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Comment by udp | Hacker News Reader

The salaries suck but this is the UK. If you’re in the correct social class to be an academic you should have your own independent means, and use your academic salary as nothing more than rent for the townhouse you’re staying in while away from your country estate. /s

(Somehow this is both sarcasm and the literal situation of people I know.)

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I'm in academia in London at the moment and this really struck true. All the senior staff bought their houses for pennies 30 years ago which are now worth millions, and don't seem to understand why the more junior staff are so worked up about salaries. Rent is 50% of our pay cheque and any house within an hours commute is 10x annual salary.

A potential alternative could be that the university provides lodging to its staff for a subsidized rent. This way, salaries don't have to be increased.

I mean: a lot of universities provide dorms for their students, why not for parts of their staff, too?

Would you want your employer to have full control of not only your income, but also the roof over your head?

When I was a postdoc at Oxford there was an article in one of the university magazines complaining that full professors could no longer afford one of the lovely giant late-Victorian villas in North Oxford that used to be occupied by academics.

Hilariously, it turns out that was always the case. The profs with the fancy houses were never doing it on their university salaries; they were doing it on family money. Meanwhile, one of my colleagues resigned and left because he couldn't afford to pay rent for him and his partner in Oxford on a postdoc salary. Plus ça change...

I wish someone had told me that before spending a chunk of my career to get a permanent academic post!

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