As strikes begin lecturer quits to become plumber Universities face brain drain and industrial action over pay while watchdog will ensure they keep promises to attract poorer students
David Ward and Lucy Ward Tuesday February 24, 2004 The Guardian As universities began a week of strikes over pay yesterday, a molecular biologist announced that he was quitting his lab for a new career as a plumber. The Association of University Teachers, the lecturers' union, claims he is not alone: a second academic is throwing up her job to train greyhounds and a third is moving to Canada with no job arranged. Karl Gensberg, a post-doctoral researcher who has had short-term contracts at the University of Birmingham, will begin his new career in the summer after completing a plumbing course at Sutton Coldfield College. "I was chatting to the plumber who came to fit my new boiler," he said. "He remarked that, because I had a PhD, I must be earning lots of money. I had my pay slip on me and when I showed it to him, he said, 'I earn twice that'." Dr Gensberg, 41, has had a 13-year academic career and earns �23,000 a year. "I expect when I am qualified as a plumber I will at first be earning pretty much what I am now," he added. "But I won't have to figure out how to find funding nor will I have to face a wall of bureaucracy." His present contract ends in April and Dr Gensberg says the university has emailed him to ask if he would return to the campus to do plumbing work. "By this time, I was hoping I would have had a permanent contract. Without that, you cannot do your own research because it is almost impossible to raise funding." If he could have found research money, Dr Gensberg would have explored his interest in electro-magnetic fields and their effects on human cells. Wendy Richards, a lecturer in industrial relations who earns about �34,000 a year, is quitting the University of Keele after 16 years for a new life in Canada. "I have had enough of a 50-hour week and weekend working. My frustration has been building up over the last three or four years because the workload has got so much heavier. I like running my course but what I hate is the bureaucracy." An academic working in the social science department of a northern university said she intended to rear racing greyhounds. "They say the only way to make a fortune in greyhound breeding is to start with a fortune. But the only way to make a fortune as an academic is to leave." She added that she could end up earning a vice-chancellor's salary. "Some of our members are so desperate to escape that they are giving up higher education and going to work in fields which are completely unrelated and which do not have the same social standing," said an AUT spokesman. The union forecast that leading universities would be "crippled" by the strikes over pay and claimed that university life in Wales had "ground to a halt" on the first day of action yesterday. On Wednesday, the AUT will join the National Union of Students, which is protesting against planned top-up fees, to attempt to empty lecture halls and in effect shut down higher education institutions. The unions say their concerns are linked because fees and pay reforms both lead to the "marketisation" of higher education. University employers said strike action taken by lecturers would be patchy. Fifty-three of the 166 higher education institutions had not been balloted by the AUT, while in another 40 membership of the union was too small for a strike to create a big impact, the Universities and Colleges Employers' Association said. __________________________________________________________________ Introducing the New Netscape Internet Service. Only $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Netscape. Just the Net You Need. New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups. Download now at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/search/install.jsp ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
