Why I’m probably leaving academia, in one (better than most!) job advert. https://jobs.hull.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=FS0575

A lecturer position, which is the level I should hopefully be trying to move onto, but here's the caveats:

1) Fixed Term, 1 year. Yeah, at 30 candidates are expected to uproot their lives and move city to be paid for a single year before being unemployed again, no thanks.

2) Grade 7. Sure, that's what most lectureships start on, but as a PDRA I'm on that now - so the incentive to scupper my research career to do a huge amount of teaching (with no progression or even permanency) isn't exactly huge.

3. "Essential: Expected to achieve Associate Fellow level of the Higher Education Academy as represented within the UK Professional Standards Framework, within 2 years from commencement of the post". It's a 1 year position...

4. This job will get like 300 applicants, because it's the scraps we're all fighting for.

I don't want to pick on that particular uni, because they all do it, but if we keep treating Early Career academics like this it's not going to go well.

How do you up and move every 1-2 years and expect to maintain relationships, have a family, get on the property ladder?

5. And of course there’s the unwritten subtext of that ad which is only evident if you know the game.

That’s (probably) a position for 1+ professor who’s been bought out of teaching. You’re going to be doing ALL of it, producing materials, the works, with minimal support.

6. Also. If this is the environment you cultivate - mercenary, unattached to a particular institution, career first, (professionally) insecure and thus desperately competitive - then you’re favouring a certain type of person, and stacking the deck with them.

7. And you’re selecting against people with families, people who need support networks, people who want to actually put down roots and build something.

8. I see this thread has been reinterpreted as "Bob hates maternity cover", which is a fun take given that I had no possible way of knowing that's the origin of the specific short term contract I was using as an example. So I'll clear up a few things:

9. Obviously parental leave should be a thing, obviously it's a good thing, obviously we should make best efforts to cover the workload of people who are on parental leave. Obviously we should also do it in such a way that returnees from that leave can seamlessly return.

10. Obviously we should avoid making new parents feel in any way like they are a burden, or in any way disadvantage them.

Right. Now back to the original point.

1 year contracts are shit. You barely have time to achieve anything. No time to get projects off the ground...

11. Barely time to familiarise yourself with a new institution/programme - let alone improve anything or put your own content in. Hell, IT probably won't get you a computer for the first fortnight.

12. So how to reconcile these two things? Maybe we can't. Maybe one year contracts are a necessary evil in this case. But they're exclusive of anyone who's just had kids or plans on having them - because who's gonna uproot their family for that?

13. I think that the right way is for us to build resilient departments where people have enough spare capacity to cover courses and sort out workload across the board. Maybe that's fiscally impossible. All I know is that I'm resigned to not being there anymore. I'm done moving.