Creating sustainable research careers: An evaluation of the HE sector’s record Michael MacNeil National Head of Bargaining and Negotiations UCU

UCU’s perspective and role UCU’s role:  Collective bargaining to win greater job security for research staff  Pressing the case for a move away from fixed-term contracts and toward employers taking more responsibility for their researchers. Our research:  After years of Roberts funding, the Concordat and the Fixed-Term regulations, do researchers have more sustainable careers?  Reviewing policies, FOI request on HEIs and a survey of researchers.

Our findings  Short-term contracts are often very short: 57% of research staff in Russell Group universities are employed on contracts of two years or less and 29% on contracts lasting 12 months or less  The Fixed-term Regulations have made little difference: 7% of research staff on fixed-term contracts are transferred onto permanent contracts in a 12 month period, but this figure drops to 3% if you take out two universities (Cambridge and Glasgow) who transfer significantly more (around 30% in both cases).  Every year, around 16% of fixed-term contract research staff will be made redundant because their contract or funding expires. A very small number (5.6% according to our data) will be redeployed by their institutions.  HEIs may be better at preparing researchers for external careers but are failing to build sustainable employment within the sector

Why this matters  The vast majority of people conducting research in the sector want to stay there.  Those leaving cite job insecurity as their main motivation But beyond the damage to careers, there is a cost to knowledge production too:  31% said they spent more than 1/4 of their working time preparing and writing research funding bids  70% said that short-term funding was ineffective and prevented the accumulation of knowledge  83% said that it geared research toward short-term results rather than longer-term impact  1/3 rd said they believed it created a culture in which unethical research practice was likely  This is madness

Just some of the comments researchers made….  “Projects whose outcome would be beneficial to the scientific community but have proved more time-consuming than anticipated have had to be abandoned in favour of less valuable but quicker return projects.”  “I have been involved in research that is a professional and ethical disgrace. The pressure to complete certain parts by arbitrary points leads to corner cutting in sorts of ways. We have made policy recommendations that are so thinly substantiated and well before any peer review or rigorous quality control. The amount of paperwork and report writing is a massive burden and hugely reduces the time spent on actual research.”  “I spend a lot of time on looking for my next funding opportunity instead of getting on with the research I have been funded for. The pressure to come up with a new 'complete' project with defined short term goals every time you write a new grant proposal means that you can't develop properly any interesting leads from the previous project. There is a rapid turnover of staff in our research group, which means that valued colleagues are constantly replaced by new people who need training from scratch, this also uses up a lot of valuable time.”

Funding Councils can do more  funding longer grants,  supporting the creation of bridging funds at institutional level  placing more conditions on grants to promote continuity of employment. Institutions can do more Data from our FOI indicates that institutional employment policies can create greater stability of employment. Some institutions have created more stability through:  More use of open-ended contracts  proactive redeployment policies  bridging funds Our surveys show that research staff themselves overwhelmingly believe that funding councils and institutions can do more and support these solutions

What should we be doing?  Working together to make the case to government and research councils that high quality research needs stable funding and stable employment.  Abandoning the race to undermine the employment rights of fixed- term contract employees  Working together at institutional level to negotiate policies that mitigate insecurity and promote commitment and continuity of employment.  The sector needs to stop passing the buck