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[californiadreaming]

First post--so be as informative (or witty, or irreverent, or daft) as you'd like, but gentle!

I wonder what the collective thoughts on this sub-forum were about the changes that are coming in UK academia, for faculty (i.e., staff) in particular. I wonder what people thought about the likelihood of further differentiation and its impact on faculty. On places like the Guardian, I get the impression that the whole debate over fees is both naive and too late--the train has left the station to destinations unknown. On the other hand, my many colleagues in different unis in the UK have on the whole produced stunning work (I can't speak for teaching) despite being kept "lean and mean" for so many years. I read the following with interest and wonder about the consequences:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=417017

In the interest of (not-quite-full) disclosure, I should mention that I am considering a named professorship at one of these unis (not Oxbridge). I'm excited about this possibility and it would mean quite a different change in a number of ways.

Fire away!

[hegemony]

Welcome to the Fora!  I think the whole thing is a mess, that social mobility will not be widened particularly (because that also relies heavily on factors beyond the control of universities), and that no one can actually predict the results of this experiment, much as they claim to.  My own prediction is that things will be a mess in a somewhat different configuration than the current mess, but that generally, plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.  That's not to say that the changes aren't complicated and sometimes drastic.  But it all ends up in a different variety of mess.

That said, U.S. higher education is also in a mess, and you choose your mess.  If the post you're considering looks like a good fit for you personally, I'd take it.  Beforehand you might want to be very clear about what their publishing and teaching expectations are.  The teaching will be quite different from the U.S., so it's hard to draw a comparison; when you get the official version, you might ask an American in a similar job what this translates into in American terms, just to be sure.  But I personally wouldn't turn down the job because of the restructuring of the British university system.  Restructuring goes on and everyone battens down the hatches and flees into the storm cellars, and then it passes and everyone comes up again and puts the furniture back and rebuilds the wrecks, and then it happens again...  That's pretty much a description of my American university, too.

[babbinacara]

If you are applying for a named professorship at a Russell Group university, nobody will give two sh!ts about your undergraduate teaching, nor should you worry about fees and who is sitting in front of you in the lecture hall during your minimal interaction with them. The fee introduction is a done deal, it's all going on at a different level than academic staff, anyway, and the position would be about research. Like Hegemony, I don't imagine for a moment the new system will widen access, but what kind of a mess will be created is unclear (and there will be different messes at different types of university).
If this is a named professorship, it's virtually impossible to get rid of, so even if your university restructures and creates different departments to sell itself better to students and widen access, your position (and you in it) will exist, somewhere. And since you'll be busy doing research, you shouldn't care whether you're in the Department of Nuclear Physics or the Department of Balsa Wood Carving.
You will need to explore the situation with regard to research council funding (and/or whatever is relevant for your field, e.g., industry) and whether financial cuts have reduced or removed that funding entirely. That's the part to worry about in the wider mess, assuming you are in a field that needs significant external funding for research projects.

[theblondeassassin]

+1

(With the small exception that some named professorships were created with "soft" money during the boom years, which is always worth checking. I wouldn't apply for the La Senza Professorship of Structural Mechanics at the moment, for example, unless the funds were definitely in the bank.)

[mingus]

Welcome to the Fora!  I think the whole thing is a mess, that social mobility will not be widened particularly (because that also relies heavily on factors beyond the control of universities), and that no one can actually predict the results of this experiment, much as they claim to.  My own prediction is that things will be a mess in a somewhat different configuration than the current mess, but that generally, plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.  That's not to say that the changes aren't complicated and sometimes drastic.  But it all ends up in a different variety of mess.

That said, U.S. higher education is also in a mess, and you choose your mess.  If the post you're considering looks like a good fit for you personally, I'd take it.  Beforehand you might want to be very clear about what their publishing and teaching expectations are.  The teaching will be quite different from the U.S., so it's hard to draw a comparison; when you get the official version, you might ask an American in a similar job what this translates into in American terms, just to be sure.  But I personally wouldn't turn down the job because of the restructuring of the British university system.  Restructuring goes on and everyone battens down the hatches and flees into the storm cellars, and then it passes and everyone comes up again and puts the furniture back and rebuilds the wrecks, and then it happens again...  That's pretty much a description of my American university, too.

Academics in the UK.   Does the US always  have to be dragged into everything?

[hegemony]

I thought from the OP's username "Californiadreaming" that he/she was an American considering a post in the UK.  My apologies if I have misunderstood.

[californiadreaming]

For those who have replied so far--many thanks. What is curious about this sub-forum (or all fora? I'm not an inveterate forum junkie . . . yet) is the ratio of visits to replies.

To clarify: yes, I am an American academic with her/his eye on a transatlantic move and this forum seemed to be the place for inquiries of this sort. I should also say that I've already been offered this named chair, which is secure I would imagine, but thanks for the suggestion about "soft money" and departments getting reorganized, downsized, or otherwise made to vanish into thin air. I must say from my perspective it was the single position in paleography at KCL that most rubbed the wrong way, since if there is not training and research in paleography within a slingshot of the British Museum, where would there be?

My fields are what are considered in the UK social sciences and therefore although my research in part depends on external grants, I do not rely on expensive labs or equipment. I am now in the midst of complicated negotiations . . .

I linked to the THES article because (1) one of the unis on that list (to the left) is the one I'm considering and (2) I wondered how staff already in the UK (whether expat or not) or those elsewhere with deep knowledge of working conditions felt about the changes that are coming with what seems to be a process of fragmentation and differentiation, including different fees, talk of some unis going "private" so they can charge what the market will bear, talk of some unis pulling out of the national pay/union structure, and so on. Of course, UK academia has always, to a certain extent, been thoroughly differentiated, but at least from a staff perspective it seems to an outsider that the union model has created a sense of equal (public) purpose and collective interest. But perhaps, in the end, it depends on whose ox is being gored.

So to restate the inquiry in slightly different terms: if it is agreed that Thatcher's assault/reform on/of universities was the last big upheaval in the sector in Britain, is the sector on the cusp of something equally far-reaching, and if so, what is it? 

PS--I realized, with great embarrassment, that my handle should be californiadreamin' ! But perhaps that reveals too much personal/chronological information....