What I miss and what I don't

Photo by Kevin Harber on Flickr

Watching my colleagues from around the UK posting images of themselves with their new cohorts of students gives me mixed feelings.

On the one hand, now I'm no longer teaching in higher education, I feel as though I'm missing out on something that has been a part of my life for the past two decades.

On the other, I feel a huge sense of relief that I'm no longer involved with all the behind the scenes admin and trivia that all teachers have to endure. I wrote about this recently in a post called Walking Away.

Lecturing at a university can appear glamorous. Standing in front of large groups of undergraduates to give a lecture, or running a seminar for a small group of students looks fun, and usually it is. But behind the scenes, there are a thousand and one other jobs lecturers must do just to keep their heads above water. What I won't miss now I am 'retired' are all the tedious meetings you are expected to attend. Some turn out to be a waste of time where nothing is decided.

At the start of each year, lecturers scratch their heads as they study their timetables detailing all their lecture dates, times and venues (some of which inexplicably overlap). There are the time consuming phone calls and emails to admin to try to get certain lectures or seminars rearranged or adjusted so one doesn't spend entire days running across campus just to get to a session on time. At the opposite end of the academic year there are the exam boards where everyone sits around a large table and goes through each and every result and verifies that yes, indeed, Sally Forth really did get a 56 for her study on moles invading the school playing field.

Sandwiched in the middle of these chores is chaos. Controlled chaos, but chaos none the less. Lecturers now need to create and update content and share it via a Learning Management System (other names are available), usually 48 hours prior to the relevant lecture so that students can see the slides and notes beforehand to 'prepare'. They need to create alternative resources for those with special needs. Reading lists have to be agreed with the Library and Resources staff months before a course starts, so there goes your summer. The planning can sometimes be up to one year ahead, with 'module delivery sheets', reserving rooms and additional resources, booking external speakers (and going through all the mandatory checks lecturers now need to do to simply get someone clearance to be on campus) and supply of all sorts of other data.

On top of all these requirements, the university lecturer is also expected to research and publish on a regular basis. Not in just any academic journal. To have any worth, lecturers need to publish in the 'right kind' of academic journals. For many, research funding, promotion, the proportion of time you spend teaching and a whole load of other privileges are based upon satisfying the powers that be that you have published your work in a 'high impact' journal. In other words, a journal that has a very low circulation, and is so expensive that only university libraries can afford to subscribe. All of it is meaningless anyway, unless you happen to be working in one of the elite universities that attract the lion's share of the funding.

It doesn't stop there. Summer months, particularly late August - are also sacrificed for clearing - the period where school leavers receive their A level results and then hunt around to see which university they would like to attend for the next three years. The inevitable round of time consuming interviews, public relations exercises, open days and other associated duties follows - in fact it is scheduled for the entire year for many departments.

There are the optional extras too (but why any clear thinking academic would involve themselves in any of these is beyond me. I can't speak though, because I did most of these at some point during my academic career), including academic offences committees, faculty boards, ethical clearance committees, staff funding approval boards, technical management groups and the myriad of staff research clusters that constantly email their lengthy missives across the network. Many lecturers spend a decent proportion of their time deleting and trashing a large percentage of these emails and circulars they receive each week.

At home in the evenings and weekends, reading and preparation is done, and this is usually alongside all of the personal and organisational research one is expected to do just to keep abreast of all the new developments in one's specialist field of expertise. There are the additional commitments of serving on academic journal boards, professional bodies, conference committees, governance groups and external examiner roles (have I missed anything?). Lecturers don't have to do any of this, but if they don't they are definitely gazed on with some disdain. And then there is the inevitable assignment marking, which comes in waves about three or four times each academic year, and if assignments are submitted digitally, there are hours and hours of late night screen staring, followed by agonising decisions about whether someone's assignment is worth a 59 or a 61. The moderation meetings are usually tedious too. Second (and sometimes third) marking of assignments is commonplace, and just as time consuming.

If lecturers dare to raise their heads above the parapet and get noticed by a director or dean, they may not only be invited to lead modules (additional preparation work and management roles), but also to manage entire programmes, chair a committee or take on further additional responsibilities such as 'co-ordinator of this and that' or 'senior tutor in charge of niff-naff and trivia' (not authentic roles, I'm told).

So, there are many things I won't miss about teaching at university. But I will miss all my lovely colleagues and students, the final joys and emotions of the degree awards ceremony, and the fun of engaging with thought provoking academic problems or challenges on a regular basis (to be fair I still do a lot of that). At this time of year, I am definitely missing out on that. But in the final analysis, I'm very pleased that I finally have my academic freedom.


What I miss and what I don't by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.