Careers

As precarity affects ever more academics for ever longer, many have come to see a permanent position as the gateway to professional happiness. But does it always work out that way? Or do the responsibilities and trade-offs of seniority outweigh the joys of security and salary? Seven academics have their say

The perception of technicians as non-intellectual workers contributes to the undervaluing of technical career paths, says Urszula Pawlicka-Deger

Precarity is a debilitating condition that often proves fatal to research careers. And it affects even the most lauded research groups

The higher their performance, the more interdisciplinary scientists are penalised by colleagues as a threat to the status quo, find four researchers

Long timelines, siloed training and the prioritisation of drug development make life-saving advances in detection less likely, says David Crosby

Leading recruiter claims firms can assist universities in looking ‘beyond the obvious’

Science minister sets up working group to examine how academics can move more freely between public and private research

Establishing a peer review accreditation scheme would also help incentivise higher standards, says Arfan Ghani

A push to end the habit of assessing researchers by their publication metrics is gaining momentum. But are journal impact factors really as meaningless as is claimed? And will requiring scientists to describe their various contributions really improve fairness and rigour – or just bureaucracy? Jack Grove reports

The silence of other universities about an apparent clampdown on lawful speech is a betrayal of their mission, says Jonathan Rosenhead

High levels of personal optimism block decisions to depart a dysfunctional workplace or halt a failing project, say Alexander Clark and Bailey Sousa

Universities must give credit for the broadened skill sets that the pandemic has prompted academics to acquire, says John Tregoning

The Covid-enforced pause to in-person visits has been a relief to BAME academics, says Aymen Idris

Increasing number of co-authors is linked to speedier career progression, especially for women, says Royal Society paper

Abandoning measurable evaluation criteria will make judgements more political and more random, say Raymond Poot and Willem Mulder

Institutions that want to help their staff have children should focus on the factors that drive postponement, says Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos

We all need to be strategic about where we devote our service time – especially those of us most inclined to say ‘yes’, say seven academics

Opacity and double standards are infuriating, but the blessings of an academic career are present at all ranks, says Adrian Furnham

NIH data hint at the extent of bullying and emotional abuse, but barriers to tackling the issue remain high, says Joanna Buscemi

Wider take-up by academics requires both relevance to specific disciplines and accessibility across disciplines, says Camille Kandiko Howson

Some people will still prefer virtual conferences, but a hybrid approach would allow part of the in-person synergy to return, says Sheldon Jacobson 

Public confusion is one thing, but some subjects provoke quizzical and sometimes dismissive frowns even among colleagues from different departments. Here, nine academics set the record straight about what they do – and why it matters

Careers can depend on publishing in higher-quartile journals, but the statistics are too easily gamed, says Jakša Cvitanić

Poor incentives and oversight mean too many doctoral supervisors are unqualified or negligent, say Mehvish Riaz and Muhammad Rizwan Riaz

Government concern has not yielded concrete steps to address chronic faculty shortages and adjunctification, says Pushkar

To attract PhD students, advisers must portray competence and warmth. Ben Marder and Sebastian Oliver explain how to optimise your staff profile

Webinar hears that postdocs are being ‘deprofessionalised’ and encouraged to win grants on behalf of principal investigators

Staff who enter higher education in mid-career without a PhD are academia’s ‘proletariat’, not ‘privileged’ young researchers, says paper

Experts say institution’s decision to scrap plans to build ‘gargantuan lecture hall’ provides ammunition to the argument for more evidence-based pedagogical practices

Experts fear submissions in 2021 won’t be able to appropriately account for wide range of disruptions to student experience caused by pandemic

Study warns lack of ethnic minority representation among counselling staff could lead to problems being dismissed

Nearly half of all professors in the UK are now aged 55 or over

Clinical evidence showing psychedelics can treat mental health disorders has revived the thorny issue of whether researchers should ever admit using these substances

Growth of academics on such terms precedes pandemic and REF census

Survey of Australian researchers also reveals unusual problems associated with home working, including sleepwalkers gatecrashing Zoom calls

UK scholars call for relief on workload to prevent them feeling obliged to send children into schools during crisis

Despite guidance from government, most leaders do not expect to be able to teach majority of students face-to-face during spring term

Student demographics will guide whether universities retain or discard large-scale lectures, administrator says

Open University report suggests using rap lyrics as texts and explaining content like an MC

Pandemic or no pandemic, academics should try to find time for regular rethinking of their curricula and methods, says Jessica Johnson 

Union branch say allowing president and chief financial officer to stay sends a ‘terrible message to staff’

Male PhD students reporting higher levels of psychological distress than women, survey says

Academics have long grappled with the strains that job scarcity and the mobility imperative impose on their families. But might the experience of mass remote working finally offer a viable solution, asks Jack Grove

While eLife is planning to publish only preprints, even it concedes that journal brand still counts for a lot, notes Michael Marinetto

Evidence suggests that different personality types are drawn to – and excel at – teaching and research, says John Dreijmanis

Father of multiple intelligences theory says pursuit of deep inquiry is ‘a foolish investment’ in today’s AI-driven world

Research on dance and drama graduates demonstrates that post-degree satisfaction is not all about salaries, argue Tristram Hooley and Robin Mellors-Bourne

University careers attract intellectually curious people who want to make a difference. But Donna Swarthout has been disillusioned once too often

Sexual orientation may have greater impact on academic choices than race, US data suggest

‘New versions of old pressures’ have emerged amid campus closures and budget cuts

Being Well in Academia offers guidance on ‘bullying, conflict, death, poverty, racism and violence’, says author and ‘agony aunt’ Petra Boynton

Astrophysicists in Hong Kong and France say that public perceptions of gender should change and that more should be done to support women in science

The acquisition of wisdom about life and career can be just as long and challenging a journey as any research project. Luckily, many wheels have already been invented. Here, seven academics offer the pieces of advice that could have given them a head start 

THE’s new Careers Clinic series brings together the great and the good of higher education to answer a burning careers question

Academics must avoid publishing material that is defamatory or infringes on copyright − but how much support do they get to navigate the minefield that is social media?

Greater diversity is needed within higher education’s libraries, says Regina Everitt, one of very few BAME directors of a university library in the UK

What does it say about our labour culture that a tenured professor stuck in an elevator did not even consider cancelling his class, asks Irina Dumitrescu

Those who make the loudest noises about equality can be among the most myopic about the evils of academic inbreeding, says Bruce Macfarlane

New lecturer Saloni Krishnan gives practical tips, from recruiting research assistants on a budget to keeping research on track while juggling teaching responsibilities

Tackling bias by urging writers to avoid stereotypically female descriptors undervalues qualities such as cooperation and care, says Davina Cooper