The normal working conditions of university teachers: 996 work system

Introduction Speaking of university teachers, it must be a job that many people envy. In people’s eyes, university teachers have free working hours and high salaries. In fact, there is another saying in the Internet industry, that is, 996 The working system refers to starting work at 9 a.m., leaving work at 9 p.m., and working 6 days a week. Under this working system, overtime is inevitable, so are university teachers working overtime and overloaded?

In fact, the 996 work system is just a normal situation for university teachers. That is to say, the work intensity of most teachers will exceed this number, and only a small number of teachers will work less than this intensity. Of course, teachers here mainly refer to front-line teaching and research staff, excluding university administrative staff.

The reason why the workload of university teachers has been increasing in recent years, if you think about it carefully, there are roughly three reasons:

Dramatic institutional changes

Someone once said that we are experiencing a huge change that occurs once in a thousand years. This adjective is not an exaggeration when used in the field of teaching and research.

Professional adjustment, curriculum reform, performance reform, scientific research system reform, personnel changes, and various reforms of the teaching and scientific research system are coming one after another. Whether for honor or survival, every change brings huge impact on interests. Front-line teachers have to spend a huge amount of time and energy to study documents, understand the spirit, and adapt to this change.

Take teaching reform as an example. Since last year, major universities have launched a new round of major and curriculum adjustments. Majors are gone and courses are cancelled, which means teachers who are not full of scientific research tasks face huge risks of job transfer and diversion. As an ordinary teacher, how can we take it lightly and study new courses and develop new majors? This huge time investment is difficult to measure. Taking scientific research as an example again, in current universities, professional title evaluation, performance appraisal standards, and postgraduate tutor employment standards change every year or even several times a year, and every change involves the vital interests of teachers. As teachers, how many of them can continue to invest time and energy to meet the ever-increasing assessment standards without comparing them to standards?

Economic Pressure

One of the biggest features of the market economy is that currency is in The role in social economy has been suddenly enlarged. Housing, education, medical care, and elderly care, whether they are three mountains or five mountains, are nothing more than describing the great pressure in people’s lives today. Although money is not everything in the world, there are more than 9,900 things out of 10,000 that require money. University teachers are also human beings, and they also face financial pressures such as buying a house, getting married, educating, and providing for the elderly. A small base salary and a large performance ratio are major features of the university salary system. In order to get more performance-based pay, they take the initiative to work overtime, get more class fees, and earn more scientific research awards. This has become the norm for college green peppers to work overload. Some people who do not work in teaching and research departments often believe that university teachers are members of the system, with generous salaries and complete social security. In fact, today's university teachers are different from those in the past. Today's university teachers have long become workers on the performance production line who are paid on a piece-by-piece basis. The basic salary of university teachers is not high at all. A newly-employed doctorate only costs 6,000 to 7,000 yuan per month. Pensions have long been included in social planning. Teachers also have to pay monthly unemployment insurance as part of their salary, and medical insurance is not complete. . What is even more worrying is that the de-staffing reform of colleges and universities is about to be fully rolled out. Taking Jiangsu as an example, the medical insurance of most universities is not included in the social pooling plan. Teachers go to the school-designated social hospital for medical treatment, and many medical expenses cannot be reimbursed. What is particularly bad is that teachers are a profession that relies on their brains and throats for food. Losing teeth will directly affect the effectiveness of classroom teaching, and dental treatment is at one's own expense. The author lost three teeth and several others were loose. The dental implants and root crown treatment alone cost more than 50,000 yuan in medical expenses, all of which were paid out of pocket. Although the author has a professional title like professor and his salary is not low, he often feels huge financial pressure, not to mention Qingjiao, who comes from a civilian family and has just joined the job. Teachers who were born in the 1960s mostly come from families with many children who are not financially well-off. A large proportion of brothers and sisters are laid off and unemployed. As a university teacher, they are considered to be individuals with higher incomes in the family.

Therefore, in addition to shouldering the important responsibilities of educating their own children and having their children start a family and buy a house, the responsibility of providing for their parents in old age inevitably falls on the children of university teachers. It is also an obligation of university teachers to help brothers and sisters who are in need.

Performance appraisal

This is a topic that front-line teachers in colleges and universities bring up and are reluctant to give up. Since the advent of high-level projects, the lives of college teachers have been inextricably linked to performance appraisal. Working overtime is largely not due to the inherent driving force of scientific research and innovation, but due to the huge impact of meeting scientific research performance standards. Survival pressure.

Based on the assumption that "human nature is inherently evil", a considerable number of colleges and universities have adopted stringent performance appraisals that punish fast-paced students. Take a certain 985 university as an example. If front-line teachers failed to pass the assessment during the employment period, they were not demoted but directly transferred to a back-office position.

An unconfirmed joke is that most of the teachers in a certain subject in the school failed to pass the appointment period assessment. An elderly professor pleaded with the school leaders: Professors and associate professors can be transferred to other posts, but the only one must not be allowed to do so. One of the lecturers will be transferred; otherwise, there will no longer be anyone to teach the students. "Teachers at the school complained privately that the school was adopting a strategy of killing the goose that lays eggs to squeeze out the last drop of profit.

The consequences of long-term implementation of strict performance appraisals that do not match remuneration are serious: a large number of talents in the school have Many of my friends are teaching in universities. In recent years, when I meet my friends, one of the biggest surprises is that the aging rate of university teachers is accelerating, and their temples are gray and stooped. There are many people with hunchback and cervical and lumbar strain.

University teachers in different schools and disciplines have different teaching and research tasks, and the work pressures of highly qualified and grassroots teachers are also different. In fact, the work system of university teachers also has a certain degree of randomness. Teachers in good schools will naturally invest more time and energy in teaching work, so candidates who participate in various teacher recruitment examinations still need to think carefully.