The Postgraduate Workers’ Union have made students all too aware of the exploitative working conditions of PhD student researchers and workers in recent years, but it’s still easy to assume that a postgraduate’s troubles are over once they graduate with their doctorate. In reality, the search for a permanent job in academia can mean years of instability and endless relocation, all for less than minimum wage.
As an undergraduate, the people teaching you can be at any level of seniority. The most senior, “professor of (a subject)”, are paid as much as €175k annually according to Trinity’s human resources department. The least senior, language assistants, can make as little as €31,842 for a year at Trinity – less than a TCDSU (Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union) Sabbatical Officer.
In the middle of that hierarchy are assistant professors, typically the first point in an academic’s career where their position is permanent. At Trinity, a job offer might read “four-year contract, tenure track”, which means you’ll most likely be offered a permanent job after four years working here.
But tenure track positions are increasingly rare. Dr Alison Fernandes, assistant professor in Philosophy, told Trinity News that “there’s a very sharp distinction” between the permanent and non-permanent staff. For those who get that title of professor, you’re supported through promotion grades and the pay increases that follow. Meanwhile, a teaching fellow – just one rank lower – has no chance of promotion into a professorship. Once their contract with Trinity ends after years or months, they have to move somewhere else.
“Trinity has become increasingly reliant on precarity to run its courses for less”
“There’s no obligation to support your career”, she said. “These are very much stopgap contracts.” Irish employment law stipulates that after four years, any employee becomes permanent, but teaching fellows and language assistants can rarely work in any one institution for long enough to earn that security. This is what is called precarious employment, and since this kind of short-term contract means a cheaper employee, Trinity has become increasingly reliant on precarity to run its courses for less – despite collecting a cool half billion in revenue in the 2022/2023 year.
An assistant professor will likely have worked for years on these stopgap contracts, known as “fixed term”, after they finish their PhD. Before Dr Usherwood became an assistant professor in Classics, she had four fixed-term jobs, meaning she had to move to a new university five times in four years. This included one contract for just five and a half months, shorter than the six month minimum that most rentals require.
Before getting these contracts, she did “hourly work” at two different institutions for 18 months after she finished her PhD. Hourly work is essentially “gig work” – you’re offered an hourly rate to give a lecture or mark papers. “The difference is, unlike what we’re sold about the ‘gig economy’, people don’t have other options,” Dr Usherwood said. Teaching experience is necessary for any tenure track job, creating a situation where doctoral graduates take any gig they can get.
Trinity’s rates of pay for hourly work are publicly available, and claim to be “inclusive of preparation and review time”, but this isn’t always the case. Ten years ago, Dr Usherwood might have been paid £50 in a UK institution for one lecture, but this wouldn’t include the hours of preparation that might go into an hour’s class when you’re just starting out. Factoring in travel and accommodation costs, you might not take any money home. “It cannot work out in a way which compensates people at minimum wage”, she told Trinity News.
Once they’ve secured a permanent job, a professor’s lifestyle might seem desirable to students when we only see them teach a few classes each week. In reality, teaching is irrelevant to career progress, and a small fraction of how they spend their time: what really matters is research. “I’m not going to get promoted unless my research develops further”, Dr Usherwood said, “and I’m okay with that currently because I’m permanent … a couple of years ago, I really felt the pressure”. On a fixed-term contract, you might be hired as a teacher or a researcher: if you’re hired as a teacher, it’s almost impossible to get time to research. As a researcher, you’re often expected to teach for free. Academia is unique in that the more time you spend fulfilling your job requirements, the worse prospects become for your career.
There are other ways of getting ahead once you’ve reached professorship. At Trinity, one of the first ways a junior staff member can prove his or her worth is to become a personal tutor – but it’s a risky responsibility to take on. Students come to their tutors in their worst moments, and you need to have the time and capacity to help. If you’re dealing with health issues, or “any other life commitments that might come into play”, Dr Fernandes told Trinity News, it “makes even just doing your regular work hard”. Taking administrative jobs in your department or school can help you get promoted, but Dr Fernandes explained that this is done “relatively informally”. Navigating opaque systems can be especially hard for staff with disabilities. “When those informal mechanisms are in play”, she added, “biases have more of an opportunity to have a role”.
Women make up the majority of what the Irish Federation of University Teachers calls “precarious staff”, which includes both hourly-paid and fixed-term workers.
“There’s a lot of elements that go into making the hierarchy as gendered as it is”, Dr Fernandes explained. “Women can be passed over [for promotion]. They won’t necessarily put themselves forward strongly enough.” In Ireland, you have to have worked somewhere for two years to get maternity leave; women are forced to make difficult choices between their personal lives and their careers. Dr Usherwood watched male colleagues start families while on fixed-term contracts, which would be “utterly impossible if they were having the babies themselves”.
Most students aspiring to a career in academia today will never become professors. Many will go into industry research, the civil service, or university administration.
“We need to make sure those are not framed as failures”, Dr Usherwood told Trinity News, “because far too many people do PhDs for the jobs that are available”. Even in the immediacy after your PhD, the post-doctoral funding for a research project flows freely, giving new graduates unrealistic expectations.
“I want to tell them how hard it’s going to be”, she said. “The system treats you like you’re disposable”. For both assistant professors, the one thing an aspiring academic should be is cautious. “At each step”, Dr Usherwood said, “reevaluate what your priorities are, what the cost has been to you, and whether you’d like to proceed”.
“Most people I know have had to move – at least cities, and probably countries – to pursue jobs, [because] there just isn’t a lot in the area. By the time you add in the time to get a PhD, you’re looking at a lot of instability in the prime of your life”, Dr Fernandes said. “There’s a question of: ‘do you really want this thing enough for what it’s going to cost?’ And I think the cost is significant.”
