My blog has been inactive a really long time, and a lot has happened since my last blog post on 31 December 2019. I had just moved to York to work at the Hull York Medical School. Below will give a fairly big update, but this was actually written as a piece of reflective work for a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice aka PGCAP (an academic qualification that is now effectively required to teach in postgraduate institutions in the UK). It was written back around September/October so might be a little dated, and has undergone minor revision, specifically removing a few sentences about courses I was looking at attending that do not add anything to the story for you as a (hopefully enthused) reader.
Background
I was an associate lecturer working
in the Hull York Medical School (HYMS) employed on a two-year full-time
teaching and scholarship contract. During this time, I taught on the undergraduate
medical programme, as well as the MSc in Human Anatomy and Evolution. At the end
of my contract in September 2021, I left the medical school to move to the
University of Liverpool on a permanent, full-time, teaching and scholarship
contract.
Higher education has long been
understood to be a continuation of the education process, with increasing
knowledge and skill development in specialised subjects. In the UK, it is a
continuation of the specialisation that students first undertake in reducing
their number of subjects from GCSE to A-levels. Higher education covers the
delivery and awarding of a diversity of degree levels from bachelors (Tier 6),
masters (Tier 7) or doctorates (Tier 8). For many undergraduates in the medical
school this description of higher education is a fair assessment of their views
when they start; effectively a means to an end of developing the skills and
knowledge to become doctors. In this respect, my contributions to higher education
are that of a teacher.
I have always enjoyed teaching in
previous positions, but teaching experiences are limited for most postgraduate
positions in the UK unless the speciality is teaching. For me, the position
within HYMS was my first major experience of teaching having completed a series
of postdoctoral research roles prior to this post. It has therefore been
critical for me to learn how to teach. This extends beyond the delivering of
material, and highlights some of the other important aspects of higher
education beyond the core curriculum. Increasingly universities are under
pressure from the government to not just teach and develop students’ critical
thinking, but to ensure students are ready for jobs from the moment they
graduate. At the medical school, this ethos already exists, and the medical
students are treated as junior doctors from day one. This policy holds the
students to a higher level of conduct than most students across the university,
fitness to practice panels are convened for violation of rules (instead of
fitness to study, which also exist). This professional responsibility is also
apparent in the anatomy laboratories where I teach. We have cadaveric material
which is regulated under the Human Tissues Act. Behaviour within the labs is
strictly monitored, and professional behaviours reinforced in keeping with the
medical field.
However, higher education is more
than just an education for students. Higher education plays an important role
in social mobility and the economy as a whole. Up to 80% of the difference in
earnings between sons from the same region can be traced to their education (Carniero
et al., 2020). The Hull York Medical School was founded on the basis that there
was a shortage of general practitioners in the local area. This was likely due,
at least in part, to the relatively low income of the region which limits
recruitment and retainment of doctors. The hope is that local students would be
more likely to come and work in their home region (GMC, 2015), especially those
who are first generation students, or those whose grades would normally have
excluded them from medical degrees in other universities. This is particularly
important as the most advantaged students are still over two times as likely to
enter higher education, and almost five times as likely to enter universities
with the highest entry tariffs (UCAS, 2020).
I am incredibly lucky as I come
from a privileged background as a white male who went to a public school. But, at
the same time my sister and I were the first in our family to get degrees. We
are part of the generation where massification of higher education has become
the norm and have benefited from it. With massification, higher education has
increasingly become a business where the commercial benefits of a degree may be
a bigger influence for attendance than learning for the sake of learning. My
parents have been highly successful in their chosen careers, but they would not
be qualified for their jobs today as they did not obtain the required degrees
or qualifications. Higher education provides the opportunity for many students
to obtain qualifications and degrees that allow social mobility, but I am
concerned rising fees for attending university, and rising costs for repayment
of loans particularly for lower earning individuals (Independent, 2021) are
actually running the risk of undoing a lot of the gains made in the last
decade.
This massification and
commercialisation of higher education plays a role in how universities market,
and manage, their courses. STEM subjects often take priority as they are often
subsidised by the government in alignment with their priorities. As such we have
seen closures of not just subjects, but entire departments if they are viewed
as underrecruiting or not profitable (e.g. Sheffield Archaeology – BBC, 2021). We
also have seen universities relying more on external sources of funding such as
research and third stream activities. For the University of York, almost 25% of
the university’s income derives from research grants (vs about 50% directly
from student teaching – University of York, 2020).
With research being such an
important component of university income, there is a lot of pressure for staff to
produce excellent, innovative, impactful research, driven increasingly by the
Research Excellence Framework (REF). The REF ranks university research outputs,
and government funding is adjusted in line with rankings. As such there is much
“gaming” of the system with universities strategically hiring staff around REF
cycles. Additionally, the creation of teaching intensive positions splits
academic workloads, so academics who are viewed as producing the best research
are freed from large teaching responsibilities. However, the quest for high
quality research extends even to those on teaching heavy contracts especially
within the Russell Group universities where research-led teaching is the norm. Research
was one of my major motivations about academia. I really enjoy finding the
solution to complex problems and my previous postdoctoral positions were purely
research. However, my own research has been heavily restricted due to being on
a teaching and scholarship post, with Covid mitigations further reducing
research time. However, I have had to transition my research to student
projects and developing their skills. This is particularly true for
postgraduate students who have large research projects as part of their
programmes and the MSc programme I taught upon prides itself in developing the
students into researchers with around half of the students going onto doctoral
programmes.
The unusual development trajectory
of academic staff from undergraduate to lecturer by way of research positions
leads to an unusual situation. Many early career researchers, myself included,
have spent years honing their research skills. However lecturing posts require teaching
experience, as well as additional management and citizenship skills that are
not often developed in research posts. York defined academic citizenship as “activities additional
to ‘normal’ teaching and research… [and] engagement with those elements of
university life that enable the smooth and collegial operation of the
institution” (University of York, unknown). For me, this included large numbers of
committees, including Board of Studies, Postgraduate Boards, Student Support,
Covid planning and mitigation, as well as fitness to study and the HYMS ethics
panel. These commitments absorb a huge amount of time, but have been hugely fulfilling
particularly with regards to ensuring everything has continued to run smoothly,
and students have been fully supported through the incredibly difficult Covid
restrictions. Additionally, I was expected to attend open days and be involved
in outreach events (for example Festival of Ideas where I hosted a speaker),
which continue to be vital for recruitment and the maintenance of the
university image. I found these events the most rewarding as they allowed for
engagement with a wider audience, including those who may have been uncertain
about attending university.
Disciplinary identity
My role at the medical school has continued drag
into question where I view myself with regards to my discipline. Since my
undergraduate days I have always viewed myself as a palaeontologist, someone
who studies fossils. However, through my PhD, postdoctoral roles, my
associate lectureship and my current lecturer position there are countless other subjects, disciplines or even
fields, that I could use to classify myself. Palaeontology on its own is the
intersection of biology and geology, with fossils being the remains of life
preserved in the rocks. My PhD in Geology was awarded for my thesis on
dinosaurs. My thesis involved understanding the anatomy of these species and
using biomechanics to study their feeding. Biomechanics itself is the
intersection of biology and physics to understand how biological things move,
whether this is feeding, locomotion or any of the multitude of other movements.
The tools we use to study a lot of the biomechanics derive from engineering. My
research since my PhD has and continues to follow this same pattern and has
also included worked linked to veterinary medicine. I have also transitioned
from focussing on non-human animals, to teaching anatomy at the Hull York
Medical School, and now the University of Liverpool. It therefore is incredibly
difficult to pin down just where my academic “allegiance” lies.
So where do I place myself? My
discipline could be natural sciences or even the professions/applied sciences
with the engineering and medical backgrounds. I could be a biologist, physicist
or an earth scientist. However, I would still align myself most closely to
biology. Within biology I fall across anatomy (comparative and human), ecology,
evolution (particularly systematics), palaeontology, and zoology. Funnily with
such a diversity of ways I could define myself, and having published more on
modern species than fossils, I would still be inclined to call myself a palaeontologist
first and foremost. Why this would be is likely due to a lifelong dream to be a
palaeontologist rather than any pragmatic reason.
Palaeontology as a discipline is
small and highly specialised, at least relative to either biology or geology.
However, defining its boundaries is increasingly complex, and I highlighted
some of this complexity within my own background. In the UK, only a handful of
universities offer undergraduate degrees and therefore most palaeontologists
have undergraduate degrees in one or other of main disciplines (i.e. biology or
geology), and only at postgraduate level develop the palaeontology
interdisciplinary identity. However, because palaeontology is a niche
discipline most researchers remain in either the biology or geology/earth
sciences departments at least within UK universities. Historically
palaeontologists were linked to anatomy groups, and with funding increasingly
difficult to come by, this pattern is re-emerging across both the UK and the
USA. Whichever department they end up in, many palaeontologists continue to
collaborate interdepartmentally, and this may be further necessitated by the
fact that many funding agencies now expect applied outcomes of research to secure
funding.
I suspect many palaeontologists
would also have the same debate as I over their exact identity, and likely also
recognise themselves as multidisciplinary. Because of this, many are members of
organisations or societies outside of their institutions that align closely
with their research interests. For example, vertebrate palaeontologists
(including myself) may be members of the Society for Vertebrate Palaeontology
or other allied societies. These societies tend to advance the science whilst
supporting and fostering education and protection of resources (Society of
Vertebrate Palaeontology, 2021), whilst providing a set of regulations to which
members must follow that can be more stringent than those of their host
institutions. Indeed, these societies can play vital roles in lobbying, for
example over national parks in the USA (Underwood, 2017), where institutions may
not be able due to restrictions from governments. However, because these
societies tend to be research focussed, I find it hard to justify my membership
when I am not carrying out research in the field.
I have highlighted my internal
debate over my identity when I can and do recognise how multidisciplinary my
background is. It is further complicated by my current post being a permanent
teaching position on human anatomy with limited research time to keep up to
date with the palaeontology discipline with which I identify. I am conflicted
by my want to do palaeontology research, and the inability to do it without
aligning to a department that has different priorities, i.e. teaching anatomy.
This tension has led to a lot of debate about my role in academia which I will
discuss further below.
Professional and academic maturation and development
My motivations have long been
driven by a single-minded want to be a palaeontologist; a childhood dream that
I’ve been questing to fulfil. This intrinsic motivation drove the selection of
undergraduate and PhD positions. In the following years, I worked in 2
postdoctoral roles separated by a short technician role. The choice of jobs
that I have applied to was mostly driven by their ability to advance my career
and learn new skills. That being said, it would be impossible to say I picked
those jobs over any others, rather I had the roles because they were the places
that I had applied to that picked me. Indeed, this would be the norm within the
UK, with 66.6% of research-focussed staff on temporary contracts (HESA, 2019),
and postdoctoral roles probably filling the majority of these roles. Despite a
large number of publications, I was struggling to find a permanent lectureship
position anywhere due to shortcomings in my CV, particularly a lack of teaching
experience and a lack of research funding. As such I applied for the temporary
associate lectureship at HYMS which was on a teaching and scholarship pathway.
The associate lectureship was based within the anatomy group, but maintained
the palaeontology connection I had wanted through their MSc programme. I have
been able to gain an abundance of teaching experience across the two years at
both undergraduate and masters level, as well as leading supervision on masters
projects, and co-supervising a PhD student. I also took over the management of
the MSc programme as acting programme director to cover a maternity leave so
gained experience across recruiting.
However, the last two years were not easy. Covid arrived six months into
my contract, at the same time I took over programme director roles. This meant
that I was actively involved in the management and policy making within the
medical school for the postgraduate taught programmes. Whilst my contract was
teaching focussed, I should have had time for research, but due to workload
changes ended up not doing much research across the last two years except
through my PhD student.
The lack of research has been hard
as it was something I really enjoyed within academia. I have loved teaching,
but I feel the loss of my inquisitive side and the single-minded quest for answers
to questions that intrigue me. I withdrew from the Society of Vertebrate
Palaeontology, unable to justify the cost and membership when I was not
actively researching. As such I have not attended conferences which allowed
dissemination of my work, as well as networking and keeping up with the field
as a whole. I’ve also felt increasingly disconnected from the palaeontology
discipline with the majority of my work focussing on modern human anatomy.
For me the hardest reality was that
academia today is an uncaring business. There is no loyalty from the university
to its staff. If there is no business case for you to be there, you will not be
kept on. Despite doing an enormous workload over the last two years, and my
team at HYMS wanting to keep me, the business case could not be made to extend
my contract beyond another six months. Academia relies so heavily on its staff
being passionate that they will work above and beyond their workloads, aware if
they do not academics will not progress or will be readily replaced by the many
others looking for jobs. All of this happens whilst academics are paid far less
than that of other equivalent non-academic/industry careers (Stevens, 2004). It
has almost been eight years since submitting my PhD, and in that time, I have
had four short-term contracts. In many other jobs I’d be probably not be
considered early career, let alone to have been on a temporary contract. My
situation is far from unique in academia, with the majority of short-term
contracts going to early career researchers (ECR - a vague term that seems to
encompass anything from PhD to lecturers within a few years of starting
permanent posts). However, it is the current generation of ECRs in the UK who
may have even worse career prospects. The massification of higher education has
produced a large number of students completing PhDs, whilst not producing even
close to the same number of faculty positions (Ghaffarzadeganet al., 2014). Brexit
and the Covid-19 pandemic have affected the economy, individual academic’s
outputs, and university income. All of these will have negative impacts on
university finances with knock on effects for hiring decisions.
I would love to continue to
complain vociferously about how crazy academia as a career is, but I am one of
the lucky ones; I have now obtained a permanent position. It is far from my
dream position as it remains teaching intensive, but it provides security that
my other posts did not.
Future
I do not know what I want with my
future in academia anymore. I have arguably been rewarded for my hard work by
obtaining a permanent post, but I am very jaded by the last two years. Covid
has restricted my ability to see family who are overseas, and my partner
remains in York whilst I have moved again for my career. I have questioned my
decision to stay in academia now more than ever before, and am reassessing my
priorities in life. There remains the question of what I do instead, and for
that I do not have a good answer.
In my dream world, I would love to
stay in academia. There are moments of pure joy, and I have found it hugely
rewarding to celebrate my students’ successes. In previous positions I have
also loved doing research, so for now my goal is to develop some research and
advance myself to a research position. This is most likely to be done by moving
institutions again due to the complexity of transferring to a teaching and
research contract from my current teaching one. However, I am not in a rush to
move again having just moved for a new permanent position that provides a
modicum of stability for the first time in my academic career. I will have to
work to secure my current position over the next three years – the duration of
my “probation” before confirmation. That will require me to continue developing
my teaching, including new PGCert courses, supporting and supervising students
and taking on leadership roles as I had done at HYMS.
Of particular concern to my current
position is the development of my teaching skills. I have been teaching for two
years, and in that time Covid has really accelerated changes to how teaching is
delivered with increased use of online lecturers, flipped classrooms and
blended learning. With more online delivery, I need to work on developing new
skills that allow for better delivery of online content. The two new PGCerts
that are being planned are hoped to be primarily online, with two residential
weeks where students will attend in person. Whilst I have delivered material
online through Covid, that was based around emergency changes, and materials
developed for online specific programmes will have to be to a much higher
standard. Longer term, I suspect I will look
towards gaining a senior fellowship in the higher education academy, which
increasingly has become used as an indicator for promotion within many
universities.
The other major career development
step will be securing some research funding. To date, my research has been
carried out through other people’s grants rather than securing my own.
Therefore, my CV is lacking one of the major requirements for most research
positions. As such I will have to be clever and try to eek out some time to
apply for grants between the teaching workload. I have started writing my first
grant as primary investigator and will work with the Research Support Office
and attend their courses with the aim of maximising funding success. I will
continue to look for opportunities to collaborate with colleagues both within
my institution and across the globe, and aim to employ PhD students through
various doctoral training programmes (e.g. ACCE).
If I fail at finding funding or
securing a research position, I cannot say what the next steps would be. I will
have to see whether the new job brings satisfaction, and how my other life
priorities work together. I have sacrificed a lot for my career over the years in
the hopes it would bring my happiness, but I have found more happiness outside
of work of late. Balancing my personal and work lives in such a way that brings
me joy is my biggest goal.
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