I agree that most jobs aren't advertised - but I know a lot of people who have got jobs without having knowledge of the dept/being friends with people in the dept (including me). It helps though, of course!

Looking to get out was where I was a few months ago, and now that decision has been made for me since my funding finally ran out on my post doc. It really sucks going from practically running the research team (being the number 2 to my PI) to hitting the job centre in the space of a few months. I applied for hundreds of post docs and lectureship posts but due to the freeze they are so thin on the ground. There is no safety net and I am seriously re-evaluating what I need to do to survive.

Gibson's OP is completely spot on. I really think anyone thinking of a future in academia needs to have considerable backup or be blessed with wealthy parents or a partner. Even then they need to be willing to move at the drop of a hat and live a transient lifestyle.

I would like to think in a few years things will pick up for those seeking lecturships full time academic jobs, but I doubt it. I think it will go the American way with part time lecturers and contract academics fighting over each other for the remaining few crumbs. Regardless by then I will be long gone and my time in academia will be nothing but a bad memory.

Thanks for that BHC. Hmmm this has been on my mind a lot in the last few days. I think school teaching or going back to fashion, being a business woman, making and selling like I used to, which I know well, and which I ran away to academia in order to escape; but even then it would mean building something up from scratch... again, and business is always a risk. School teaching at private schools seems to be pretty competitive now too - I know I can't work in an office. I think most things are tricky these days, a bloke I know who works in IT was unemployed for over a year, I don't know exactly how many posts he applied for, but I know he was looking for all that time.

Reading this post over the past week has made me feel quite uncomfortable. To think how we work so hard to become so qualified, but ultimately can be just as easily unemployed as anyone without qualifications, makes me feel pixsed off. Because, but for personal achievement, it makes you wonder whether it is all worth it in the end? I do what I do, not only because I sometimes enjoy it, but because, although it'll never lead to great wealth, I want to be comfortable and just do a job I enjoy with interesting people. Perhaps I sound a simpleton, maybe like the world owes me a living, but I've not worked all the years I have to end up no better off and where I started. That's not one of the many main aims of entering higher education, which is supposed to raise people's aims and aspirations. Let's face facts, most of the posts on here that we get about PhD and funding opportunities are from good people that want to improve their lot in life by working hard. If talented people really can't get what they want (or close to it) through doing a PhD (especially academia), then it's all a bit messed up - and potential candidates should appraise the value of doing a PhD. It must be soul-destroying, as an eminently qualified individual, to get your PhD and then find yourself unemployed for long periods. Obviously, the matter is much more complicated than I make it out to be (I know that), but I think I get across the essence of the matter. :-s

I think that with the current scenario, and the fact that the academic prfoession really can't stop the horror stories from emerging thanks to the largely unregulated nature of this and other social networking spaces for postgrads/postdocs, that universities will eventually struggle to attract PhD students (or at least students of the academic calibre they expect). And even then, those that do hang around for PhDs will mostly look toward non-academic careers - meaning that the numbers of people available to teach seminars for UG courses on the cheap will erods and the existing academic staff will suddenly find they have to teach everything themselves.

Still, the academic world as a whole has such a "head-in-the-sand" approach to the future of the profession that this will only become a "crisis" after this effect takes hold.

Furthermore, although the wider job market in non-academic spheres is quite bad at the moment, it will recover in time (indeed, in my current non-academic role I see evidence of this already).

Whereas in academia it will never recover. The current situation in the academic job market is not simply a consequence of over-production of PhDs - it is also a symptom of the way in whihc universiities have quietly been eroding the number of permanent full-time posts available within depts. in favour of a constant stream of low-pais, insecurely employed temporary staff who can be pushed around more easily and who don't come with same pension burden etc. as full-time staff. It's a bit of a university manager's wet dream - a constantly rotating stream of contract staff - the "sweatshop-isation" of academia - whilst protecting budgets for full-time admin/managerial staff.

======= Date Modified 22 Oct 2009 10:07:09 =======
OMG: the films I'm looking at are about the thoughts of a depressed and drifting lecturer who is slowly being pushed out of his teaching career by cuts, a he ponders the state of run down London and England in the 90s, and then eventually cracks up... well, I'll try and stay motivated. I do want a good permanent job out of this and I really, really hope it happens. I will defo speak to my sup about all this, I think it's something we all need to be aware of so thanks for bringing it to the for WJ. Right, will stop procrastinating now, and get on.

Sneaks - Yes, I love watching films. Going to the movies is my faourite way of relaxing and switching off, but it's totally different when I watch them for work. I have 3 ways of watching them:

1. Work: concentrate on every tiny detail, re-watch repeatedly (I've seen one film about 25 times for my research). These films are usually very dense intellectually and emotionally, very heavy going, and/or I will be considering them in light of heavy historical or theoretical issues.

2. Leisure #1 Go to the cinema on my own: I love this! It's a very mild version of the above, I'll enjoy almost any film, but when a gem comes up its like every Christmas rolled intoo one.

3. Leisure #2 Got to the cinema with other people: this is social life, I enjoy yhe films, but not as intensley, this is as much about popcorn, a glass of wine afterwards and catching up than about seeing the movie.

All life enhancing in their own way.


Yeah, maybe we should set up our own uni. I so hope we get our posts, but I guess the reality is that it will be a struggle, even in we do. Film is an expanding area so I hope I'll be ok, I'm going to ask some acquaintences in academia how they think it's going.

The (fictional) lecturer in the film I'm looking at has just been lamenting the future demise of public services in the UK and how they probably all collapse in the future - including unis - this film was made in 1994 by an artist who also teaches at the RCA, so this prospect has been with us for a while. I can rmember warnings back in 2002/3 from people telling me about all the PhDs they knew who were unemployed. I've always done risky things though, I guess we all just need to be positive, but realistic.

We should defo keep the idea of our own uni as a back up. I'll head of film studies! I think I'm the only reg that does this.

Shotgun! Head of Psych department please for me :-)

I think there are always going to be a lot more people starting PhDs than there are academic jobs available - it's been like that for at least 20 years now. It's a similar scenario to the people doing legal training - nothing like enough training contracts and pupillages to employ all the would-be barristers and lawyers. The problem is that there are a lot of myths about academia being a nice, easy job that may have been true in the 1970s but certainly isn't now. Staff morale where I am is unbelievably low because they are being told to do more teaching, more admin, more and better research with less resources and increasingly teaching students at all levels with serious academic weaknesses. Oh and now have 'impact' and do 'engagement' whatever that means.
What concerns me too though, having worked in government before my PhD, is that I often hear older lecturers in particular telling their PhD students (in Politics) that they'll easily get govt / NGO type jobs. THis just isn't true, unless you're doing a very applied type of thesis that has involved a lot of interaction with those sorts of bodies. Otherwise you're like any new graduate - you need relevant work experience or to be good at getting through grad recruitment schemes.
But what do you do to solve the problem? Do you insist that you have to have a 1st class degree and distinction at Masters level before you're let near a PhD programme? Refuse to let people self-fund so that at least the financial risk is not so great? I can see problems with those ideas.

I can remember my solicitor friend having similar fears to ours; he often mentioned that there weren't enough posts for trainee solicitors before he made it - he meant the really low paid ones with salaries of aprox 11,000 pa for full-time (back in 2000ish).

Well yesterday I attended this HEA training day and we were told by the editor of a very prestigious journal in a field quite similar to mine that in some disciplines it was now a requirement that to be considered for a job you need to have 4 publications, and that this is becoming the case across the board! This scared me a lot... In my discipline I know the book is the big aim so I don't know if you'd need or be able to publish so many articles out of your thesis, but just thinking how long the process of getting an article into print even if it's accepted first time takes, why didn't someone tell me this before the start of my second year! Has anyone else heard this?!

my supervisor is constantly stressing at me to get publications done - even if I never got the PhD, its the publications that count. AND she said there is no point in publications in low impact journals - she argues they have to be big hard hitting journals, the best in your field and then you have a chance. I am in my third year and very scared at this point - oh well, there's always getting pregnant and living off the state - THAT WAS A JOKE