Speaker 1: The first thing professors won't tell you about academia is that no one's doing anything about the mental health crisis. This has been known for a long time and no one's addressing it head on. I found this Nature article and essentially it talks about in 2018 the depression and anxiety rates of PhD and master's students are six times higher than those in the general public. And trust me, I feel like that is even worse these days. The report shows that based on 2,279 students, 40% of the respondents had anxiety scores in the moderate to severe range and that nearly 40% showed signs of moderate to severe depression. Despite this being known for a long time, no one is doing anything about it. Now correct me if I'm wrong, let me know in the comments. But I have been to a number of universities and the way that I've been to a number of universities is that I've been to a number of universities seem to be dealing with this is just like, oh, here's another pizza party. Or do you want like a movie night? Or do you want a fun activity in the tea room with some cheap cake? We've got you a speaker about anxiety. Good luck. Like there is no actual long term solution that universities are proposing for this really important issue. And I feel like everyone is saying what they want, the PhD students are like, give us more time with our supervisors, we need more direction. Give us more resources so we can actually complete our research. Build better relationships as a community with your PhD students and your group and the university in general. Talk about the difficulties that academics face. But that is not happening. They just go, oh, we got like Wednesday morning yoga for you. Academics are getting squeezed. And it's hard to work out where the biggest squisher is coming from. And it's hard to work out where the biggest squisher is coming from. I found this paper from studies in higher education. And it says that in 1986, the year after I was born, somehow the sheer joy of being a scholar has been eroded. It's not just because of the money, they have taken the fun out of teaching you feel so pressured, it's hard to find time to sit and think we've gotten into this publish or perish type syndrome, where we publish trivia, and we're not reflecting on what we're doing. And that was from 1986. And the situation has only got worse. We are not tackling these issues head-on. In this paper one professor said, we are being expected to be all things to everyone. We hear that we are supposed to publish more and that we have to have an international reputation to become full professor, yet that we are told that the Provost doesn't really care so much about what we do with our best and brightest but we will be evaluated by what we do for the average students. I think we are expected to do everything. If we become more research-focused we need to let something go. We cannot be expected to do everything, i.e. teach 40 grad students in a class and do research. This is the situation in academia. Academics have not said, no. It's a slippery slope. It's one of those things where it's like, oh, it's just a little bit more work do this, and we go, okay yeah because you know it will help our career or whatever and then it's like a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and this builds up over time. So what starts as just like a little bit outside of your job and your position and your role and your expectations of what you do for the university becomes your job. And then it shifts a little bit more, shifts a little bit more. It creeps until there is literally no time to do anything. Some faculty members offer comments such as the following, I do what it takes to meet the standards, work more hours. I like my research and I find the time to do what is necessary to keep it going. I sleep very little. And unfortunately, some of these professors wear this as a badge of honor, when in fact, it's just stupid that they should expect, first of all, that people sort of like remove the enjoyment from their life to do the thing that they're employed to do, rather than saying, you know what, I need to set clear boundaries on my work life, on my private life, on how much I work, because it's going to make me a better, academic overall. This is interesting that Australian academics have become more market and accountability orientated. So while on one hand, specifying more clearly than ever before, what is required to be successful, the accountability culture works on an individual subject to make them unsure whether they are doing enough, doing the right thing, doing as much as others, or as well as others, constantly looking to improve, be better or to be excellent. That is the constant, anxiety that exists in academia. You're not doing enough, you'll never be able to do enough, someone's always going to do better than you. And you need to bring in more money than you've ever brought in before. Met last year's targets, let's go for more, more papers, you published 20 papers last year, let's go for 50 this year, there is never, never enough to satisfy the beast that is academia. I think that early career academics are being completely undervalued. They bring so many more new ideas, enthusiasm, fresh blood to a university and a department, but they are seen as nothing more than sort of like that extra cog in a wheel, particularly for older academics. They have got this kind of weird perception that everyone should suffer the amount that they did to get to where they are. And they forget that we're in a completely different world and situation. I know many academics that wouldn't get their current position if they were to apply for them today. And I think it's this cream rises the top mentality that really sort of like poisons the expectations on what early career researchers should do and where they should contribute the most. I found this book chapter, which is living the dream, but for how long? Being an early career academic in the context of excellence. And remember that constant pressure that we were talking about? That's that excellence that no one will ever, ever be able to live up to. So I'm going to scroll down here to their findings. I now find that I'm an academic, not a teacher, not a researcher. The stuff I thought I would do. I expected to mentally stimulate other people, read and engage in deep conversations with my colleagues. Instead, I find myself running around trying to find out what I'm supposed to do. Never in my life have I sent so many emails and filled in so many forms. And I think this is kind of the reality of being an academic researcher. Sometimes you do go into it with rose tinted glasses and you think, oh, you know, this is going to get better after my PhD. You know, this is going to get better after my PhD. It's going to change significantly. And it can be really hard to find, you know, a foothold in the academic career ladder when you are doing everything other than what will actually improve your career, which is research, applying for grants and doing and analysing experiments that you can later sort of like publish in peer reviewed journals. And it's those early years, the first five years after your PhD graduation that are so important in setting a great foundation for your career. So if you are looking at becoming an early career academic, you're going to have to make sure that your daily task does not just involve doing all of this admin stuff. What are you going to be your contributions? What are you allowed to do? How much time will you be given for research and try to say no to all of those other expectations that are put on you from above. Because of this constant pressure to be excellent, there is a real push and pull from two really important aspects of academia, and that's teaching and research. Now, in Australia, if people are doing a lot of teaching, quite often it's seen as a punishment for not doing well enough in research. But do you know what? When I was in academia, I really wanted to teach. And so you ended up being sort of like pulled away from the thing that would actually allow you to end up working in a university, which is research and bringing in money. But importantly, we're not allowing people to actually sort of like do the thing that they like, which is teaching. I know now in Australia, there's lots of new teaching focused roles in academia, and I hope that they will continue to attract people that actually enjoy the teaching and learning process. But here's the thing, they're not actually taught how to be teachers. You learn on the job, baptism by fire. A lot of the time, the professors are actually just rubbish teachers. I've heard of people being so annoyed at university because they're like, hang on, I'm paying all of this money, and I'm essentially paying to teach myself all of this content because the professor, the lecturer is just no good at teaching. Quite often, if someone is a good teacher, they're not paying all of this money. It's because they've actually got a little bit of a passion for that teaching rather than them being taught how to teach productively and appropriately. We are now expecting students to come from high school, a place where pedagogy changes based on the students' needs. Their teachers are expected to differentiate the curriculum to adapt to learning styles. And then all of a sudden, they're plonked in university, and it's like, oh, good luck, sink or swim. And they employ research rather than researchers that are better at teaching because that is where the prestige comes. That's where the money comes from. And teaching is just kind of like a byproduct of all of that. So there we have it. There's the dark side of academia and all the things that professors won't tell you. Let me know in the comments what you would add. And also remember, there are more ways that you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstapton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description. And when you sign up, you'll get five emails over about two weeks. the tools I've used, the podcasts I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract, and more. It's exclusive content available for free. So go sign up now. And also remember to go check out academiainsider.com. That's my new project where I've got my ebooks, I've got resource packs, I've got the forum, the blog, and everything is over there to make sure that academia works for you. All right, then I'll see you in the next video.