Somewhat rashly, I told my last-year BA students that if any was interested in an academic career they were welcome to discuss their future plans with me. The first email message I have received indicates that they are not necessarily familiar with the concept ‘academic career’, so this post is intended as a beginners’ introduction to that concept, and to the stages of said career (in Spain, where I work).
As an undergrad, I myself had no inkling about what actually an academic career entails. I just wanted to be a university teacher because that sounded more glamorous than being a primary or secondary school teacher (my B plan). I very much admired one of my UAB teachers, Guillermina Cenoz, and I wanted to have a job like hers. I eventually found out that Guillermina was not really active as a researcher, but as a teacher she is still very much my model. She did try to warn me that not all was glamorous in her (and mine) chosen profession, but I was young, innocent and a foolish dreamer (I still am).
When I was first hired, thanks to Guillermina, nobody explained to me what I was supposed to do as a teacher-researcher and doctoral candidate (now UAB has training programmes for new recruits). I had to learn by trial and error. Besides, Spanish university-related legislation has changed several times in a few decades, as it constantly does. What has not changed is the very long process of obtaining tenure (that is, a permanent job or position). Up to the mid-1990s it could be really fast in Spain, a matter of obtaining a doctoral degree and perhaps having published one article. But then this process became increasingly elaborate and demanding. Those of you interested in the current legality may check the Ley Orgánica del Sistema Universitario (LOSU), passed on 23 March 2026. I don’t intend to comment on this law, however, but to describe more generally what we mean currently by ‘academic career’.
An academic career is a professional trajectory developed in a university context, consisting of teaching, doing research and admin tasks (the operations needed to run the Departament). An academic is, in short, a university employee, though, notoriously, we are a collective very reluctant to be seen as salaried workers. The noun ‘professor’ comes from the verb ‘to profess’ and we see ourselves as a ‘professional’ caste, apart from other (teaching) collectives in our intensive dedication to our pursuits. Currently, all kinds of teachers, from kindergarten to secondary school, are protesting in the Spanish streets against their appalling working conditions, but I can’t imagine university teachers mobilized in the same way, particularly tenured teachers (like me) enjoying the safety of a job until retirement. An academic career has, essentially, two parts, the pre-tenure and the post-tenure period, and it’s much easier to imagine pre-tenured academics protesting in the streets. Indeed.
So, you’re a BA undergrad about to finish your studies and you need to decide whether to follow an academic career. Your main aim must be to obtain tenure, a permanent job. This can be of two kinds: a permanent contract which does not guarantee 100% that you will never be fired, or a position as a civil servant (‘funcionario’) which cannot be cancelled (unless you commit a very serious offence). The first kind is usually offered by regional governments (like Catalan Generalitat) and the second one by the Spanish state, depending on who provides the funding. I’m myself a civil servant employed by the Spanish state (though part of my wages comes from Generalitat). You don’t get to choose: you’re offered what is available. By the way, I speak here about public universities, but, of course, the number of private universities is growing in Spain. They offer contracts, I don’t know how stable.
To obtain tenure you must compete with other junior academics, so you need to make yourself as competitive as possible by accumulating as many research and teaching merits as you can in your CV. Academic careers are so stressful because, since competition is open, nobody knows how much you’re supposed to do and everyone tries to accomplish as much as they can. Legislation determines the minimum you need in order to apply for a long-term contract or a tenured position, but not the maximum. You might feel confident that your merits are sufficient to be a tenured teacher-researcher only to discover that your rivals have done much more (God knows how!).
When do you start competing for tenured jobs? Well, the moment you decide that you want to write a doctoral dissertation. If you’re finishing your BA, you need to decide next whether you wish to take an MA degree or not. Many, if not most, students take MA degrees wishing to be better qualified for jobs, and see the MA as the end of their studies. Others take an MA to enter a doctoral programme, which in Spain consists of a minimum of three years of independent study, supervised by a tutor, with a view to writing a book-length dissertation. The BA includes a final dissertation (20 pages), in which you produce individual research under a tutor’s supervision. You might discover then two things: a) that you enjoy doing research, b) an interesting topic you might like to explore further. In an ideal situation, that topic becomes the subject of your MA dissertation (35-50 pages) and even of your PhD dissertation (250-300 pages).
A PhD is the highest qualification you may obtain. Many PhD students (or ‘candidates’) abandon their studies after two years or more, when they discover that one thing is enjoying research and quite another writing a long dissertation. Add to this that, unless you obtain a scholarship (which is difficult), you need to combine a job with your doctoral studies. Until 2008, when legislation changed, doctoral students could be employed as full-time teachers (that was my own case), but since then they are mostly employed as part-time associate teachers. Doctoral students often combine a university part-time job, a second part-time job and the thesis for up to five or six years. Stressful, yes.
While you work on your PhD dissertation, you’re supposed to fulfil the requirements of the programme (in ours you participate in a yearly workshop, present a paper at a conference, try to publish an academic article), and, if possibly, go beyond them attending more conferences and publishing articles and book chapters related to your thesis. It’s hard work, and you might think that very few people become doctors, but you will always find at least a few others competing for the grants and the jobs you apply for.
This is where things get really tricky. Before LOSU (the new law, remember?) persons in possession of a doctoral degree who wanted to pursue their academic career and eventually get tenure had to either find a post-doctoral grant (very scarce in the Humanities) or get an accreditation to be hired as a full-time lecturer (job titles may vary). An accreditation is a certificate validating your merits, and you may obtain it from a national agency like ANECA or a regional one like Catalan AQU, depending on the job you aspire to. The first, basic accreditation has now been suppressed, which is good news, and you now simply compete for lecturing contracts (4-5 years) on the basis of your CV. The CV is, indeed, the most important element of an academic career for, essentially, you work to add competitive merits to it, almost until retirement.
Supposing you become a lecturer, you need to use your contract years to add more teaching and research merits to your CV, and get an accreditation for the next step: a tenured position, the Holy Grail. If you’ve followed me, at this point you have under your belt an academic career already lasting for about seven to twelve years: PhD (3-5 years), perhaps a post-doc period (1-2 years) and lectureship (4-5 years). If you get the accreditation (either national or regional), you can then apply for tenure, if there are any positions available. Both in the first stage (lectureship) and in the second (tenure) you can apply for jobs in your university or in others, but be warned: Spanish universities tend to protect their own, and usually only offer positions when someone from ‘the house’ has enough merits (I wrote recently a post about this).
Suppose you earn tenure and are hired permanently. By this point, you’re in your in your early to mid-thirties. The next step would consist of accruing more merits to think of obtaining a full professorship (or ‘cátedra’), the highest professional category in an academic career. You need a long list of publications, leading research groups and projects, being a good teacher, doing plenty of admin work, and international contacts. Full professorships are usually applied for between the ages of 45 (or a bit earlier) and 55 (or a bit later), after you earn yet another accreditation. The new legislation allows you to be judged on your merits without competing with other candidates to the position, but in many cases full professorship still may involve competing with other academics.
Until a few decades ago there were tenured positions which did not require the persons thus employed to be a doctor. These positions were for teachers uninclined to doing research. That time, however, is over, and now every tenured teacher in all Spanish universities is a doctor, most of them active in research. Some claim that this is not as it should be. Universities have positions for full-time researchers, mostly employed by research institutes, but they no longer have tenured staff totally devoted to teaching. We are supposed to combine teaching with research and admin work, but very few professors are good at these three branches. Good researchers do not necessarily make good teachers, and the other way round; and very few teacher-researchers enjoy the heavy bureaucracy of admin tasks.
So, is an academic career worth the huge effort? I don’t know. I’m personally satisfied, but I must say that I only started fully enjoying my academic career quite recently, after I stopped doing admin work, which gave me the time to write books. The eleven years before tenure were anxiety-ridden; today, I would have been referred to a psychologist for therapy, no doubt about it. But other persons are more pragmatic and more resilient. One thing that is clear to me is that academic careers are designed for competitive persons who can count, ideally, on the support of family, friends, and very sympathetic partners. Yes, I mean men… An academic career is always much harder for a woman, and far more so for a mother, so that’s something to take into account. However, if you’re a young woman, don’t be deterred. Talk to the women teacher-researchers in your Department who are also mothers and ask for their advice.
Would I choose the same path again? Yes, I think so, if only because I can’t imagine myself in any other profession. Now, if you’re one a BA students, imagine yourself as a university teacher-researcher and need advice, make an appointment with a teacher you particularly like or trust. We love helping!