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The author is in the UK where nearly all universities are public, and due in no small part to the efforts of the University and College Union (UCU), most Higher
by sigwinch28 7y ago
The author is in the UK where nearly all universities are public, and due in no small part to the efforts of the University and College Union (UCU), most Higher Education staff (including "postdocs") are paid according to a national (published) salary system:
https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales
Universities of course have maneuverability in the specific spine point they pay people for different positions based on experience or demand, but in the grand sceheme of things specific roles are paid specific amounts of money.
At the author's current university, for example, the national pay scale is split up into different pay grades (each of which includes a contiguous range of spine points) for different roles, e.g. Research Assistant, Research Associate, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, etc.
- michaelt 7y agoEven when you have fixed salaries for job titles, employers can't escape market forces - just instead of raising the salary until they fill the post, they have to increase the title too. That's why you can be a 'senior software engineer' 2 years out of college :)
- sweeneyrod 7y agoYes, and by removing the ability of university to set a lower price in monetary terms, this system simply encourages them to extract more value per pound in other ways, such as the lower status and fewer benefits mentioned in the post. This seems unlikely to benefit academics overall.