PostDoc Discussion Forum

Excuse me, but I have detailed and justified everything I've said, demonstrating through examples that it is feasible, and expected supplementary responses, which most have been willing to provide. You, however, have simply written obnoxious one or two sentence responses which appear to be designed to insult me rather than engage with my post. I know which form of behaviour most would consider to be 'grown up' here, and it's certainly not yours.

No, all it does is tell us all we need to know about your prospects of becoming a decent and civilised human being.

To get an academic position in politics without a PhD: go and work in a government department for 20 years and produce a string of research output and pat yourself on the back as the professorships roll in.

As others have said, there's no secure or direct way into an academic career without the PhD. Many of those examples you cite? They not only had careers prior to academia, they belonged to a very different era of academia. What Academia was in the 70s is not what it is today, so you cannot even use them as 'guide posts' because the reality is, the world changes quite rapidly.

I'll put it this way, you'll be competing with PhDs who have massive grants and projects behind them, a list of publications, and teaching experience. One of my mentors,3 years out from her PhD, already had two ARC linkage grants behind her, each around the 250,000 mark of funding (which is a lot for my discipline). ARC grants are the holy grail of grants in Australia, where Linkage, Discovery and DECRA are what Academics here aspire to secure. Your research also needs to have impact, a list of publications is not enough, they need to be in quality journals and book presses.

Another thing to note is that the elusive tenure is no longer a holy grail in protecting you from instability. At the university I was working at, two staff members, who were tenured, were let go, because their research performance was not meeting the required metrics.Tenure did not protect them.

Be aware that unless one is a full professor, rarely does anyone 'secure' an academic career. Whatever path you take, brace yourself for 10-20 years of career uncertainty, short term contracts, and having to continually adapt, in getting to the secure stage.

IntoTheSpiral, I did not mean to irk anyone, I simply want to avoid this financially costly process if possible whilst securing an academic career. I am open to part-time study though, so your experience has been helpful. I wish you the best with it.

I think there is a slight misunderstanding here, though I thank you for your help – it has opened my eyes in many ways, and I’m sure others who have been reading this thread. I am not seeking a position now, at my relatively young age and holding only an MSc and 3 years of experience, but I am seeking to formulate a long-term strategy so that I can take actions in my career/personal development activities which would maximize my chances of securing an academic job, without a PhD, over the long-term. I was also open to the idea that this may not be feasible, and would then look into studying for a PhD part-time, which is the only financially viable option for me. I would not disagree with your description of Razzu’s experience as ‘high quality’, but it is certainly not ‘first class’ or ‘stellar’. He has served mostly as an economic adviser and an economist in government departments – thousands of others do this, too, and the economic analysis of policy, whilst important, does not represent the entire discipline and can be limited in scope compared to a pure policy analyst. An example of truly first class policy experience – excluding politicians – would be Geoff Mulgan, former Chief Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister, founder of a think-tank, and Director of a major public social and innovation unit in the Cabinet Office and Downing Street. My feeling is that, given that Razzu’s level of experience is attainable, and he has been offered a full professorship, lecturer or reader positions would be open to those who had attained even less than him. Continued....

Along with the teaching is of course things like spending weekends doing your fair share of the open days. Putting masses of stuff on blackboard / moodle etc. Marking - providing increasingly large amounts of feedback in the vain hope a student might appreciate it and raise your dept's NSS score. You will be required to gain a teaching qualification usually in the first two years. Your teaching will be judged on your evaluation scores and you will be expected to achieve a certain level. Lots of university teaching is delivered by hourly paid or fixed term usually 9 month contract staff by the way (many of whom have a PhD and are working for about minimum wage when you add up what hours they work compared to those they are paid for - again with the highly qualified workforce around you'd have to make a very good case why you are special).
Then the other third is admin. Degree programme management, quality assurance (lots and lots of this and the TEF promises more), admissions, employability work, managing study abroad/ internships etc. Four times a year you get to account for every hour you've worked that week - depressing how much of it is admin.
All of this is done in a working environment that is poor - university management is often poor and target culture is just as prevalent as it would be in a sales job. Google Stefan Grimm to find out what than can mean in practice. The wages are also not that great unless you get to professor. This blog might also be of interest https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com/ . Basically it's not what most students think it is like.

You also need to factor in the competition, which in your area is strong. To get an interview for a permanent post in Politics / Public Policy, increasingly you need top quartile journal articles, preferably a postdoc to show you can get research funding, teaching experience and the PhD. You'd need some really amazing professional experience for it to count as equivalent.