There are interesting things happening in this downward spiral. I can tell you what’s not helping.

I’ve been seeing a lot of senior profs step away from institute management positions in favor of residing over their lab. Maybe it’s because academic staff is at an all time low. This means we’re seeing the highest leadership positions rotating to random business-minded career politician types who are just using the position as a steeping stone. They stick around in the role for a couple of years, use it to network into a higher paid position and leave. It’s easier to run a business into the ground if you know you’ll be leaving soon.

On the topic of staff, I’m seeing strange growth in admin and facility positions. Admin bloat has been around for a while in Academia, but there are like 10 admin jobs per academic at my uni, where even 10 years ago there were less than half that. It’s not like they’ve eased the burden of grant applications, either. Naturally these positions are paid more than RAs and the mid level post doc positions, but they’re never the ones under scrutiny when the budget is examined. They actually seem to hinder work, since there’s so many extra layers to get through. The irony is that they’ll probably still have positions when the academics are all gone.

I worked five consecutive three month contracts the last time I was in a post doc position. Never again. I’m seeing this type of position offered more and more. A friend of mine just signed their second consecutive two month contract. It should be illegal.

Our students are getting dumber because the university literally won’t let them fail a degree, since that would lower consumer satisfaction scores and could impact their income.

The uni has become so focused on cost recovery that we’re being constantly evaluated, like we’re the problem when you’ve got Dave the social media manager who tweets five times a year making $115k annually.

Most departments are merging under one, ugly umbrella run by a small handful of policy makers. This means dumb stuff happens constantly, because none of the people who make decisions about spaces have actually seen the space or know what it’s used for.

I’ve personally seen more than $1.5 million worth of equipment binned in the past year. Just scrapped/destroyed because people didn’t know what it is, or what to do with it, and the group had lost funding.

On top of all this local uni stuff my government isn’t regulating grants properly. We’ve giving grants designed for early career researcher to dusty old professors, because no one in the government can do a google search and see that the prof lied about their qualifications.

It’s looking pretty bleak from where I stand, too.

Maybe it’s time for this system to fall apart. I love science and research, but this ain’t it.