post cards from the periphary - response to part time contracts etc

ustazjoseph

some one just sent me this . I think its interesting and perhaps also relevant to second level ?
https://3lww.wordpress.com/postcards-from-the-periphery/

gaiscioch

ustazjoseph wrote: »

some one just sent me this . I think its interesting and perhaps also relevant to second level ?
https://3lww.wordpress.com/postcards-from-the-periphery/

One of the saddest things I've seen in career terms is the number of people who are doing a PhD for years with misguided expectations or are on the post-doc merry-go-round. It's very disheartening to watch that hope of ever getting a permanent post dim as the years pass. I dipped my toes into the water once, very briefly, and attended conferences go leor. I was offered a two-year post-doc but it would have entailed leaving Ireland. It might have been worth it if I had been guaranteed a permanent job in Ireland afterwards. Of course, no such guarantee existed. What would have been much more likely was that I would finish it, then move on to another contract and another (if I was "lucky"), and those jobs would probably be in that country as I would have built connections there and it had much more opportunity. I'd also have to make sure I never got on the wrong side of a handful of academic kingpins in my area as the number of academics in your field of expertise will be relatively very small.

There is, it should be stated clearly, an outstanding degree of deception on the part of senior academics who want cheap exploitable labour, and wishful thinking on the part of PhD students and post-docs who doggedly refuse to do the sums on their job prospects - i.e. far too many people with PhDs chasing far too few tenure track lecturing positions. In short, you are ridiculously expendable unless you have some unique or even esoteric skill. One friend of mine is doing his PhD for almost 10 years now because he has allowed himself to be plámásed into being a dogsbody of his department, giving tutorials, correcting exams and being paid a pittance all in the hope of getting on the right side of the powers that be in his department. All the while his PhD supervisor/professor can fly ahead in his publication output to assist his own and the university rankings now that the disruption of teaching has been thrown onto his latest (and now long-serving) PhD student. Infuriatingly exploitative. Infuriatingly. Some day somebody will do an exposé on what's happening in university departments, because people are paying huge tuition fees for tutorials that are usually given by students rather than full-time lecturers.

He has no rights, no pension - nothing.

For me, the prospects of a post-doc didn't add up. Basically, you could qualify as a solicitor or accountant (or be most of the way through your FEI/ACCA exams) in the two years of your post-doc. Or, as I did, do the one-year Dip, become a teacher and with the PhD allowance start on significantly more money as a secondary school teacher (€38,000) than the vast majority of post-docs offer (c. €30,000). Admittedly, it's a massive change from teaching students who want to be there in small tutorial classes in uni to psychologist/social worker/crowd controller/teacher of students who often don't want to be there in secondary school. But it is much more likely you will get a permanent/CID contract and therefore be able to move on with your life in financial terms. Time is too precious to be stuck dreaming at the periphery of academia without any real hope of being financially free.

CramCycle

I had a part time gig lecturing, but was told there were no more hours while on honey moon by e-mail. While I throughly enjoyed my work and research, the pay does not stack up unless you are permanent.

I got an industry job shortly after and would never go back even though I loved it.

Very lucky I even got my industry job though as most would consider you "over qualified" after a few years in academia, they happened to be setting up a new lab and I knew the system inside out but that was a fluke, most jobs had me as either over qualified or worried I would either try to get up higher to quickly or would just drop them as soon as another academic gig came along.

I have pension, healthcare, dental, overtime, I even get paid for all the hours I work, I get to do research in my job (though very little will ever be published unfortunately). I have a steady wage that does not disappear, I am not begging for each and every hour of pay, not doing the after hours demonstrating, leading labs, lecturing to make ends meet, meeting students out of lecture times.

it took me too long to get over my misguided expectations of working hard would pay off, if you don't make it by your second or third PD contract, it is time to let it go IMO.