A Point of View

A POINT OF VIEW By Lisa Jardine

Students called for the lecturers' dispute to be settled

No one paid much attention to the lecturers' pay dispute until students' graduation was under threat. Why are academics not taken seriously in this country?

Last weekend, as the grey skies lifted and the sun finally came out, when most people were heading for the park, I spent a spell-binding day indoors instead, looking into the future of academic research in the humanities.

I was taking part in a one-day conference at Queen Mary, University of London, organised by young colleagues in the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, where I am the Director.

Students in their second and third year of post-graduate study made short presentations, to which senior academic mentors responded with comments and advice. We ended the day eating supper together under the trees in the fading light, on the terrace of Queen Mary's award-winning graduate building in Mile End, beside the Regent's canal.

The topics were varied, but they shared an overarching theme. Armed with awesome specialist skills - palaeography (that's - how to read long-obsolete handwritings), descriptive bibliography (how the pages of old books are put together), Latin and Greek - each student described a unique encounter in the archives with a piece of evidence which had changed their way of thinking about a significant issue in their field.

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Here's an example: In the Wren Library in Cambridge, a student had found a small book in Latin on the art of translation, published in 1559 in Basle by an exiled Protestant Englishman. An absolutely tiny printed book, with the tiniest of tiny handwriting in it, less than half a millimetre high. (See the book in the enlarge image, below.)

It had been densely annotated (in Latin) by someone called Gabriel Harvey -for a short time in the 1570s the Cambridge University Professor of Rhetoric, and a man prominent in literary life in England for the next two decades. He had inscribed his name on the title page, and the date - 1570 - when he began reading it.

Marginal contribution

By looking at Harvey's marginal notes, the student had recovered an animated debate between reader and author about how imaginative and free one was entitled to be in turning a text from an ancient language into a modern one. It's a debate intensely relevant to English religious politics of the time, centred as that was on the translation and interpretation of the Bible.

The small Latin book Enlarge Image

The student presented her book, its handwritten annotations and their analysis, with infectious enthusiasm, moving confidently with her laser-pointer between electronic images of its pages. She shared with us her detective work figuring out the significance of the red chalk marks for emphasis, the underlinings, and curious crossings-out.

She singled out telling remarks by the annotator - in his distinctive black ink and minute italic hand. Sometimes, she showed us, he scribbled those comments so fast, with such eagerness to get on, that its mirror-image can still be seen, blotted on to the facing page before the ink dried, as he hurried to turn over.

This pint-sized book, she pointed out, does not figure in the latest, much-used, electronic resource for historians of the English literary heritage, which only reproduces books in English. Yet her little treasure-trove volume with its evocative annotations showed that it was an integral part of early Anglican doctrinal developments - still the guiding principles of the Church of England today.

This is the way academic research in the humanities is meant to be, I believe, in the 21st Century: engaged with real issues, alert, alive, and full of energy.

Pay claim

Here is intellectual athleticism, leading to skills that can be transferred without difficulty to today's fast-moving world: how to identify a significant problem, the sustained analysis of bodies of difficult data, rapid processing of information, and confident arrival at valid conclusions supported by telling evidence.

The knowledge-economy depends on expanding higher education

How ridiculously far all of this feels from press comments in the past few weeks during the stand-off between beleaguered university vice-chancellors and harassed and exasperated university lecturers.

You may hardly have been aware at all, that for months some lecturers at universities have been taking part in "action short of a strike", in support of a 23% pay claim. They argued that their salaries have fallen well behind those of comparable public sector professionals and that a significant adjustment was necessary to enable them to "catch up".

Why do the British have so little respect for their academics?

Their action consisted in withholding marks for the assessment of student coursework, and refusing to set and mark examinations. On Wednesday this week they accepted a lower offer from the vice-chancellors of 13% over three years.

Throughout the dispute, the public's attitude hovered somewhere between lack of interest and lack of concern. Few contest the fact that academic salaries have fallen far behind most other professions.

Yet no-one seemed to be terribly bothered whether academics were adequately rewarded for educating the next generation of intellectual high-flyers. The lecturers' continuing action reached the headlines only occasionally, when somebody noticed that it might have knock-on consequences for students' careers.

Why do the British have so little respect for their academics? We are constantly being told that our future is as a knowledge-based economy. That means we will need a better and more broadly educated workforce, made up of those who can argue a case coherently, appraise, analyse and evaluate. Which in turn means a longer, more challenging programme of education - more students in the sixth form, more undergraduates, more PhDs.

I came across an education correspondent's comments on the BBC website this week, suggesting that the difficulties universities were having in resolving their pay dispute typified the pointlessness of all academic endeavour.

Investment

According to him, it is no surprise that the two sides were not able to agree over basic facts such as the average pay of lecturers, what the universities could afford in the way of settlement, or even the date the dispute had begun. "Academic discourse often descends into vitriolic disagreement over what is, or is not, a 'fact'," he wrote scathingly.

Universities need to have a career structure to attract young academics

I find such trivialising of the value of what we academics do and contribute, deeply depressing, and wide of the mark. Talking about the challenge of globalisation on the Today programme on Monday, Gordon Brown told John Humphrys emphatically that we need to invest more in education if we are to meet the global economic challenge.

We need to make our universities more competitive, said Brown, we need more scientists to meet that challenge. As the Chancellor knows full well, there are significant costs attached to those ambitions.

If we are to be "one of the great global success stories of the 21st Century", we need investment in the university sector right across the board. We will need more highly educated young people in every discipline if we are to keep pace with change. The kinds of students I train will be every bit as valuable to the new-style British economy as physicists or even engineers.

One of my most gifted young researchers gave up her research post last year, and has just qualified as a schoolteacher. Her reasons were clear, and I wholeheartedly supported her: teachers in Britain's schools now have a proper career structure, and good conditions of service.

Significant investment since 1997 means that school-teaching now offers realistic and fair remuneration. Schoolteachers have begun to regain their position of respect in the community, and with it their own self-respect. At our conference last weekend , she rushed up me to tell me that she had just got a job at a well-known London girls' secondary school.

I have watched that student teach Shakespeare to a large class of first-year undergraduates. She is an inspiration in the classroom - one of those individuals who can control a lively group and communicate effectively without ever raising her voice.

Her decision to leave a promising career in higher education is secondary education's gain. But it speaks volumes for this country's failure to value its universities. At a time when our universities are more important to us than ever before, we are in danger of destroying them by simple neglect.

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Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

I fully endorse the issues raised by Lisa Jardine. The industrial action was seen by students as potentially detrimental to their degree and so they found it hard to support. Lecturers across the institution in which I work, De Montfort University, were torn between their desire to not harm students and a desperate need to have the low pay issue resolved. I took a pay cut from my work as a cultural consultant to teach students. I wanted to help build the cultural leaders of the future. A cause the DCMS itself has recognised as an urgent requirement. The low pay, the excessive workload (due to our hands on tutoring, our desire to provide 1st class quality service to students and pastoral care we provide for students),the lack of respect afforded to those working in HE by society are factors that make one question if one should stay in HE. The industrial action offered an opportunity to provide the HE sector with appropriate remuneration for the work being carried out. The outcome of the negotiations fails the sector and compounds unhappiness among lecturers. One wonders if the industrial action had included a ban on any research activity would the result have been different?
Cara MacMahon, Milton Keynes

I listen each week to your talk and they are very interesting. This week I must comment however on your thoughts about research at universities. I have to say that dons and lecturers are fortunate part. Ox/Bridge with short terms and long recesses. In fact they could have 2 years in each 12 months for students Time is then spent on writing books and lecturing on cruises etc. I would like to think that research people were devoted to research only We value univ. when we get value for money and there are too many universities many with low standards why not consolidate modernise then we can talk.
john medforth, barnsley south yorks uk

I agree wholeheartedly with Lisa Jardine's comments about lack of an academic career structure. I am fortunate enough to hold an academic post, and it is a great job to have. But I have seen so many promising researchers who have left, disheartened, to do anything else after enduring two or three temporary post-doctoral fellowships without any prospect of ever getting an academic contract. If anyone asks me whether I would advise them to embark upon an academic career, I tell them to think very carefully, several times about it. There are simply too few opportunities open to new aspirants: it really is a case of 'dead men's shoes'.
Dr Robert Brook, Bangor, Wales

There a number of mixed topics here. Firstly, my belief is that higher education is not providing what industry and commerce requires to survive in the global economy of the 21st century, let alone be "one of the global success stories". Secondly, many of my generation that passed through the university system and are now in positions where we may be recruiting current graduates feel that a general lowering of qualifications has occurred driven by Governments "everyone must pass" mentality. Thirdly, university lecturers are incredibly poorly paid for what they should be contributing but this is due to lack of Govt interest and minimal funding rather than public disinterest. Lastly, I was always taught that "respect" had to be earned and was not due just to ones status in life.
LB, Surbiton, Surrey

I totally agree with these comments, as a post-doctoral Chemist-Physicist hoping to one day to attain a permanent position at a UK university I think there needs to be a major advertising campaign to set public perception ablaze for decades to come about the role of UK academics. For too long; engineers, teachers, medical doctors, lawyers, surgeons, vets, fast jet pilots, and those in the media, such as journalists, reporters, columnist's etc.... have been presented to the general public as 'special' and worthy of huge salaries and respect. However, none of these would exist in the form they have now if it wasn't for the proper and solid research conducted by academics at our wonderful universities. Think on!
David Plant, London

A society which pays more to a bricklayer or a plumber than to a university teacher, tells us how much they value education. Education is like any other commodity, which can be bought over the counter, some believe. No wonder number of British postgraduate students are very small.
Tarzan Ghosh, London

Oh, how I wish physicists were valuable to the economy. A year after graduating with a 2:1 I'm still working in a call centre.
Richard Wood, Swansea, UK

"Why do the British have so little respect for their academics?" Good point. I had always been led to believe respect was and is never a god-given right, but a virtue: respect is given to those who should be respected. Of course, at the heart of the matter, academics should be given the respect they should have earned. But somewhere along the way this has slipped - and I think it is down to the academics themselves to figure out why. Although I (being a student graduating in September...or not) have had some wonderful lecturers, and been truly inspired but their teaching, the way in which the whole pay debacle has been conducted smacks of vanity. Vanity and self-centred stubbornness does not - unless I am mistaken - breed respect. Yes, there is a mild indifference in the general public - but, frankly, it does not concern them. Who it does concern are the lecturers themselves, and the students they claim to be in profession for. At the heart of the matter, if they had! acted on reasonable terms and not thrown the academic and careers of potential post-grads into jeopardy they would have had far more inner-support, and in turn, a greater oxygen of publicity in which to voice their complaints. They do deserve a pay-raise, undoubtedly, but killing the patients to empty the ward isn't the best way of going about it. DT
DT, Bangkok, Thailand

As much as I agree with most of the comments in the article I would like to point out that the academics and lecturers are ably supported by administration staff who, in some cases, do not earn even half of the lowest paid lecturer's wages. They organise, collate, minute meetings, work long hours and generally make sure that the lecturers are able to spend their time teaching rather than struggling with mountains of paperwork. The administrators are forgotten when it comes to talk of how important lecturers are but without them universities would not function and lecturers would be unable to do the jobs they think they are not paid enough for.
,

University lecturers are not teachers. Their role is mentor and inspiration with a bit of quid pro quo lecturing, tutoring and marking in return for departmental space. If they rely solely on their "wage" then they are not much use to the students anyway.
Stuart, London UK

I'm just starting out on my academic career, and it is frustrating that had I left after completing my undergraduate degree I would have started on more money working in a bank than I earn as a post-doc with 5 more years of education and research. Most people I know are in the business of academia because they love what they do, but just because you love your work should not mean that you get paid less for doing it, which often seems to be the attitude of employers. It's also sad that no one seems to care very much - I wonder how many responses there will be to this 'point of view' compared to some previous ones?
Claire, Leeds, UK

Lecturers are not "adequately rewarded"? They are paid several times more than, for example, cleaners, library, admin and other support staff many of which have less holidays and benefits and much harder jobs. Grow up! I get £12k a year as a library assistant, and lecturers are whining that £30k and above is not enough? I have no sympathy.
anon, anon

I agree that academics aren't afforded due respect (or pay)in this country, but more for the research they do rather than their teaching. Many degrees are of little worth (for example I have to disagree with Lisa Jardine when she says a history graduate is as valuable as physics graduate) and teaching them a waste of time. But it is academic research that advances the world more than any other sector, and in this regard British academics are second-to-none.
Dan Dover, London, UK

Why are academics not taken seriously in this country? Can they be used to sell corporate products? No. There you go.
david bennett, amersham

I graduated from Cam, continued with an MSc and a DPhil at Oxf and now I am postoctoral researcher here. My field of study is Neuroscience which is an interesting, relevant, and, why not, "trendy" science. I decided for a career in science for various reasons such as: learn new things, be my own boss (instead of being ordered around), travel a little bit around (conferences, lab visits etc.), having a slightly flexible timetable, and live in a nice university town with good sports facilities. Payment for researchers/lecturers is pretty low particularly when you think how long we study. Therefore, raising a family in the UK is almost impossible for me. My plans for the future are pretty clear. I'll stay in the UK for a while to establish myself as a researcher and than emmigrate to Canada, where they offer the best research/lecturer salaries in the Commonwealth. The pity is that the UK universities supported me throughout my studies as I was an overseas student (aprox 13.000 GBP for an year for) and now, after graduation, I am not allowed to work in the UK and somehow pay back my "debt". And also, thank you Lisa Jardine for your comments on Mr Baker article.
Lab-Monkey, Oxford

All very true, but the dispute focused on the wants (needs?) of those in established positions. The real loss to HE is doctoral students who finish their studies and find themselves facing a casualised work place, lecturers and supervisors who actively advocate going on the dole so that you continue to research, short term contracts that might send you to different ends of the country within months, and a recruitment system, at least in some disciplines, based on nepotism and Buggins Turn. Often, frankly, the ones who stay on are either just lucky, or don't have the imagination to shift disciplines. I now work in a more applied field, earn more than my peers still lecturing/researching and am happy with the move - but it wasn't the low pay that made me leave, rather it was the hopelessness of trying to lead a relatively normal, stable existence as a young researcher. Perhaps academics need to review the way they conduct themselves, and their business, before pointing the finger entirely at the outside world!
Dr. G. Fincham, Norwich

"We are constantly being told that our future is as a knowledge-based economy." Are we? This is the first I've heard of it. Only last week we were told that 85% of the working population were in the service industry - hardly evidence of a knowledge-based economy. I would truly love to see a UK with people in the pursuit of knowlegde, but seeing the brainless behaviour of people generally means I have very little hope that such a future will actually happen.
Robert, Cardiff, UK

University dons have no equivalent to the parents who play hell if their childrens' schooling goes amiss. They have to rely on the support and kind words of politicians, who nobody trusts. Students do care, but there is no link between their vote and their university education. Often they graduate between general elections. I am a former secondary teacher and current university lecturer, and I can see Lisa Jardine's point about improved prospects for schoolteachers. I would add another critical difference between schoolteachers and lecturers: the former are very thoroughly trained, and they (have to) remain focused on their performance as teachers. That rigorous professionalism is perhaps one of factors that attracts talented young people into the career. Whilst there are of course many talented teachers in HE, the UK university system as a whole is only slowly waking up to the primary importance of teaching skills. The initial training and continuing professional development of lecturers need to be much more rigorous if we are to succeed in developing in our students the "intellectual athleticism" that Lisa so rightly claims is our goal.
Martin Hampton, Havant, UK

Lecturers in the past have often employed an almost rascally impudence in waxing lyrical about their little-work-for-good-money existence. Unfortunately, that is now coming back to haunt them. I live in an area favoured by many senior lecturers as an urban village where they can meet in the local bars and discuss life, work and everything. I'm afraid their conversations are pure self-glorification for their knowledge, and their seeming lack of understanding of current affairs or political debate is never going to change my mind as to their real position in society: Academics obsessed with their own learning, with little or nothing of relevance to pass on to today's students.
David Ph, London, UK

As a PhD student in the Humanities, I can relate to the comments expressed here. When I tell people that I am writing a PhD they look at me as someone disconnected from reality in my ivory tower, but when I explain what the subject of my PhD is, this always leads to an interesting conversation as they realise that academics do interesting, relevant stuff. The academic voice is near absent in public debate - I work in issues of international development yet during the G8 the public were listening to the opinions of musicians rather than people who spent decades working at the front line - academics. Don't stereotype the tweed suited academic living in another world - our work is based upon the real world, and it has important consequences for it. Respect us - how can PhD students be expected to live on £10,000 a year, working hard at research and teaching, when their friends from undergraduate who entered the private sector are earning several times that.
George, Manchester

I have little sympathy for these academics. Too many of my friends have had their degrees endangered and their emotions toyed with as this ridiculous dispute has gone on. I'm university educated myself but I think most of these academics would do well to get out into the real world and see how much people are willing to pay them then. It's not fair to withhold teaching/services from students who are actually these days paying for the privilege.
Rebecca, Wakefield

It is certainly the case that the worst education I recieved was at University. A university course supposidly in the top 5 for my course. This was a year ago and I lost faith in higher education due to it.
J, Sheffield

I was an undergraduate during the early years of Thatcherism (1979-1983). I was also the student representative on the University management board. I remember as tenure ("job for life") was eroded, and then lost, swingeing cuts were imposed and lecturers were expected not only to publish academic treatises but to actively seek consultancies (part-time jobs on top of their full time commitments) to bring in funding to the departments - all to the detriment of undergraduate students. I remember posting so many notes under my lecturers door, that when he returned from a fortnights' overseas research, we had to get the caretaker to unwedge the paper & rug jam to get in to his office! That was during term time, and I had my own examinations looming. It is only the passport office that recognises the value of any sort of instructor - swimming teacher, driving instructor, teacher, lecturer or mentor - yet all of these people have to study hard, pass examinations and then share their knowledge with others. In a lot of cases they have to continually re-register and update their skills too. "Knowledge is power!" - I think not!
Carole Benton, Hastings, East Sussex

The director of the research group of which I am a member is a former PhD student of mine. He graduated in 1987. Since then most of my gifted young British scholars have gone on to pursue postdoctoral research but not one has joined a university as a member of academic staff. All looked at what was on offer and left. How sad.
John Harris, Newcastle upon Tyne

Why are academics not respected? Here are a few reasons. 1. They are not trained to lecture. In the first year of my maths degree 92/94 failed 1st year Statistics. Rather than blame the lecturer we were dismissed as a 'bad year'. Despite being one of the 92, even I can work out that there must be some other cause!
2. Very few are inspirational - I can recall one or two in four years that were truly great teachers. The vast majority have very little enthusiasm to teach. Lecturing is the inconvenience that allows them to continue their research.
3. Far too many academics have no real world experience, having never worked anywhere other than academia. This frequently manifest itself in pronouncements from some emiment professorial type that manage to be intellectually rigourous and utterly impractical at the same time.
Andy Saltiel, Gamlingay, UK

In a country that is constantly 'dumbing down' and awards the talentless underachievers while forgetting the importance of intelligent individuals able to apply their abilities and interests, it's hardly surprising that most of the country lives in blissful ignorance of the work and pay conditions of our academics. We should be proud of the achievements made by generations of British academics, educated in fine British institutions, but we forget, and whatever we forget, we will eventually lose.
Heather, Wolverhampton

This article is accurate apart from its depiction of all UK academic staff as excellent. The fact is that years of poor salaries have forced the quality of many university faculties lower and lower. The need is not for longer and longer times spent in the semi-unreal world of higher education, it is for the quality of the time that is spent there to be improved. So pay and status should be increased to attract BETTER academic staff, but not simply more of them.
Al Sinclair, London, UK

I hate to say this, but maybe Britain's academics are undervalued because they're not as good as they should be. My experience of University was being taught in the main by poor tutors with no passion or interest in the subject - those that brought the subject to life should have been paid millions, the rest should have been paying me to be there.
Nik Kellingley, Huddersfield

As an academic at a university, I have since 2002 gained a Doctorate of Science, and become a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers. These are the highest academic and professional qualifications I can obtain and are invaluable to my university for the Research Assessment Exercise and for the Institutions who comprise the Joint Board of Moderators who assess our degrees. The university's response was to offer me early retirement. I shall be applying for promotion later in the year and wonder what the answer will be.
John W Bull, Newcastle upon Tyne

Lisa Jardine asks why the British have so little respect for their academics. The reason might be that so many of us have been to university and met some of them. I still recall my first week at university in the mid 1970s, at what was considered to be a 'good' university, and attending a talk given to new students by a senior member of staff about what we could expect. He told us that students sometimes criticised the poor teaching ability of some lecturers, but we had to remember that the staff's primary motivation was research, not teaching, so we shouldn't expect too much. I've never forgotten that. In effect we were told we were an annoying distraction from the lecturers' real interests, and that was exactly the attitude of many of them. Fortunately for us, there were a few who didn't take that few, but they were a minority.
John Swanson, Twickenham

My father-in-law worked in the Min. of Labour, and knew about disputes. He said they were never only about money. Lecturers have certainly been underpaid, but they have also been messed about for 20 years in other ways - e.g. by worsening staff-student ratios. The prime duty of an administration is to facilitate their work, but they have instead given in to every govt. demand that makes thins worse (so much for once-vaunted university independence. My surprise is that the lecturers haven't rebelled long ago. P.S. What has the 21st century to do with anything? It's the same world it was in 1999. (I'm a retired professor of English)
W.H. Stevenson, Edinburgh

Brilliant! Thank you for speaking up so loud and clear for the academic profession.
David Chillingworth, Southampton

The underlying problem lies in the perception in the mind of the general public of an academic's life. As the wife of a (retired) lecturer, I have been acutely aware that most people think we live a life unconnected to practical concerns, we share the long holidays of the students and do not contribute anything worthwhile to the community. The students' behaviour is seen as a reflection of the unconcern of the academics of local and, again, practical problems of every day living. Academics, in the public perception, do not contribute anything of value to the working class. Once that attitude is changed, there should be more sympthy toward higher salaries for the university sector. The great British public does not value intellectual accomplishments and interests and therein lies the problem. The government's reluctance to increase salaries reflects the general lack of respect and understanding of the academic community's contribution to society. Sue Drott
! Mrs. S. Drott, Loughborough, Leics. UK

Thank goodness someone is saying we should have more respect for academics and learning, but scholars and academics are considered "toffs" and no one wants to be like a "toff" so learning is out and dumbing down is in. BBC should know all about that as they feed us dumbed down programs on a daily basis. So does the British press. Scandals, celebrities, fashion, sex, drink, football, pop music is the regular diet of news which the British public gets fed so one learns little. People have to be encouraged to learn and acquire knowledge and see the benefits of it, but as I speak there is the youth of Leeds screaming and shouting in the city off to the pubs to booze and booze - nothing in their heads at all. We need more Lisa Jardines and she should be telling BBC to broadcast programs like language courses, i.e. the French Experience which BBC made, at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. in the morning instead of at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. in the middle of the night. Furthermore, people like Armando Iannucci, who claims he is an intellectual, stated on Desert Island Discs today that he enjoys making comedy for BBC and has an Expletives Expert to help him with the swear words (wonder what he gets paid?) in the programs to make it more realistic which is the usual excuse. Yes, the U.K. is heading for trouble, but until there is an appreciation for learning....and high culture....then nothing will change.
B. Tipman, Leeds

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