Unprecedented ‘churn’ in academic jobs – but is it already over?

Brexit, burnout and post-pandemic recruitment drives contributed to a significant increase in academic job churn in the UK, according to experts, but the sector’s current financial crisis may have reduced mobility this year.

An annual statistical report produced by Advance HE showed that 20,220 academic staff left their jobs in 2022-23 for a known destination – a 15 per cent rise on 2021-22 and the similar levels seen in other years. This leavers’ count represented about 8.4 per cent of all academics employed in UK higher education that year.

Giulio Marini, an expert on the UK academic workforce, said higher education employers have become “human capital eroding” operations – in which staff face rising stress levels and “sky-high competition”.

“As a result, despite still being intellectually remunerative, it is also consuming like fire does. It is a burning profession, said Dr Marini, a senior assistant professor in the University of Catania’s department of economics and business.

“People probably try to heal this issue by changing institution.”

Of 20,220 staff who left their jobs, 32 per cent went to another higher education institution within the UK that year. That was up from about one in four over the three preceding years.

Vassiliki Papatsiba, reader in social sciences at Cardiff University, told Times Higher Education that the increase in mobility likely reflected a post-pandemic rebound in recruitment – a “natural correction” to the delayed hiring of previous years.

“The higher rate of movement between UK institutions combined with improved university finances during Covid – when operating costs were lower – would suggest many institutions were in a position to actively recruit,” she said.

“This could have created more opportunities for academics to move within the UK higher education sector.”

The figures show that just 5 per cent of academics left for an institution outside the UK in 2022-23, which was down slightly from previous years.

Dr Papatsiba said that this could indicate that domestic opportunities had become more attractive, possibly as a result of this enhanced recruitment drive, and that the UK may have been experiencing a period of post-Brexit stability.

Two-thirds of academic staff leavers remained in UK employment in 2022-23 – up from 58 per cent in 2021-22. Just 10 per cent took up a post outside the country.

The data shows that 10 per cent of leavers moved to jobs in the private sector, 5 per cent to a research institute and 9 per cent became students.

Overall, just 25 per cent of this cohort left employment altogether – down from 33 per cent just two years before. The proportion retiring also fell slightly.

With the Advance HE figures covering only 2022-23, there is no data yet on how current financial pressures are affecting academic churn.

Thousands of jobs are expected to be cut across UK higher education in coming months amid a financial crisis driven by high inflation, the long-term freeze in tuition fees in England, and unstable international student recruitment.

“Such financial pressures, already expressed through voluntary severance schemes, could significantly impact institutions’ ability to maintain current staffing levels, let alone expand recruitment, potentially reversing the recent trends in academic mobility we’ve observed,” Dr Papatsiba said.

Dr Marini said many scholars were coming to the conclusion that “it is not worth staying in academia”, regardless of financial concerns.

“If this trend will be confirmed in the next years, we might think of academia like a beehive where people [regularly] come and leave…just for a stint of their professional life,” he said.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com