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LSE postgraduate teachers 'paid as little as cleaners'
Tom Lawrence17.08.09
One of London's top universities has been criticised for using inexperienced postgraduate students as a cheap teaching alternative to full-time staff.
Graduate teachers at the London School of Economics claim they are being over-worked and under-paid by bosses, earning similar wages to a domestic cleaner. Managers at the business school have been accused of using more postgraduates to deal with the rising intake of students, which has almost tripled over the past two decades.
Student teachers have presented a report to the LSE's chiefs, claiming they are being paid for half the hours they work, are teaching more than triple the recommended hours and are earning as little as £13 an hour.
"Many PhD students want to become academics so universities can rely on a willing pool of students willing to take on this work at rock-bottom prices," the report said.
Students have complained that they can go for months without meeting a full-time lecturer face-to-face.
But an LSE spokesman said it was investing an extra £2million a year improving teaching, and a pay increase for graduate teachers was being implemented. "We do use graduate teachers and they play a valuable role, but they do not substitute for full-time qualified lecturers," he said.
Reader views (5)
In Dundee we get £6.50 for laboratories, £11 for lectures. Andrew, you may remind us of the minimum wage, however,£11 for a one hour lecture includes preperation time, so even if I only took a single hour to prepare a lecture, something I would not do, more like two hours+, we are already under the minimum wage. Plus we have had to fork out a huge sum of money to even get to this level of education!
- Rem, Dundee, UK
MDj - you say "unemployable graduates" but now for some of the most basic of jobs, a degree is required. In fact because there are so many people going to uni, anyone who doesn't is severely disadvantaged. I firmly believe that even those without a job are better off than they were before they commenced higher education. Personally, I have only been out of Uni for 2 years and like all my friends have an excellent job, which I also love, as a result. Going to University changed who I am and taught me to challenge, question and think differently. I disagree that a whole generation has been sold a lie, as the saying goes - 'an education is something that no one can ever take from you'.
- Jr, Farnham, UK
The abuse of postgraduate teachers is widespread throughout UK higher education. Most universities pay a nominal, seemingly high amount for each contact hour - in this case £13 per hour - but then expect postgraduate teachers to put in many more hours of preparation. Last year, I reckoned I got paid around £2.50 per hour, after averaging the amount of preparation and follow-up time I put in relative to each hour for which I was paid.
- Ajb, Northeast England
'As little as £13 per hour'
Can I remind these people that the National minimum wage is £5.67 per hour and the (unofficial) London minimum wage is £7.20 per hour
- Andrew Nicholls, Ely ,England
Given the reluctance of people to take cleaning jobs, and the surplus of unemployable graduates, this seems like a valuable lesson for them in the workings of the market.It's just a great pity, and a huge waste, that a whole generation has been sold a false prospectus.
If a business kept on churning out a product that the market didn't want, it would go bust. In the past, professions used to recruit juniors and trainees in-house, and take on as many as they could foresee need for. Now the number of lawyers has more than quadrupled in thirty years because the market is broken: architecture similarly has suffered from a huge oversupply in recent decades (doesn't seem to improve the standard of buildings, though). This is a brutal reality check, and sad for those at the sharp end of it.
- Mdj E10, london uk
