How to become a university lecturer? (1 Viewer)

[kaz1]

Those who can't do teach.

 

[iSplicer]

Well first you'll need a Bachelor's Degree, at this point you may or may not get a good enough GPA to qualify for...
Honours Year, during which you may or may not be good enough at research to earn 1st class and get into a...
PhD, which takes about "3" (i.e. 5) years, during which your research needs to be strong enough to get lots of good publications in quality journals so that when you're finished (you've now been at uni for up to 10 years and your friends have houses and families) someone will want you for a...
Post-Doctoral fellowship, which take about 3-4 years EACH (i.e. no long-term job security but at least you're getting paid ~60k now for 10 years qualifications), during which you better be pumping out a heap of high-impact publications and writing lots of grant proposals so that when someone dies (they don't really retire) you might just be competitive enough (but don't bet on it) for an...
Entry level Faculty Position at a university, now you can start directing your own research more, but it better be good so you can attract students of your own (by this I mean honours and phd students, not teaching undergrads) keep making publications so you can attract maximum funding and hence keep your job. As you progress you might eventually become an Associate Professor or even Professor. In this case your job will be 90% admin, managing students and managing your lab/department. In between that work, which does not end when you go home and has no real holidays, you will be asked by your institution to do a certain number of hours of...
Lecturing, congratulations, you now get to "waste" a number of hours each week talking at apathetic undergrads, managing their constant whining and finding someone to mark their papers

enjoy
(tl;dr version: you don't)

Brilliant! Love the satire.

But those who go into lecturing love the academic lifestyle. You can really get used to it - if you love your work, then reading textbooks, doing research collaborating with fellow academics can be a dream life for you!

 

[4025808]

Brilliant! Love the satire.

But those who go into lecturing love the academic lifestyle. You can really get used to it - if you love your work, then reading textbooks, doing research collaborating with fellow academics can be a dream life for you!

haven't seen you on the forums in a while...

Welcome back

 

[iSplicer]

haven't seen you on the forums in a while...

Welcome back

Thanks mate. I see this place has really improved after that phase where it kept crashing song getting hacked, lol.

 

[iSplicer]

Crashing *and getting hacked. Damn iPhone!

 

[Chemical Ali]

Brilliant! Love the satire.

But those who go into lecturing love the academic lifestyle. You can really get used to it - if you love your work, then reading textbooks, doing research collaborating with fellow academics can be a dream life for you!

Where's the satire?

 

[iSplicer]

Where's the satire?

Owp!

 

[townie]

Test

 

[bineal]

most professors i know are miserable people

enjoy wasting 10 years of your life doing shit that noone cares out

the best 10 years of your life

 

[Motumoyo]

Seems that Australia does not attach importance to intellectuals. Why do you want to be an academic, unless you are the intellectual tendency, way.

 

[HongKongPhooey]

lol so much hate for the academic life. Long story short, yeah there are many, many downsides to it, most, if not all, of which have been pointed out already, but you do it, or attempt to get in, because you're passionate about it. An academic whose made it in the field could point out just as many downsides to some other career choices, which don't inherently have anything wrong with them either, just a matter of preference. Just do what you love.

 

[Shoom]

PHD is an 80,000 word limit. At USYD I know some lecturers work very closely with their phd students, so more often then not you end up getting your name on quite a few papers. You do a lot of research and teach it is a very difficult job, I think one PCOL lecturer mentioned 40% research 40% teaching and 20% admin. Pay for profs at USYD has a base rate of 170k + senior lecturers are 115ksih. According to the USYD staff book, if you hold higher admin positions you earn more then these base rates.


It is pretty cool ... but hard work, the school of chem has two new lecturers who just finished their post docs, not everyone does 3-4 years post doc, usually a couple. Have a read of some of USYDs staff profiles on the chemistry website.