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Which actually made me wonder - where/how do London academics live? I find it hard to imagine them commuting for hours from the suburbs - it does not seem very

Which actually made me wonder - where/how do London academics live? I find it hard to imagine them commuting for hours from the suburbs - it does not seem very consistent with an academic life - but I do not see them being able to afford to live near their universities either.

redis_mlc 6y ago
FYI: How Stanford University handles that now is that they have a new subdivision on campus, and chosen professors are given title to a nice house. When they move later, they are given the assessed profit of any rise in house value over the years. This was necessary because house prices in Palo Alto are in the $2+ million range, which is not affordable to profs, and prevents them from the normal housing ladder investment seen in the rest of the USA. A lot of the profs use bicycles to ride the mile or so to class.
- wombat23 6y ago
  it's kinda scary that the go-to personal investment plan is based on a leveraged buy & sell with the implied promise that things perpetually increase in value.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    You are feigning surprise at a common practise that goes back hundreds of years in most countries?
conformist 6y ago
At Imperial: They mostly commute (but not for hours), because it's basically impossible to find a decent flat in South Kensington. It works, because Imperial has matching childcare. Also, many mathematicians tend to work from home frequently.
asib 6y ago
> I find it hard to imagine them commuting for hours from the suburbs... Why? It's as easy to commute from certain places outside of London as inside. For instance, it takes longer for me to get from where I live in south London to e.g. Kings Cross than it would to get there from Cambridge. The amount of time you save by living more centrally is probably less than 20 minutes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bosie 6y ago
  Costs you a mighty penny too, though. Commute Reading to Kings Cross should be close to 5k a year (not including tube), no?
- room271 6y ago
  Ha I agree with the broad point, but as someone who (used to until Covid) commute from South London to Kings Cross everyday, this doesn't seem true timewise until you live quite far South in London. And I live a 15 minute walk from a tube station. Having said that, I agree with the sentiment!
  - asib 6y ago
    Tooting -> Kings X is 49 minutes according to citymapper. Cambridge -> Kings X is a 48 minute train. I personally wouldn't consider Tooting to be deep south, but maybe we have different definitions. I have a friend who lives near Kingston, it's roughly an hour commute for him.
    - room271 6y ago
      I don't know how City Mapper is getting that number to be honest. TFL gives 35 minutes, and that includes 5 minutes for walking out the tube at Kings Cross. The trick is you have to change at Stockwell onto the Victoria Line. Nb. I did almost this journey every day pre-lockdown and the numbers are accurate for me at least.
learnstats2 6y ago
I imagine that a knighted professor at Imperial can comfortably access a mortgage in London, so I doubt this applied to Martin Hairer. But, post-graduates in London (if they have no other source of support) do tend to have a difficult lifestyle. Not recommended.
- jack_riminton 6y ago
  No not really. With the average price of a house in London approaching £1m https://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices.htm?location=london https://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices.htm?location=lond... and an average professor at Imperial earning £80k https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Imperial-College-London-Professor-Salaries-E36783_D_KO24,33.htm https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Imperial-College-London-P...
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    Looking more closely on glassdoor: it's unlikely to be true that Imperial professor salaries average £80k and University College London salaries average £101k, and these figures are more likely biased by small, self-selecting samples. [Updated to note: Imperial College quotes a fixed minimum salary of £79,080 for professors in 2019 with performance-related increases - so the Glassdoor figures quoting lower than that cannot be right] The home.co.uk site quotes the median price of property listings is £600k (is that close to £1m? ok sure). It also identifies that houses priced higher than that are listed for significantly longer, i.e. they count with more weight in this stat despite not selling. Therefore, I understand the median sale price to be lower.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > I imagine that a knighted professor at Imperial can comfortably access a mortgage in London You don't get paid for being knighted. And these universities have a mostly fixed pay scale it's not like Google where you can just demand whatever you want if you're good enough.
  - p-a_58213 6y ago
p-a_58213 6y ago
Imperial, on the whole, is one of the better-paying Universities in the UK, and certain Departments are able to provide considerable supplements upon base salaries. The vast majority of academics with families live in the outer zones in London, or commute by rail from the suburbs just outside. London has a very dense and efficient public transport network, and therefore a typical commute time is around 40 minutes, and in most cases less than 1hr. The price of accomodation remains an issue with younger academics, who arrived in London after the housing booms (1st surge around 2004, 2nd around 2010). Consultancy, enterpreneurship etc do provide good additional income streams for many, and therefore it still all makes sense. More recently Imperial has been developing some of its own accomodation for junior staff and graduate students, which is made available at subsidised rates.
friendlybus 6y ago
It's somewhat common for London office workers to park at an overground station 30mins-1hr out of london and commute in.
dogma1138 6y ago
The same way that everyone else does; buying a 1.5M 2 bed flat in Zone 1 isn’t possible on UK tech salaries either, even if you reach the top tiers for UK tech pay which usually tops at around £125K base you aren’t buying central London properties either.
- agent008t 6y ago
  But then who is buying them? I see plenty of young families that seemingly live in those 1.5M zone 1-2 houses and flats, and many do not appear to be renting (although maybe they are? But not like renting is THAT much cheaper either).
Symbiote 6y ago
Is London compatible with your idea of an academic life? A friend rejected a job at Imperial because he didn't want to live in a metropolis. Another friend stays at UCL because she can't bear to leave London.

redis_mlc 6y ago

FYI: How Stanford University handles that now is that they have a new subdivision on campus, and chosen professors are given title to a nice house. When they move later, they are given the assessed profit of any rise in house value over the years. This was necessary because house prices in Palo Alto are in the $2+ million range, which is not affordable to profs, and prevents them from the normal housing ladder investment seen in the rest of the USA. A lot of the profs use bicycles to ride the mile or so to class.

wombat23 6y ago
it's kinda scary that the go-to personal investment plan is based on a leveraged buy & sell with the implied promise that things perpetually increase in value.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  You are feigning surprise at a common practise that goes back hundreds of years in most countries?

conformist 6y ago

At Imperial: They mostly commute (but not for hours), because it's basically impossible to find a decent flat in South Kensington. It works, because Imperial has matching childcare. Also, many mathematicians tend to work from home frequently.

asib 6y ago

> I find it hard to imagine them commuting for hours from the suburbs... Why? It's as easy to commute from certain places outside of London as inside. For instance, it takes longer for me to get from where I live in south London to e.g. Kings Cross than it would to get there from Cambridge. The amount of time you save by living more centrally is probably less than 20 minutes.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bosie 6y ago
Costs you a mighty penny too, though. Commute Reading to Kings Cross should be close to 5k a year (not including tube), no?
room271 6y ago
Ha I agree with the broad point, but as someone who (used to until Covid) commute from South London to Kings Cross everyday, this doesn't seem true timewise until you live quite far South in London. And I live a 15 minute walk from a tube station. Having said that, I agree with the sentiment!
- asib 6y ago
  Tooting -> Kings X is 49 minutes according to citymapper. Cambridge -> Kings X is a 48 minute train. I personally wouldn't consider Tooting to be deep south, but maybe we have different definitions. I have a friend who lives near Kingston, it's roughly an hour commute for him.
  - room271 6y ago
    I don't know how City Mapper is getting that number to be honest. TFL gives 35 minutes, and that includes 5 minutes for walking out the tube at Kings Cross. The trick is you have to change at Stockwell onto the Victoria Line. Nb. I did almost this journey every day pre-lockdown and the numbers are accurate for me at least.

learnstats2 6y ago

I imagine that a knighted professor at Imperial can comfortably access a mortgage in London, so I doubt this applied to Martin Hairer. But, post-graduates in London (if they have no other source of support) do tend to have a difficult lifestyle. Not recommended.

jack_riminton 6y ago
No not really. With the average price of a house in London approaching £1m https://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices.htm?location=london https://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices.htm?location=lond... and an average professor at Imperial earning £80k https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Imperial-College-London-Professor-Salaries-E36783_D_KO24,33.htm https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Imperial-College-London-P...
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  Looking more closely on glassdoor: it's unlikely to be true that Imperial professor salaries average £80k and University College London salaries average £101k, and these figures are more likely biased by small, self-selecting samples. [Updated to note: Imperial College quotes a fixed minimum salary of £79,080 for professors in 2019 with performance-related increases - so the Glassdoor figures quoting lower than that cannot be right] The home.co.uk site quotes the median price of property listings is £600k (is that close to £1m? ok sure). It also identifies that houses priced higher than that are listed for significantly longer, i.e. they count with more weight in this stat despite not selling. Therefore, I understand the median sale price to be lower.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> I imagine that a knighted professor at Imperial can comfortably access a mortgage in London You don't get paid for being knighted. And these universities have a mostly fixed pay scale it's not like Google where you can just demand whatever you want if you're good enough.
- p-a_58213 6y ago

p-a_58213 6y ago

Imperial, on the whole, is one of the better-paying Universities in the UK, and certain Departments are able to provide considerable supplements upon base salaries. The vast majority of academics with families live in the outer zones in London, or commute by rail from the suburbs just outside. London has a very dense and efficient public transport network, and therefore a typical commute time is around 40 minutes, and in most cases less than 1hr. The price of accomodation remains an issue with younger academics, who arrived in London after the housing booms (1st surge around 2004, 2nd around 2010). Consultancy, enterpreneurship etc do provide good additional income streams for many, and therefore it still all makes sense. More recently Imperial has been developing some of its own accomodation for junior staff and graduate students, which is made available at subsidised rates.

friendlybus 6y ago

It's somewhat common for London office workers to park at an overground station 30mins-1hr out of london and commute in.

dogma1138 6y ago

The same way that everyone else does; buying a 1.5M 2 bed flat in Zone 1 isn’t possible on UK tech salaries either, even if you reach the top tiers for UK tech pay which usually tops at around £125K base you aren’t buying central London properties either.

agent008t 6y ago
But then who is buying them? I see plenty of young families that seemingly live in those 1.5M zone 1-2 houses and flats, and many do not appear to be renting (although maybe they are? But not like renting is THAT much cheaper either).

Symbiote 6y ago

Is London compatible with your idea of an academic life? A friend rejected a job at Imperial because he didn't want to live in a metropolis. Another friend stays at UCL because she can't bear to leave London.