Academic careers in slavery

I was going to write about the chocolate croissants I had for breakfast but then I found something that made me very angry and now I need to vent. I was looking at jobs at various universities and found a position for 'Arts and Visual Culture' lecturer at LaTrobe University. Had a quick look and though it sounded promising, run a subject, run supervision for honours and postgrads, carry on your own research etc. I was then horrified to discover it is part time 20%, so 1 day a week. Absolutely preposterous. Even as a casual tutor with only two tutorials and not writing any lectures teaching one subject takes up at least 1.5 days of my time, and that is with me being as strict as possible about not working for free. The one time I ran a whole subject on my own, with 40 students (relatively small) there were 5 hours of face to face time alone, plus at least 1 - 2 hours of student consultations. Add to that the 10 hours it takes to write a lecture (on casual rates they generously pay your for 2 hours preparation). I spent about 3 full days working on that subject on a good week. Also add to that the hours I put in writing the subject for two weeks before semester started which were completely unpaid, as were most of the hours I spent at the end marking work and doing course administration.

The job I saw today had a helpful breakdown of how your time would be allocated between various tasks. So I whipped out my calculator and worked out the exact minutes per week available for each 'area of accountability' based on the idea that the lecturer works a 10 hour day with no lunch or other breaks.

Conduct tutorials, student field excursions, clinical sessions 28% (2.8hrs)
I guess that might be enough to give two tutorials (though considering the subject is a foundation one there would be presumably be more than two tutorials), but it would mean spending a mere 40 minutes pre tute preparing, even casual tutors are usually allocated 1 full hour of prep time.

Prepare and deliver lectures and seminars 22% (2.2hrs)
For 1 lecture the delivery would take 1hr, so that leaves 1.2 hours preparation time. Most lectures are about 4000-5000 words, require reading of at least 10 books/articles and also for art require a powerpoint presentation of about 30-40 images. Good luck doing that in just over an hour. One lecturer I worked with, who was full time, said he thought that to write decent lectures at a high standard it took even a seasoned academic at least 2.5 to 3 full days work.

Initiate and develop relevant face-to-face and online subject material for simultaneous delivery to Bachelor of Visual Arts and Bachelor of Graphic Design students, with appropriate advice from and support of more senior staff. 11% (1.1 hrs)
As above really. Don't know what to say here except that I often spend 30-40mins just waiting for clunking online learning software to load.

Act as subject coordinator 2 % (20minutes)
I would be laughing if this wasn't so depressing. 20 minutes a week, coordinating a whole subject?!

Supervise the program of study of honours students and supervise postgraduate research projects. 10& (1hr)
I guess this could be doable, 30 minutes face time per student, see them every fortnight that would allow for 4 students, but not much time to reply to their emails or read their work.

Conduct research. 7% (42minutes)
Better have your egg timer out for this one, set timer, read chapter, times up. Wait till next week. Though of course what they are counting on is that you will do your research during the other 4 days that they aren't paying you for, but you will of course (to keep your job) submit all articles/books towards your department's publications output. So they will take the credit/points from your research but not actually pay you to do it. Nice. I suppose you could put some of the 12 days out of semester that you will be paid for when you aren't teaching to get your own work done, but last time I checked it took me 5 days just to proof read and fix the footnotes on an article I had spent 4 weeks writing.

Mark and assess written, oral and visual art and design work, to an appropriate academic standard, with relevance to identified University and program graduate capabilities. 10% (1hr)
I think as a casual tutor I recently submitted to be paid for 55 hours marking for the end of semester, this was for 35 students. Even providing you don't have to mark every week that is still only maybe 14 hours of paid marking per semester, enough to mark and write comments for maybe 30 essays.

Consult with students. 7% (42 minutes)
Let's say that in this foundation subject you have 42 students, that means they each get a minute a week. Hopefully they are happy with that.

Attend department and /or faculty meetings and/or membership of a number of committees. 3% (18 minutes)
Has anyone ever had a department/faculty/committee meeting that went for only 18 minutes? Even if they aren't weekly that means you can have one one hour meeting every 3 weeks.

End of rant. I think it speaks for itself really. Clearly they expect you to do an amount of work that takes longer than 1 day, but are not prepared to pay you for it. Part of me feels that as an up and coming academic I should just apply for jobs like these as there are virtually none around. But why should I sign up for what is such clear and blatant exploitation? I also know from looking at friends that it isn't likely that after a year or so your hours will be increased. Plus they are using the fact that jobs are tight to underpay and exploit desperate early career academics. No thanks.

If you are interested in this issue I reccomend you check out Tammi Jonas's blog here. She wrote some good articles on it in December, also see her article in New Matilda here.