powers that be deem that you have the possibility of publishing, the next tariff up is 100 hours a year, or roughly 2 hours a week.  If you HAVE published, then you'd likely be given 150 hours, or 3 hours a week.  For those who are REF-able (4 papers at an average 3.5* ranking in 6 years), you get a whopping 200 HOURS A YEAR!  Yup...that's 4 hours a week.  To be a world-class researcher.  But it gets worse.  Remember above where I mentioned that no 'research' is created equally?  Well, the Degree Farm has decided that we should spend our oh-so-precious research hours doing things that make the Degree Farm money, such as moderating exams and dissertations for foreign universities, or whatever other tasks they deem as 'research'.  But we're publishing, surely we shouldn't have to do those things?  Can't other people who don't have any desire to publish can do them?  No.  Again, everything is fair at the Degree Farm, some things are just more fair than others.

Advice of the week

So the advice of the week comes from the boss. Although we are required to do research and publish under the afiliation to the Degree Farm, we are supposed to do it purely out of our love for research.
How should it work in practice? We should work on research during weekends and Christmas. By the way, Christmas counts as our annual leave - we are forced to use our annual leave allowance during those days (fair enough but don't tell me to work during that time!). So sorry family, l can't join you for the Christmas dinner because I need to work on that paper...!
Weekends? Hello Boss! Have you forgotten that you're already forcing us to work about five Saturdays a year as open days plus clearing without any compensation, whatsoever? Oh wait, forgive us, we've forgotten that we still have 52 Sundays in a year...

This is just an icing on the cake: out of that love for research we are required to publish a 3* or 4* paper a year. But then again silly us, our (now) Dean kindly informed us that this should be dead easy and they could write a 4* publishable paper in two nights! That awesome Dean has a master's  degree from the Degree Farm as their highest degree and has never experienced real research. Yet, (s)he's got a vital say on how we should do research and how it is resourced...

Greetings from the Degree Farm!

We don't need your stinkin' NSS rules!

Now, I don't actually know if there ARE official NSS rules.  For those of you who don't know, the NSS is the national student satisfaction survey.  The scores are highly weighted in the UK university rankings.  You can see that some of the post-1992 universities owe their increased rankings to increased NSS scores.  Not research, not student spending, not student to teacher ratios...student satisfaction.  So, have we improved our teaching to such a huge degree that we've moved up so much in  the rankings?  Have we hired SO many new, super-qualified people that students are so much more satisfied than they were just 3 years ago?  Maybe, but I'm going to guess that's a pretty big ask.  So, it appears that we help it along a little bit.  You know, by having highly exclusive holiday lunches that are ONLY for only the 3rd year, non-foreign students (the target of the NSS) where we tell students how great our NSS scores have been and how they anticipate that the students will give us even BETTER scores this year!  This is the soft-sell.  The harder sell will come closer to NSS itself where we tell them that if the good scores don't continue, the value of their degree will decrease as our rankings decrease.  No pressure, eh?  I've even heard about departments taking their NSS students for week long field trips to fun places to fill out the surveys.  Noooo, not trying to bias the outcome at all.  But hey, if there are rules, they don't apply to us, at least they don't as long as we move up in the rankings.

Degree Farm's Deanery Genius Du Jour: Open Plan

Yup.  Open Plan  One of the deanery has the design bug, so we're doing away with our semi-private offices (two or three to a space) and joining the ranks of the call centre worker.  Don't get me wrong, open plan has its place...in a call centre, for instance.  But not only is it not overly productive to producing great research (oh, sorry...forgot that wasn't a priority), it's just not overly productive full stop.  Now, I know a lot of you reading this may be in open plan.  You might have a lovely cubicle, decorated with pictures or memos...a nice safe place which keeps out pretty much everything except the noise.  Is this what is planned?  Er, no.  When we say open plan, we mean OPEN plan.  We'll be facing either a window or our co-workers.  No dividers.  No walls or dividers to put ANYTHING.  But hey, maybe this means more space for everyone?  No.  We'll get one shelf in a bookcase and one lockable drawer in a file cabinet.  Books?  Resources?  Pah, who needs 'em!  PAPERLESS is the way to go in academia.  And, I bet the studen...er, 'clients' will LOVE it!  Remember how it felt when your boss called you into the office in front of all of your open plan co-workers?  Like 'oooooh, you're in TROUBLE!'  Yeah, that's how your kids are going to feel.  Because if they have anything they want/need to say to us, we're going to have to leave the open plan and try to find a private place to talk.  For those already in open plan, this often means the stairwell.  TOP NOTCH!  Do you really think that your child is going to come to me in front of everyone and say 'I'm failing, I need help', or 'I'm really feeling a bit depressed, can I talk to you?'  I sincerely doubt it.  So not only is management treating us like call centre workers, they seem to be working really hard to dis-assemble the already tenuous relationship between student and lecturer.  Ah, you say...but if everyone is open plan, it must be great!  But not everyone IS going to be open plan.  The deanery certainly isn't, and right now the current idea is to not have management in open plan.  Because, you know...they need their privacy.  At the degree farm, everyone is equal.  Some are just a little more equal than others...

Would you send this e-mail to your boss?

Ok.  I get it.  We spoon feed you everything.  We print out all of the lecture slides for you because you can't be bothered to download them yourself. We're supposed to allow you to come into class whenever you feel like it because you've paid up to £9,000 a year for your education...never mind the fact that everyone ELSE has also paid that amount and manages to get to class pretty much on time (not 1/2 hour late to a 2 hour lecture, coming in with a steaming cup of Starbucks!).  No...your coming in to a packed class of 150+ students where the only seats left are in the middle of the rows or in the front (God forbid you sit in front), so you make 12 students get up from their seats in the middle of the lecture to let you pass as you greet your buddies....is absolutely awesome and in no way a disruption to anyone else's learning.  Hey, what does it matter anyway because, yes, you expect me to give you the answers to the exams.  And yes, some of my co-workers succumb to this practice in order to meet their 95% pass rate target.  So I admit it, I am a horrible person for asking you to at least TRY to learn what I'm working so hard to teach you, and telling you that anything we've gone over in classes is fair game on the exam.  I understand that I, as a lecturer, am failing you in your quest to not actually learn anything and still pass my class, as evidenced by the e-mail sent to me by a student (below), and I'm ok with that.  I sleep pretty well at night over this, though I'm not so sure that whomever taught grammar/punctuation to this student should be...  Here is the e-mail that relates to an upcoming exam; would you send this to your boss?

"hi
since you refused to tell us the topics to focus on and you said read all of the topics you taught us can you at least give us some revision questions to focus on and the answers you expect.  because this is so stressful.  all other lecturers have given us topics to focus on but i dont know why you are making it so difficult for us."


Because I'm a horrible meanie, that's why.  And because no one in the real world is going to give you the answers.  Did I mention that this is a MSc student?  Not a first year...a MASTER'S student.  What are we teaching this generation?  Are we teaching them the skills and knowledge that will help them to get good jobs and lead productive lives?  Or are we teaching them that if they pay their money, they'll be considered 'clients' (yes, we're actually told by management that this is what we're supposed to call students) and they don't actually have to take responsibility or develop a work ethic.  I mean really.  I don't know about you, but I don't want the people who are designing aircraft I fly on or the cars I drive to have a degree simply because they passed by learning the 20% of the overall information that the lecturer told them would be on the exam.  Is that wrong?

Stasi - we want to control you at home and whenever you are online

Your Disgruntled Lecturer decided to get a tablet computer to use for work. After all, reading papers, marking essays , responding to emails, etc. should be more convenient this way, right? So following this train of thought (s)he decided to connect the device to the work email and calendar. And here came a surprise! In order to do that, Degree Farm requires the user to grant the following privileges to the university:
- access to all the resources and files on the device,
- the right to delete and edit any content on the device,
- the right to reset the device settings at any time (it sounds outrageous but it could be justified by data security in some exceptional circumstances)

The points that can't be justified are :
- access to the device's camera and picture gallery,
- access to the voice recording (both without the users knowledge!),
- access to the device's keyboard and other input methods,
- access to the device's location,
- access to personal passwords.

This sounds outrageous, doesn't it? Stasi-like? NSA and GCHQ , I think you can learn from Degree Farm! At least they have a decency to ask for one's consent...
(What makes it worse is that most of our colleagues did have no idea, including your Disgruntled Lecturer on their mobile phone) .

How would you feel if...

... you spent nine years of your life to get good university education from an undergraduate to a Ph.D. degree, published in one of the top journals in the world in your discipline, were offered a job with a promise of research time and support, and then were told what academic research is by people who struggled to get their bachelor degrees from under-performing universities? Yup, welcome to our hell! Let this post be a warning to ambitious and intelligent people who consider applying for jobs at post-1992 universities (even those that appear to be good judging by league tables, etc.). Don't believe the managers and people who interview you, instead approach some young and mid-career lecturers for some unofficial information on the working conditions, duties, targets, etc.

A couple of years ago we were offered lectureships at the Degree Farm. Already in the job interview we were assured of the extensive support for our research and amazing opportunities available to us. The message was reinforced when we were offered the positions. It all seemed good. The picture was quite exciting - being a part of an underdog that wants to join the big dogs in the game. A chance to change something, to be a part of some great development. What else a young idealist could ask for? The first year was tough - focused almost entirely on teaching, course development and admin tasks. But hey, the first year is expected to be difficult and it should get better later on, right? Well, it didn't. The teaching load was steadily increased to 70 - 80% of our time, we got involved in 4 - 6 courses simultaneously and the rest of the time is spent on more and more mundane and brainless admin tasks. On top of that, some of us teach 3 semesters in a year - September to August! The requests for basic (and inexpensive) research software were repeatedly denied as the management couldn't see any benefit in spending money on it. Conferences? - "Expensive, do you really need to go?" Workshops and additional training? - "Expensive, can't you find something cheaper? Sorry you used your share of the annual budget when we paid the 20 pound fee for your previous workshop..." We could spend a whole day counting more outrageous examples. The problem is that they would always come up with some dramatic excuse - someone being sick, absent, had an accident, the department was understaffed, etc. But how can that be the case for over 2 years? Our recent departmental meeting made it clear - research doesn't count or matter! The management more-less said that most members of the department do not have intellectual capacity to conduct research and they shouldn't be treated any different. Therefore, no one should get any research support! Obvious logic! (sarcasm).

So to sum up, they recruited a whole bunch of people with Ph.D.'s from the top UK universities on the promise to develop the university's research profile, then once they had us in, they kept denying any chance of doing research and in the end our line manager shouted (!) at us saying that research is not really our job.

We must be sadists to be still around... Time to move on, don't you think?