This spring, the Labour Authority will carry out another investigation into work pressure and social safety at universities, a spokesperson confirmed to Delta, Delft University of Technology’s independent news platform.
Five years ago, the Labour Authority called on universities to address their workload problems, but a report published last year revealed that very little progress had been made. The inspections scheduled for the coming months will show whether the situation has improved.
Budget cuts
This certainly doesn’t seem likely, given the government’s plans to slash research budgets. “There is a real risk that these cuts will further increase workloads”, the universities wrote in a letter to education minister Eppo Bruins shortly after the coalition agreement was published last summer.
Bruins responded by pointing out that budget cuts do not absolve universities of their duty of care to their employees. It was high time for university administrators to start putting their plans into action, he wrote to the House of Representatives last October.
Unsustainable pressure
Unmanageable workloads are a real problem, says Eddie Brummelman, chair of The Young Academy, a society for talented early-career researchers. Brummelman is also associate professor of pedagogy at the University of Amsterdam.
“Universities have been under unsustainable pressure for decades”, he says. “We’ve managed to maintain a high level of quality in Dutch education and research, but only because everyone works overtime, which can’t go on forever. There’s been structural underfunding. That’s why the previous government added a billion euros to our budget.”
This extra funding is now being taken away again. Still, The Young Academy is happy that the minister is concerned about workloads, Brummelman says. “But it is ironic, in times of austerity.”
Young researchers
Workload problems are especially common among young researchers, according to Brummelman, who says this is borne out by the initial results of the Academy Thermometer, a new survey launched by The Young Academy. The data has not yet been published, but Brummelman says that the pressure is highest for PhD students, postdocs and assistant professors, probably due to their precarious position. “They have to teach more and more classes, but they’re judged mainly on their research accomplishments.”
To have any chance of a career in academia, these young researchers all compete for grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Universities see these as a mark of quality, and they give researchers the time and resources they need to actually do research. But those vying for NWO funding face stiff competition: out of every 100 applications, only 13 or 14 are approved.
To address this problem, the previous government introduced so-called start-up grants: new university lecturers were given their own budget for research, making them less dependent on NWO. Meanwhile, more experienced researchers could apply for an incentive grant. But the system had teething problems, says Brummelman: “Sometimes faculties will expect you to use that money to hire a PhD student, and then suddenly you have less time for research because you’re also doing supervision.” Make no mistake, he still thinks the start-up and incentive grants were a great idea. But these too have been cut.
Pre-selection?
To curb the number of grant applications (and increase their success rates), some universities had plans to do their own pre-selection to filter out applications with a low chance of success. Might this be a solution?
No, says Brummelman, because you also have to think about social safety. “If universities start doing their own pre-selection, they open themselves up to all sorts of risks. NWO committees are independent and well trained, and even they struggle to make these decisions. Pre-selection – and the dependency it creates – is dangerous. A lot of researchers need these grants to build their careers, and now they’re intertwined with personnel policies.”
Secure foundation
He sees only one solution: a ‘secure foundation’ for researchers – a basic amount that every researcher can spend on their work as they see fit. This would make them more independent, according to Brummelman, who says that systemic change is needed to reduce workloads and improve social safety. After all, he argues, if you keep pouring money into the same system, you’re going to get more of the same.
Smarter
But such a change could take years to materialise – if it comes at all. Isn’t it possible to improve things by making small adjustments? Brummelman believes so. That’s why The Young Academy is pushing for a ‘smarter academic year’, meaning a smaller number of teaching weeks. “Dutch universities have nearly two more months of teaching than equally good universities in other European countries.” Pilots with shorter teaching periods are already underway, and Erasmus Universities will be the first to actually implement them.
Under the slogan ‘Everyone’s a professor’, The Young Academy is also challenging traditional academic hierarchies. It argues that assistant and associate professors should also be able to award doctoral degrees to PhD students, so that they don’t have to depend on full professors. “Studies show that a lack of social safety often stems from resource scarcity and power imbalances. So those are things you really need to focus on.”
Blame
Both, Brummelman thinks. “The cuts are having a disastrous effect on workloads, but I’m still glad that the Labour Authority is re-examining universities’ organisational efficiency and duty of care. We need to come up with a solution to reduce competition for students and research funding.”
Translation: Taalcentrum-VU
Having a tenure track or permanent job at the university is already a massive privilege. That the Young Academy also demands free research money on top of their hard-money-guaranteed salary shows how disconnected they are from reality.