“They treat us like we are very low pond life”: precarious contracts and low wages are the norm for early-career academics at Oxford. EmmaIrving met some of those struggling to make ends meet
n a rainy summer’s day, I met Henry at a cosy pub on the outskirts of Oxford. A cheerful man in his 40s, with cherubic curls and a mischievous grin, he was wearing shorts in defiance of the British weather. As we waited to be seated, he eyed up a chicken-and-bacon club sandwich on a neighbouring table and joked, “I need a bit of fattening up, don’t you think?”
Henry had sometimes felt like an outsider growing up: his academic ambition distinguished him from his family, and his background set him apart from his school friends. He received a grant for his postgraduate studies from the Arts and Humanities Research Council , a funding body, but there was a cap of four years total funding per student.
As one might expect of an institution that has accreted over hundreds of years, the University of Oxford has a structure as labyrinthine as its surroundings. The central university funds and administers departments and faculties, where lectures and laboratory facilities are provided. The self-governing colleges admit students and deliver the intensive tutorials, often one-on-one, that make the Oxford experience distinctive.
Measures like these have begun to make the student body more diverse. In 2021, more than two-thirds of undergraduates admitted to Oxford went to state-school – one of the highest ratios since the university began recording detailed admissions statistics in 2007. Gender and racial diversity also improved: in 2021, 55% of the British students admitted to Oxford were women, and the percentage of places offered to ethnic-minority students rose to 25%.
Notably, Oxford does not publish data on the socio-economic backgrounds of its permanent academics. But I found, in nearly 30 interviews with fixed-term, permanent and former academics, that those who were not from affluent families found it difficult to withstand the precarity imposed by the academic gig-economy. These pressures seemed to be particularly acute for women and people from ethnic-minority backgrounds.
One academic I spoke to was informed, at the end of a lunch with her teaching supervisor, that her hours – and therefore her salary – were being halved with four weeks’ notice This emphasis on research is a legacy of government policy going back nearly 40 years. In 1985, the Conservative government, which wanted universities to think of themselves more like businesses, decided to give more money to those institutions that prioritised research. For some universities, this created a virtuous cycle.
Oxford’s institutional structure may impede efforts to diversify the backgrounds of its hires. Unlike other universities, hiring at Oxford is not organised centrally; instead, a small committee is appointed, usually constituting academics associated with the relevant college and department. Such committees may themselves lack diversity. “They have almost total autonomy over what they choose to do,” an associate professor told me.
Two academics who were on fixed-term contracts at Oxford for 15 years – until their contracts were not renewed in 2022 – are now suing the university
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