So that you know, according to the current regulations of my university, and following Catalan legislation, a full-time teacher (24 ECTS) is supposed to devote 640 yearly hours to teaching, out of the 1640 we’re supposed to work annually. Actually, if I multiply the 215 working days of the current academic year 2025-26 by 7,5 daily hours (by contract, civil servants like me work 37,5 hours a week), we get 1612,5 hours, but that’s fine as the 28-hour difference has to do with the diverse local holidays.
Our 1640 hours are subdivided into 38-42% for teaching, depending on the credits assigned; 38-42% for research; and 16-20% for admin and other activities (such as writing reports, or being in committees). I’m actually teaching only 17 ECTS (= 450,5 hours), because my five research assessment exercises get me a discount of 7 ECTS, which I’m using for research (an extra 185,5 hours on top of the maximum 688 I should be using, that is, 873,5 hours, about 50% of my total hours). I’m doing practically no admin, now that I’m very senior and can get away with that, except for attending meetings, organizing our annual teaching seminar, and a few more minor tasks. So, yes, I’m using as much time as I can for research.
One teaching credit is valued at 26,5 hours (subdivide 640 into 24 and round it off) and we take into account the size of groups, so that my subject Contemporary English Literature (73 students) is worth 8,227 ECTS (268 hours) and my new subject English Prose (40 students) is worth 6,358 ECTS (218,5 hours) even though formally they are each worth 6 ECTS and I spend the same time in class for each. Supervising a TFG (or BA dissertation) is valued at 21,28 hours (0,803 ECTS) and a TFM (or MA dissertation) at 47,04 hours (or 1,775 ECTS). The tricky thing about these hours is that in English Literature and Culture we need to read plenty to prepare classes or tutor a BA/MA dissertation.
I find the figures I’ve quoted so far more or less acceptable, though I’ve never counted the actual hours I spend on each task. Being a university teacher is not really a job that can be restricted to a specific schedule, and I often find myself, like all my colleagues, working evenings or weekends, depending on the particular needs of each moment. I don’t take days off if I work extra hours, but that’s because I need my time for research. If I’m in the middle of writing something, taking time off can indeed help, for the brain needs a rest to be really productive. Yet I’ve never taken time off just because I felt like doing nothing. I think this is habitual among us, researchers. I have no idea what teachers who don’t do research do with their days.
As a researcher, I’m supposed to tutor PhD students, and this is the aspect of our workload which is less satisfactorily valued. Currently, at UAB, a PhD dissertation is worth 100 hours of teaching (3,77 ECTS), or, basically, a little above two MA dissertations (that would be 94,08 hours). We, PhD tutors, are allocated 25 hours each of the first two years our full-time tutorees take to write their dissertation and the remaining 50 in the academic year following their viva and their earning the title of doctor. Technically, doctoral students have four years to complete their dissertation, so we technically use 25 hours per year for each. This might be tolerable if, as we do, we consider the monthly tutorial (60 to 90 minutes), the six hours of the yearly workshop, the six hours of the yearly examinations, and other tasks.
I’m not counting here the hours employed to read the texts that the student is working on, texts whose number is really open to us (I just can’t read all the texts my tutorees of all levels analyze). The 100 hours, however, become totally insufficient when, for whatever reason, the student needs to take one or two extra years to finish their dissertation, years in which you supervise them for free. Add to this the long process of reading drafts, from section drafts to the whole dissertation (250-300 pages), and you can see that the 100 hours are quite a joke. If supervising a 35–50-page MA dissertation is worth 47,04 hours, supervising a PhD dissertation should be worth at least 50 hours per year, a total of 200 hours, with 50 hours added for any extra year.
We can supervise up to six doctoral students simultaneously, but, having done that, I can tell you that it’s crazy. I’m currently supervising three students and waiting for another to finish her temporary medical leave (this is a co-supervision, for which my co-tutor, who works at another university, gets no hours whatsoever). So far, I can cope well, but this is because they are at early stages and still writing little. My concern is that the three of them finish in the same year and I have three 300-page dissertations to read and comment on at the same time.
I’ve discussed all this today with the Coordinator of our programme in English Studies, and she tells me that there was a meeting about this issue with the Head of the Doctoral School just last week. There is, the Coordinator explained to me, widespread discontent about the issue I’ve raised here, and some kind of action is being demanded from UAB. She and I know that we just don’t have enough staff to cover all the teaching programmes, BA, MA and PhD, which is, of course, the root of the problem.
We are all under a lot of pressure to keep our three types of programme as full as possible, but the cost this implies in working hours is never considered. The tutors in the doctoral programme are exploited (sorry, but that’s the word) in worse ways than in the BA and MA programmes, because tutoring PhD students falls between teaching and research. The assumption is that we can (or should) employ research hours in tutoring doctoral students. This might work for scientists or engineers working in labs, but it doesn’t work for us in the Humanities. It might work if we forced our students to work on areas with the same bibliography we’re using in our own research, but even in the best circumstances, I have never found any kind of shortcut for my own research in my students’ research.
If, supposing, the Doctoral School agrees that 200 hours, instead of 100, is the reasonable figure for a PhD supervision, where are we going to find the resources? This year, the combined workload of my two subjects has already prevented me from tutoring BA and MA dissertations (I mean, I could do it but only by giving hours away for free, which I have decided not to do any longer). Next year, I will be in an even worse situation, for UAB will have to add to my work count the three dissertations I’m supervising (so, 75 hours). In practice, I will be supervising my PhD students for free, giving my teaching hours away. If we count all the hours we’re giving away for free in my Department, they amount to a few full-time teachers. If we increase the hours allocated for PhD supervision, as it would be only fair, then we’ll be in very red numbers.
PhD students, I assume, have very little information, if any, about how we tutor them. They have to fight other battles, too, such as the fact that, unless they are the recipients of a full-time scholarship, they have no right to office space anywhere. Imagine undergrads and MA students being told they cannot use any corner of our buildings! I don’t want to give PhD students in any way the impression that they are an obstacle for their tutor’s research, or an imposition on our time. Not at all!! I’ve found much satisfaction in shepherding PhD candidates towards finishing their dissertations along the years, and I certainly enjoy tutoring. In fact, I apologize to my current PhD students because I understand that they might need more time from me, but I just don’t have it.
The problem, as usual, is that whereas teaching and admin work must be given priority for the institution to fulfil its immediate tasks at a department, school or university level, research is always relegated (at least in my area) to a secondary position, even though it may be a primary occupation. I can miss, for instance, a Departament meeting because it overlaps with a class, or even because I’m away at a conference, but not because I’m in the middle of writing an article. We all accept that classes must be taught and time deducted off research, but in the case of PhD supervision the problem is, I insist, that this is done at a too high cost for our research time. Again, I must insist that PhD students are not the problem at all, but the extremely limited budget with which UAB, and many other public universities, try to keep all their programmes alive.
At one point, not too long ago, I suggested that, since we have insufficient teaching resources, we should cancel our MA programme and focus on the PhD programme, which is more closely connected to our research. My proposal was rejected on the grounds that the MA programme is supposed to provide us with doctoral students, even though many come to us from other universities. The question, at any rate, is that I’ve never seen the Department get more staff because we need more PhD tutors; the resources are always allocated on the basis of the BA and the MA. If, as I have noted, PhD supervision starts being better valued, we will need more teachers, which we’re not going to get anyway. We might end up giving away many more hours for free…
Yes, I’m wondering as I write who can be interested in all this farrago, but this is a professional blog, and this is the part of my profession that worries me today. When I tell people that I teach English Literature they all go ‘ohhhh, that’s so cooool’. Well, sometimes it isn’t cool at all… though I do get that what I have described here today are the problems of a privileged worker only my colleagues can understand.