\tThe bright student who visited me wanted to know what it takes to become a university teacher. Time, patience, luck, stamina, determination, pragmatism and the thickest possible skin. The other qualities \u2013a teaching vocation, a passion for learning, good writing skills\u2013 are taken for granted to such as extent that I have never heard them mentioned, which speaks volumes about the upside down world in which we live.
\n\tThis student is 20, still very young, but I found myself planning her life for the next 10-12 years. First you finish the degree (2 more years), then take an MA (1 year), then write a doctoral dissertation (3 years) and that\u2019s just the barest beginning. Um, yes, as you do this try to combine working with teaching as an associate (which universities hate, I know…), publishing and attending conferences out of your own pocket. In our current accreditation system if you strike it very, very lucky, you get a first post-doctoral accreditation, which might just perhaps lead to teaching position for 4-5 years. By that time you\u2019re already 30 \u2013if you\u2019re a woman the biological clock starts ticking, which means that you stop being competitive just at the time when the second, final accreditation for tenure comes up. If you get that by the age of 30 and are tenured by, say 32, that\u2019s EXTREMELY lucky (the average age for tenured positions is now 40). I told you: my student is 20, 12 years later she might be tenured. Or not.
\n\tThere was a time, 20 years ago, when one could become a tenured teacher still in their mid to late 20s, with just a PhD dissertation and one (minor) published article under their belt. Now this is impossible. I agree that the academic career was, if not exactly easy to access, easier than it should have been. Now it\u2019s verging on mental torture and, faced with this very long road no wonder many young promises are giving up before they start. My crystal ball tells me we\u2019ll soon have a shortage of doctors with a lectureship accreditation but, then, as this will coincide, or is already coinciding, with this monstrous crisis which is destroying tenured positions as teachers retire, I just don\u2019t know whether to tell my student to feel optimistic or pessimistic…
\n\tI just hope the younger generations are not as naive as we, the ones born in the 1960s, were. Pragmatism rules… The best you can do is take the accreditation regulations, study them, and plan your career with foresight. What this has to do with the creativity of learning beats me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The bright student who visited me wanted to know what it takes to become a university teacher. Time, patience, luck, stamina, determination, pragmatism and the thickest possible skin. The other qualities \u2013a teaching vocation, a passion for learning, good writing skills\u2013 are taken for granted to such as extent that I have never heard them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}