Lecturing as a career

Niamhk21

I am a LC student and I hope to study English and History and then go on to be a lecturer of English. Is this a realistic career? What is involved in getting there. I am aware that it is advisable to carry out a PhD, but are there intern programmes available? Are there many jobs available worldwide for this job? Thank you

Geuze

Niamhk21 wrote: »

I am a LC student and I hope to study English and History and then go on to be a lecturer of English. Is this a realistic career? What is involved in getting there. I am aware that it is advisable to carry out a PhD, but are there intern programmes available? Are there many jobs available worldwide for this job? Thank you

Do the degree.

Do a Masters in your area.

Then start a Ph.D., typically 4 years full-time, typically funded.

So 8 years of study, assuming no interruptions.



After the Ph.D., some go on to be post-doc researchers.

Avatar MIA

Geuze wrote: »

Do the degree.

Do a Masters in your area.

Then start a Ph.D., typically 4 years full-time, typically funded.

So 8 years of study, assuming no interruptions.



After the Ph.D., some go on to be post-doc researchers.

Nearly all universities have English departments, but probably no non university third level education would.

Getting a PhD would almost be a basic requirement, you'd probably do some undergrad teaching while gaining your PhD.

You'd also have a tough time with competition. You'd also start off on a relatively low salary as an assistant lecturer grade.

It's not a career path to which I'd personally look forward.

Avatar MIA

Geuze wrote: »

Then start a Ph.D., typically 4 years full-time, typically funded.

Who would fund and English PhD - I'd say they'd be few and far between (open to correction).

eeguy

It's also a job for life for many in the profession as there's few alternatives that pay the same wages.

You may have to wait for someone to retire or die to progress.

sullivlo

I'm not in English but I am in research. I can't speak specifically about English but I can speak about academia in my field.

I would like to lecture. However very few positions become available. I have a PhD and I have 2 years postdoc experience. Most lectureships require 5+ years of postdoc experience, along with publications and grants.

Currently about 14% of grant applications are funded.

Lectureships are also horribly unstable. It's contract to contract. No stability, no forward planning. My last 2 contracts were 2 months and 4 months respectively. How can I plan ahead if that's the security level I have?

Also salary wise if I were to apply for a lectureship I would have to take a pay cut.

There are other ways to teach to build up your CV - tutorials, demonstrating, subbing for your boss when they're not able to make it - but those opportunities are rare and highly contested. I have a diploma in teaching third level yet there are still more experienced people than me.

There are some lecturers in the arts that don't have a PhD, but they're now few and far between as so many people now have PhDs that there's more competition.

It's not an easy career path.

sullivlo

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Who would fund and English PhD - I'd say they'd be few and far between (open to correction).

The same places that fund other fields PhDs.

Avatar MIA

sullivlo wrote: »

The same places that fund other fields PhDs.

Most of those funded (that I know of) are practical research such as in pharma or something that would provide tangible results.

Can you give an example of a funded English PhD?

PhoenixParker

Niamhk21 wrote: »

I am a LC student and I hope to study English and History and then go on to be a lecturer of English.

Is this a realistic career?
No

What is involved in getting there. I am aware that it is advisable to carry out a PhD,

First class honours degree, securing funding in a top international university (you really want to be top ten worldwide for that, so factor in emigration).
Your supervisor is also key here, not only do they need to be well respected and prestigious (so their recommendation afterwards is worth something), you also need to be able to work with them.

Then all you need to do is actually complete a PhD (preferably in a reasonably short amount of time) while also carrying out large amounts of side work like teaching assistant.

You will also want to ensure you get papers published, present at conferences and network extensively.

but are there intern programmes available?
They'll usually be associated with your PhD programme.

Are there many jobs available worldwide for this job?
No, virtually none, especially when you compare it to the number of people graduating with PhDs. To get a lectureship, you often have to spend years in crappy jobs post PhD "paying your dues", generally a few hours here and there as a teaching assistant, insecure contract roles, low pay, moving universities and often country regularly.

Geuze

Avatar MIA wrote: »

You'd also have a tough time with competition. You'd also start off on a relatively low salary as an assistant lecturer grade.

Lecturers (below the bar) start on 40k approx, however "new entrants" start on 10% less.


Here are UCC 2016 scales:

salary: €31,821 - €56,967/€62,353 - €76,942

Geuze

A blog post about economics PhD in the USA:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/academic-sentences-to-ponder.html

Avatar MIA

Geuze wrote: »

Lecturers (below the bar) start on 40k approx, however "new entrants" start on 10% less.


Here are UCC 2016 scales:

salary: €31,821 - €56,967/€62,353 - €76,942

Not great to be starting out, late twenties on €31k with probably some hefty student loans. And that's if you get the lecturing position straight away, which is highly unlikely for a University English Lecturer.

sullivlo

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Most of those funded (that I know of) are practical research such as in pharma or something that would provide tangible results.

Can you give an example of a funded English PhD?

Well the IRCSET program which is the main funding body for postgrad funding, funds arts and humanities.

Same for the Marie Curie grants - they have areas of interest that includes arts and humanities.

Avatar MIA

sullivlo wrote: »

Well the IRCSET program which is the main funding body for postgrad funding, funds arts and humanities.

Same for the Marie Curie grants - they have areas of interest that includes arts and humanities.

Very good - glad to hear it.

Geuze

IoT staff finished on Mon 20th June.

They don't have to step foot in the college, or even answer an e-mail until 1st Sep.

Top of their scale is 82,665

Great job.

Avatar MIA

Geuze wrote: »

IoT staff finished on Mon 20th June.

They don't have to step foot in the college, or even answer an e-mail until 1st Sep.

Top of their scale is 82,665

Great job.

How many English lecturers do you know working in IOTs or was this just an excuse for a rant?

Geuze

Not a rant, just a comment.

I'm not complaining about them, fair play to them.

And there are other downsides to their job.

Avatar MIA

Geuze wrote: »

Not a rant, just a comment.

I'm not complaining about them, fair play to them.

And there are other downsides to their job.

Not a relevant comment though.

eeguy

Geuze wrote: »

IoT staff finished on Mon 20th June.

They don't have to step foot in the college, or even answer an e-mail until 1st Sep.

Top of their scale is 82,665

Great job.

Great if you can get it.

To the OP. Have a look at the various academic vacancies sites and you'll get a good impression on what the job market is like.

Realt Dearg Sec

I'm a lecturer in English.

I can honestly say that while I love it, every second of it, I would not recommend it, and there's not enough people in our business willing to say that.

People look at the job itself and it looks very attractive but it is a very difficult path. If you don't love literature, you have absolutely no business doing it. If you do love literature, honestly, in all probability, you still have no business doing it unless you are really, really good.

Whoever said you have to go to a top university is probably half correct, it's not absolutely necessary but it doesn't do any harm. It doesn't matter in the slightest how long it takes you to finish though, don't let anyone tell you otherwise because they don't know what they're talking about. The only problems with that are, obviously, money, and the universities themselves are restructuring PhD programmes to speed up completions.

People talking about it not being great to start out in your late twenties on 31k? You should be so lucky. That job, if it comes up, will have in the region of 200 applicants, all of them highly qualified, and willing to tear you to shreds to get it.

After the PhD you are likely looking at several years of adjunct or occasional work, which means, being paid per hour for teaching classes. if you are post 2008 or whatever year the cut off was, which obviously you are, you will be paid 30 an hour for a tutorial, maybe 60 an hour or so for a lecture or a seminar. Sounds very high unless you factor in the many hours of preparation that go into it and the fact you might only have four such hours work a week. It's a scandal, actually, but honestly for all the lefty talk in English departments they are deliberately creating an excess pool of labour by producing loads of PhDs, who do all this donkey work for a pittance to enable tenured faculty to have a grand old time of it.

If you are lucky, you will get a postdoc after your PhD. I got an Irish Research Council postdoc a couple of years ago to finish my book, it was my second attempt. You're not allowed a third, by the way. They are highly competitive, people can become incredibly embittered by the process. Anyway I was lucky and I got it. 32k for the year. You are not guaranteed a job after that.

I got a substitute position after doing it, and then worked full time at another university, but again it was right place at the right time. Then I went to America to do another postdoc. I am not tooting my own horn here when I say that this probably had in the region of 300 applicants. For ONE postdoc. You are not, at all, guaranteed a job after that either.

While you're doing all this work you are expected to be publishing, a lot. You need to have two articles a year from about your third year in the PhD. I published a book, which is great and all but in Britain now with the Research Excellence Framework which was entirely modelled to suit the hard sciences, they actually only grade a book equally to an article. Which is nonsense and makes no sense within our discipline, but you may get used to that kind of thing.

I have applied in my time for literally hundreds of jobs, and aside from the postdocs I have probably been invited for about five interviews. That would be a lot higher than most people I know. Knowing a lot about literature is the absolute base. You have to be able to navigate an increasingly insecure and complicated job market too. Applying to Britain (there are virtually no jobs in Ireland, we have only a tiny few departments) involves understanding what the REF is that I mentioned above, and being able to show how your work will contribute to each department's REF submission. They are introducing a teaching equivalent, the TEF. All of this is just lumping administration time onto lecturers, but you have to be able to speak that language and play that game.

You also have to be presenting at conferences. These are quite expensive, especially as a student with no money having to fork out for trips abroad that are essentially work. Don't get me wrong, they're great craic as a student, you meet lots of others in your boat and go drinking and have sex and what with people with the same very niche interest as you, and it's all in the name of furthering your career. Wonderful. Also all the friends you make are actually your rivals, if a job comes up in your area of specialisation, every single one of those people are against you for the job you are looking for. If one of them gets it, you have to pretend to be happy for them while secretly hating the fact. It is a deeply jealous profession full of fragile egos.

I do love it, I don't want to pretend that all of this bad stuff is the sum of it. If you are interested in money then it's the wrong profession anyway, but aside from that the insecurity is by far the worst element, I'd be happy enough on 30 grand a year forever. But there is no guarantee that you are the one who will get the job. You are up against fiercely intelligent people (who were intelligent about everything but their career choice...), in one of the most competitive job markets you could imagine. A market that is shrinking, by the way, as universities push towards more and more non-tenured positions and more insecurity, to save money. Meanwhile there are probably more PhDs on the market than at any time in history. For fewer jobs.

If you DO get a tenured job (they do still exist!) there are mounds and mounds of administration involved. More importantly, your job is more focused on your research record, but you spend all of your time on teaching and admin. Tough luck, but that's the reality.

If you are doing it, I would suggest that you don't enter the PhD straight away, spend some time out of academia. This will probably give you a career fall back, but also spend that time reading and writing and so on. You need to be doing research in a growth area. Right now eco-criticism is a major trend. So obviously it's too late to go for that. You need to be able to figure out what will be big when you're graduating. Knowing that will require a very wide knowledge of critical theory (the periods themselves obviously don't change although I'd steer clear of Middle English, it's being scaled back everywhere, Maynooth don't even teach it anymore for example), which quite frankly most people WITH PhDs don't actually have, most are just feeling around in the dark. This is probably the main thing: go in with your eyes open about it, knowing what is needed, but also being willing to accept that you might well fail. If you do those two things you will be doing far better than most people pursuing the career.

Also there is a thread on the AMA forum with an English lecturer. You should read it.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057382953

draiochtanois

This post has been deleted.

Realt Dearg Sec

draiochtanois wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Well, the mocks are obviously complete bullsh1t, and so is the Leaving Cert. You would want to be doing well in your subjects, obviously, but the way history (I did history for my degree as well) is studied in university is very different, and the way research in either discipline is carried out has nothing in common with the LC which is, honestly, mickey mouse stuff. I know a few people who didn't get As in the Leaving in these subjects who now have careers in them, they just didn't do the LC game properly. I've seen how people discuss the English LC on this forum, frankly it makes me want to puke, the whole thing is just a game, there is zero creative or critical thought involved.

That sounds like I'm dismissing your point, now I read it back. I'm really not. I'm just qualifying it. That said, if you are getting Cs in your leaving, you probably won't become a lecturer, to be honest. At undergrad in English there are droves and droves of very average students. The very, very best in a given year might be good enough to do an MA, and within that only a tiny few, maybe one or two in a class, would be good enough to do a PhD. And as I say, even at that, there's too many PhDs. So, if grades are going to be an issue, you won't be in the hunt for a job.

Realt Dearg Sec

Some clarifications: you need to be at a top university for your PhD, maybe. Nobody cares where you did your degree. Nobody cares about your degree.

It isn't advisable to do a PhD, it's mandatory, you won't be considered for anything without one.

PhoenixParker

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Some clarifications: you need to be at a top university for your PhD, maybe. Nobody cares where you did your degree. Nobody cares about your degree.

It isn't advisable to do a PhD, it's mandatory, you won't be considered for anything without one.

The thing is, to get into a top university to do a PhD, you'll probably need to go to a top university (or at least a university with a well respected English department and lecturers with good contacts at top universities) to actually get the funding to do the PhD at the top university.

There's other ways obviously, like interesting work experience or standing out in a particular field somehow.

Realt Dearg Sec

PhoenixParker wrote: »

The thing is, to get into a top university to do a PhD, you'll probably need to go to a top university (or at least a university with a well respected English department and lecturers with good contacts at top universities) to actually get the funding to do the PhD at the top university.

There's other ways obviously, like interesting work experience or standing out in a particular field somehow.

As long as your work is good at undergraduate you'll get into somewhere good for postgraduate. It's complicated by other factors, but that's the bottom line really. Going to America, for instance, where nearly all the best universities are, is about your grades and your GRE. I don't know of any lecturers off the top of my head who don't have good contacts in big universities, because whatever place you're in, the lecturers likely went to big universities themselves.

I have friends who went from maynooth at undergraduate to Oxford, Columbia, York. I have friends who did PhDs in UCD who went on to teach at Harvard, amherst, Notre dame. It's hard to generalise this stuff transitioning from any level, certainly there's no bar at all to moving from a small university at undergraduate to a prestigious one later. The reason people tend to move between top universities is because they tend to be the best students. If your grades and your work are good enough, you're good enough.