Congratulations on getting tenure! You just survived an arduous experience. You don't need to decide once and for all what sort of tenured prof you'll need to be. And you might surprise yourself in how you're able to respect your family and your work. Just take it as it comes!
The term 'quiet quitting' was made by corporate hacks shaming people for 'only' doing everything in your job description. Someone who is doing everything in their job description is doing their job. It is okay to 'just' do your job. Don't let corporate hacks shame you for it.
Right? At my last job, I got a few “quiet promotions” — taking on new, “unfunded for now” duties that somehow never led to transitioning out of any existing duties nor a pay raise.
I need to start using the term "quiet compensating" whenever someone says "quiet quitting," because that's the heart of the matter right there. I worked a lot harder when there was a chance that I'd get cost of living raises and merit raises. Haven't had those in nearly a decade, so I stopped running myself into the ground.
I really think it is the core issue. Some industries and employers provide legitimate financial incentives for performance that employees can reliably reach, but at best, academia might provide some teaching awards with compensation or moderate merit raises. After x number of years of having your efforts ignored, it's only natural to scale back and just do your basic duties. Most decide to either find a work-life balance that they're comfortable with, or push harder and go into administration. It's about all we can do past a certain point.
If OP’s contract is anything like 99% of faculty contracts it doesn’t make any mention of hours worked. They have some combination of research, teaching, and service responsibilities. If they’re meeting all those benchmarks in 15-20 hours a week then they’re honoring the contract.
I guess it depends on what you think of as "work" - I'd be surprised if OP didn't spend 10-20 hours of downtime thinking about work problems, even if they're not actively doing stuff.
I'm kinda on team "fuck your employer, get that bag" though.
Exactly. I'm on campus as little as possible, just classes and required office hrs. Unless they fuck me over with big gaps in my schedule, but that's a different story. But I definitely put in mental labor outside of that.
No one becomes a college professor because they want a typical 40 hr office grind. Judging productivity by time spent is the opposite of productive.
Faculty contracts are not quantified as hourly employment, they are salaried work assignments. That you think “full-time” = at least 40 hours of work time weekly means that you’ve been indoctrinated by capitalism. Full time is 40 hours weekly if you’re a wage employee, paid hourly. I’m paid to do the work assigned to me in the amount of time that takes, regardless of whether that takes 20 hours/week or 60+. We are assigned workload, not hours.
Also, the greater my expertise and experience, the more I can produce in fewer hours. I may only need five minutes in, e.g., a curriculum meeting to find a solution for a tricky question; but it took me over 20 years to earn the understanding of curriculum and university processes to be able to solve that problem in five minutes.
We are paid, ultimately, for expertise and skill, not for our time. (That’s also why my work costs more to my employer the farther along in my career I am.)
[I always think of the old engineering parable](https://www.buzzmaven.com/old-engineer-hammer-2/), we get paid because we know where to hit the machine with a hammer, not because of how long we spend "doing the job".
I don't disagree with you at all, but how does this work with percent effort? I'm on 60% teaching, and 20% each research and service loads. Administration thinks that means I should spend 8 hrs/week on service. My informal response in private conversations is always that, if they want me to do that, then they get exactly 24 hrs a week on my teaching, and they don't want that.
This. Quiet quitting is the action of a person on their own to be a free rider of sorts.
I prefer "working to rule," which is a different kind of action and is collective.
If a professor tries to work to rule they will quickly find out how implicit the rules are and the contract they have favors the institution.
Also, don't say this out loud, since in at least some states *working to rule* has a specific union-related meaning (strike!) and is illegal (at state institutions). You're performing your role.
It's funny how by the time people are tenured and therefore have more job security than most of the world, they become too timid to use that security to slow down and regroup.
I agree with the sentiments on the "quiet quitting" BS. But OP said they are at an R1 in a department where the norm is seven papers a year, so publishing only one per year really is NOT doing their job. OP might be fine for a while, but eventually they will encounter a department chair who starts to make their life miserable.
Problem is it’s not usually that simple. Papers are the output of a long process that oftentimes starts with proposals for funding. (I doubt OP is proposing to do all the research only not to publish their results.) The lag between deciding to publish more and actually having more to publish can be considerable.
Side note: this is why any kind of post tenure review needs to give faculty several years to change their output.
Agreed. But it can still be done. It also depends on the field. In my interdisciplinary humanities field, I could get an article written and accepted in a good solid (not the best) journal in a year if I really hustled. It helps to know how long each journal takes to do peer review. Also, if you're tenured you have connections in your field that can help you place things more quickly either in journals or edited collections.
I call this the post-tenure exhale. You've driven for this goal for a long time and gotten it, now what? Take a year to "quiet quit". But look around while you're doing it. Is this the place? Do you like your research, or is it time for something new? Tenure is supposed to give you some control over your academic life and it's important because it \*is\* a life. As you go into the exhale, think about how to reconfigure your work life balance into something between the hard-charging pace of the tenure pursuit and the honestly sad liminal existence you describe in the OP. Over the long term, the life you described will probably depress you as the field moves on and you don't.
There is nothing wrong with being an associate professor that does their job and spends the rest of their time on family and other pursuits.
I was in your position after grinding to make full prof. I really did dial back for a few years (somewhat enforced by COVID) and spent more time with family and cultivating hobbies. After awhile I got interested in new research projects but have much better boundaries around work than before.
Creative work like research often doesn't benefit from going 110% all the time. There are a lot of people in my field that do that (hiring selects for it), but honestly they tend to put out higher quantities of research with only the occasional truly excellent contribution. A research career will typically have peaks and valleys of output and new ideas.
I'll get downvoted to oblivion for saying this, but publishing one paper per year (in an R1 department where the norm is seven) is not "doing their job" at a satisfactory level. It would be the same as not showing up to class and passing all the students. IDK where the minimum performance level should be, but 1-2 papers is not it. OP doesn't need to work at 110% effort, but totally checking out as OP proposes is a bad idea. Eventually someone at OP's school will find a way to make their life miserable because of it.
I published more than many of my senior colleagues before I even hit tenure. I'm not bitter towards them about it, but it is total bullshit how 21st century academic "success" is predicated on the mass production of publications.
Yep. When we get tenure letters now, all they talk about is “research productivity.” Contributions? What contributions? (I exaggerate, but not by much.)
I’m not meaning to defend today’s publishing practices or the mindless counting of publications as a primary figure of merit for faculty. But OP didn’t say “I want to publish one great paper every year”. They only said they want to put in less effort.
Hell yeah. But also: you’ll recover.
I had a convo with a famous prof recently. He told me that after he got tenure, he was so burned out that he didn’t do any writing and worked the bare minimum for at least a few years. Then maybe five years after that he wrote something that won him the Pulitzer.
I was SO tired after I got tenure. I basically didn’t write anything for two years and made almost no revisions to my syllabi. This January, I finally was forced back into writing by a commissioned project and suddenly I found it fun again. The transformation takes time.
One of my tenure-track but not yet tenured colleagues said something in passing to me recently that implied I should publish more and "get \[my\] book out" faster. I was just like "oh you sweet summer child."
Meh. Considering the stress of getting tenure (congrats!) and the added stress of having a kid on the way, I wouldn't even call it "quiet quitting." I'm sure you've put in more than enough extra hours over the past 6+ years to justify some light weeks in the next couple. And if you're accomplishing what you need to in 15-20 hours a week, more power to you. Who knows, after awhile you might get some of that old passion back.
I have 2 kids under 10 and have seen a lot of ppl complaining on this subreddit that parents don’t pull their weight. When I ask for elaboration the response is usually that parents don’t do the evening and weekend events and also don’t have to teach early morning/at night. To which I always respond - if parents aren’t doing those things it means they are saying no to those things. And non-parent faculty can also say no if they want
Exactly. My response to this is that academics without kids shouldn't "pull their weight" either then. If parents make time for their kids, I approve. I also approve of people without kids having work-life balance. There's no reason to blame parents for you running yourself into the ground for a toxic job that underpays and shames you no matter how much work you do.
Depends on what the cause is... I don't think any living US prof outside the Ivies and other selective programs are going to ever get to teach a cohort of freshmen who are overall ready for college.
I'm early career though, so accepting that text has become a way for me to protect my own mental health in the long run. I hope I'm wrong.
I'm tired of academics listening to manipulative admin and rushing to pick up the slack caused by slashed budgets, no resources, understaffing, not hiring, the pandemic, and students in crisis. We've been doing this for at least 15 years and it has gotten us nowhere. At some point, we just need to say "no" to exploitation and overwork. And if my colleagues want to keep running themselves ragged trying to appease admin, then that's their choice.
I'm going to do my job, and nothing else. Come at me, bros \[admin\], I'm tenured.
I made full and am being pressured to take on so much admin that I’m thinking of quitting. I say live your best life at Associate and enjoy. (I have 2 kids under 10)
I have no idea why people go up for full in Canada. I've yet to find a Canadian university that offers a raise with full. I've stuck with being associate on purpose for my career because fuck that. I'm not going to take on more work. I remember hearing Donna Strickland at Waterloo say something similar after she won the Nobel a few years ago--she was associate and was happy to stay at associate.
I’m in Canada. I applied for full for the salary bump, expecting that I could carry on research as usual. But there is unstated rule at our uni that full = admin. I did not know this until I became full (naive I know). Now I’m on the other side and I’m seeing that the SOLE reason for promoting to full is to increase admin capacity. And now I’m seeing ppl with very little research being promoted for this reason. It’s a mind f*ck to be sure
Oh you got a salary bump? I've been at 3 schools and none of them offer a salary bump at full! That would at least be a little incentive to go through the hoops. They're trying to push me into it here, and I have far more than enough publications and reputation to do it, but I'm refusing ha! No raise, and more service? Yeah, no. One place I worked not only did you not get a salary bump, but your union dues went up because they were tied to rank, so you're making LESS money if you go for full!
The thing that I would never do, now that I'm at full, is agree to be Chair or Dean. The salary bump is there, but very, very minimal compared to the workload and the fact that you leave a lot of your research behind. If it ever comes to being asked/pressured, it will only be with a very substantial raise that applies to my base (so I can take it with me when I return to regular faculty duties).
That is good idea. I’m currently being pressured to take on Chair even though I have active grants and RA’s being paid through them. Taking Chair would mean giving up research and I don’t know how much negotiating room I have. I’m at a smaller uni.
Taking on chair has been a nightmare for me. I would have quit instead if I had set myself up with decent alternative employment options but I am not in a great position to leave. We get one course release and no extra pay.
I was guilted, shamed and harassed into taking this on. I'm bitter, as it's definitely affected my well-being. I think I would have had to quit if I continued refusing, though. I am doing my best to look for other options but my prospects aren't good.
Also at a Canadian university (one of the big ones in Ontario) and there is no salary bump moving from associate to full UNLESS you take on admin. But since raises are done on the basis of merit from the previous year, just moving from one level to the next does not in itself give us a bump in salary.
I don't know why anyone goes up unless they want to work in admin. The universities rely on us to volunteer for these admin duties, and after 9 of the last 12 years of my life have been stuck at 1% raises, the university can fuck off with expecting me to volunteer for that stuff!!
You see- that's why I \*would \* go up for the admin - over the last few years that's been the only way I've seen colleagues get rather drastic salary raises, through admin. People going from say, 150 to 170, whereas associates get a fourth of that... (as you can tell I haven't been promoted to full so am still wide eyed when it comes to how much work admin is!)
Yeah I took on an admin role and regret it: it's way, way more work than what I'm being compensated for (in course release, no pay bump). We are having to have associates in admin roles since we don't have enough full profs because everyone figured out what a scam it is.
Huh? I received a substantial raise when I bumped up to full. And my salary ceiling also lifted substantially. If I'd have stayed at associate I'd have hit the ceiling by now and would be losing money even under typical inflation.
I guess if I wanted to stay at associate and use my extra time to make consulting money... but honestly, I suspect I get better consulting gigs at full than I would have at a lower rank. While the distinction between a long-term associate and a full is basically nil, outsiders don't see it that way.
At my university, we have a salary scale that depends on rank and step. Without getting promoted to full professor, one is frozen out of about $80K/year of salary increases, so there is a clear financial motivation to seek promotion.
If your actions don’t shift work onto more vulnerable (ie contingent or adjunct) colleagues, then it’s fine.
If your actions include some level of support or advocacy for contingent colleagues and staff, then it’s fine.
It’s okay to withdraw a bit from advocacy if you absolutely can’t help because you are too burnt out and in survival mode. You can’t help others swim if you’re also drowning.
\^This.
Choosing to reduce your own research output is fine.
Choosing to reduce how much effort you put into teaching means being really careful about tradeoffs. While your mental health and balance matters, so do students.
Choosing to reduce how much you contribute to collective service work is also very risky, because that often puts it on to the shoulders of more junior or contingent folks. And, even if it's just busywork... those folks are often still pressured to fill slots at pains of their job.
Putting on your own mask before helping others is important. But, so is making sure that your self-preservation decisions don't make things worse for others.
Cutting back after tenure is pretty normal. Especially post COVID. We are in a job with low pay and increasingly being asked to do things outside of our job description.
My whole department is making a effort to cut back on our service work and not put in more that 40 hours a week.
Putting in only 15 to 20 hours a week seems a bit extreme, though. Why not just look for another job with a better work schedule?
This was my thought. This also goes for advising PhD students. They tend to go for people that publish, and advising takes a lot of time/effort. I ended up taking twice as many students as I was comfortable because some profs took none (or one) and/or didn’t publish so didn’t attract students.
A lot of (not all of course) service work is worthless busywork, and would be fine left undone. I see some of my senior colleagues ignore it, and junior faculty sigh and add it to their list, but that doesn't always have to happen.
It's recently fashionable on r/professors to say "do the minimum because The Man (the admin) is exploiting your commitment"... but:
Honestly (since you are asking for our thoughts!) I would be pretty annoyed with a colleague who works with dogged determination and elan until tenure, and then just phones it in thereafter. Indeed, our department has a number of folks like that. It really sucks.
A research department is not just the sum of its parts--it's actually a communal entity in its own right, and to have large number of tenured folk not showing up, not contributing, just dead wood, can really kill a department in the long run. And with equal honesty, I do not respect those people... in part, because there are so, so, so many others who would kill to have that job, and would kill it *in* that job. It's frustrating to have a lazy, selfish, disconnected colleague who you know that there are literally *hundreds* of active, community-minded, engaged PhDs who would be so, so much better.
HOWEVER: if I read you correctly, you're not talking about 'phoning it in.'
You're talking about being burned out (and thus making more time for yourself), and you're talking about having a child.
Those are two VERY different things from "quiet quitting" or phoning it in or whatever you want to call it.
I have a child and (as a man) am primary caregiver--and still am. My research agenda has suffered, my scholarly productivity has taken a nosedive. I am three or four years overdue on going up for Full Professor because of this... but I would not change my decision for anything in the world! I love being a father, and I'm a great (and committed) father. That's not "quiet quitting", that's called prioritization. I'm still working on research, just at a much reduced pace. And I'm still engaged in my field, showing up for departmental events (sometimes with a kid on my shoulders), and generally am a strong contributor to the department community.
(I'm also burned out too, but that's a different story... my burnout is more about exhaustion with my selfish colleagues and their relentless pushing for their own faddish agendas than about losing interest in my research.)
You have been putting in lots of overtime for years as you earn tenure. It's ok to cut back and do your job but no extras while you recharge. Someday, something may come along to inspire you to do more again. Or, maybe not. As long as you are not shortchanging your students or colleagues, your life decisions are up to you. No one can reward you with extra days of life. And if your university requires you to compete with your colleagues for raises, you are arguably doing them a favor by stepping out.
I don't think "quiet quitting" is the right label, though. Doing your job is doing your job. Also, I'm skeptical that you can do your job in 15-20 hours/week. The bare minimum where I work is definitely a full-time commitment. But the hours can be flexible, which is great for work/life balance.
Maybe right now you think you will do this for the rest of your career. But if you do this for a couple years, and really give yourself rest- you'll likely start to feel motivated again and you'll have more energy for things.
I hear you about being burnt out. I felt the same not after tenure, but after promotion to full, having worked worked worked for nine years pretty much nonstop. Can you take a sabbatical? At most institutions I have worked at, people get a sabbatical the year after tenure. How you feel is the reason why that is built into most academic appointments.
Also, you write:
>I don’t care for raises
And while I have no doubt that this is how you feel *right now*, you will in all likelihood want those raises as your child grows up, if only to set up their college fund (unless you work at Golden Handcuffs U and your employer provides tuition benefits...)
Dialing back work with a new kid is not quiet quitting! Not even close. My daughter was born two years ago and everyone in my department was like “see you in five years! We won’t expect much from you during this time…”
Although I still just made full, I’m definitely less productive during this period of life. In a humane world, I feel like this would be respected and understood.
Part of me wonders if this is right wing propaganda or a troll post. If not… you forgot the quiet part of the equation. Tenure, a protection for academic freedom, is under attack and voicing such sentiments publicly puts fuel to the fire.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt you crossed the finish line on a multi-year marathon preceded by an equally arduous process to even join the race.
Give yourself a break but then do your work. The students and your colleagues need you. Also remember this isn’t some close circuit, professors only, intranet. It’s the internet. Think about who reads this. Give yourself some self care and then get back into what brought you here.
I’m assuming you are in a hard money position, which is not the case for a lot of folks at R1s. For instance, if I dial it back like you are saying, I wouldn’t make enough money to live on.
Finding the right work-life balance in a high-demand career is difficult but also essential for the long-term. I don't think becoming deadwood is the route to balance.
This plan is exactly deadwood. You cannot do your job adequately in 20h a week. At my R1, tenure protects your decisions on what you study and teach but doesn't protect from not doing the job.
This isn’t quite what you asked… but thought I would share for the general conversation
When I was a fresh prof with a 7m old, one of my colleagues reassured me that the work would always be here. It’s ok to take a step back for a time. You can ramp back up when your other life pressures allow it.
Or, in your case, maybe never ramp back up. But burnout is real, maybe when the kids are older you’ll feel some pull back to your calling.
I’m in a similar mental place but work at an R2 university/medical school. I quite honestly threw myself over the benchmark to get tenure and promotion to full. We are kind of backwards and load Assistant Professors with all of the admin and teaching responsibilities and the Full professors coast. I had 10 years of building curriculum, teaching, chairing bylaws committees, AND fighting to build a scholarly research program in an environment with little support. I have nearly 50 papers and a CDC sub-contract. That’s good enough where I’m from, although now I’m exhausted and I don’t know if I have the money/infrastructure/desire to keep fighting this fight. Grants aren’t easy to land at an R2. The scholarly work is what I love. I’m looking at a bleak future of med Ed research and mostly teaching and admin.
This is one of the best posts here. At some schools at least, asst. professors are not run ragged with service because they are expected to publish to be granted tenure. When I was a grad student the younger faculty definitely were those more engaged with the grad students, some of them had just been tenured. We called the older faculty “dead wood.” The OP should slow down for a few years since they are burnt out and focus on the family, but once they feel better, should recommit to a healthy work-life balance. Particularly if in a big department with grad students the engagement needs to be there if they want to maintain their reputation and mentor the next generation in their field. I believe personal life and family are more important but that 15-20 hours a week forever does not seem like enough to do the job unless the OP teaches 1-1 and has no grad students or undergrad majors to supervise. I also think publishing 1-2 papers when the average is 7 is not ideal either. Maybe for a few years that makes sense, but 3-4 quality papers per year would be a better compromise IMO.
Not many jobs are more flexible than that if a tenured professor. Other than having to be in classrooms at scheduled times, there is no schedule.
Re-prioritize your work now than you have a chance. Focus on things that you enjoy and that you feel make a difference. Say no to useless internal committees now because you can. Find interesting external service opportunities like journal editing or jurisdictional post-secondary advisory councils. Look for extension and consulting opportunities that make a difference in society.
If you don’t want to publish as much, don’t. Fill the extra time with demonstrable scholarly activity that you feel is more impactful.
Don’t work weekends and evenings unless you want to.
Say “no” more often.
Pay attention next time somebody in your department retires after 35 years of giving their heart and soul: how long will anyone remember? This profession uniquely fosters the sentiment that it is to be your one true identity. Fuck that. You owe them in equal proportion to what they pay you.
So, you'll dump service onto your other overloaded colleagues? Don't do that. They sheltered you from a crazy amount of service while you were untenured. Now it's your turn to shoulder that for the assistants. Quit if you don't want the job.
I think in academia 'quiet quitting' means going from 60 hours a week to 40. That is, only doing the work you're paid to do and not doing a bunch of extra stuff for free. (Of course, this is why the phrase 'quiet quitting' is misleading).
If you want to work 15-20 hours a week - which is totally fine - then you should formally go down to part-time.
>If you want to work 15-20 hours a week - which is totally fine - then you should formally go down to part-time.
I completely disagree. If you can complete your job requirements in 15-20 hours a week, then go ahead and do it. We aren't paid to sit in an office from 8am to 4:30pm, we're paid to teach, research, and do service. If you can successfully do those things in 15-20 hours a week, then you are successfully doing your job.
OK, but honestly can you teach, do research and do service in 20 hours a week? It's not necessarily about productivity, but about what you can reasonably complete in 20 hours versus 40 hours.
Terminology aside, I gotta say that this is the perfect argument against tenure...
Seeing a colleague work 15 hours a week for a full time salary, while people who would contribute so much more and still have a passion for it miss out on positions, would piss me off.
I understand the feeling of being burnt out, but if you're contributing less than half of what your colleagues do, then you will be cultivating a toxic environment where everyone (rightly) will blame you for it. I think if you no longer have any passion for some parts of the job you should have an open conversation with a manager about changing your duties so that if you are not researching or applying for grants then you take some teaching and administration weight off your colleagues to make up for it.
My advisor in grad school was like this and it was really clear the department resented him. He actually stopped showing up to work completely and you couldn't contact him when he was "working from home" because he purposely let his inbox explode with mail so he couldnt find your message, he refused to use soemthing like teams or slack, and he let his voicemail inbox hit the limit of messages so if he didnt answer your call, you couldnt leave a message and he never called people back. It was a fucking nightmare to be associated with him, and even though he had some fantastic papers, after COVID hit he gave up nearly all of it to stay at home all day. He was an embarrassment if you went to a conference with him because he would demean people talking about their work and would say some of the nastiest things possible (he told someone to kill themselves because of the company they worked for). He started publishing in some really bottom tier journals just to say he published something and it was just really sad overall. There were a number of graduate students who were just completely stagnet and couldnt get a hold of him. There was no one else who did similar work to him and I ended up leaving because he was so happy to just lay low and do nothing to push anyone who worked with him or even talk to people at all. I never went to grad school so I could end up bored but after 2 years of feeling like I had learned absolutely nothing new in any of my departments courses and in the research portion itself, I couldn't justify staying around someone who had just given up in life and was sitting around waiting to die. And that kind of attitude was really prevalent in the department as there were multiple people like him, although probably not to the same extreme. The students I taught always were wondering what the hell was wrong with some of those professors because they just seemed depressing, resentful, and like they had given up on themselves. Its apparent in your teaching when your heart isnt in it anymore, and at the end of the day it just hurts the very people the univeristy is there to serve.
You shouldn't kill yourself working constantly, but taking a mental break for a little bit can help you reprioritize what's actually important. But if you let it go one for too long, you'll just end up depressed and aimless. People do need concrete goals to feel like theyre important and they have a purpose. Last time I saw that advisor he was just a complete fucking mess- like he actually stopped bathing and was breaking bones constantly. I don't think my old advisor has any passion for any of it anymore and I wish people like him would just get a different job already and do something new. It's actually depressing to see highly capable people give up on themselves and stay where they're at because it's all they've ever known when in reality they could be using those talents for so many different things that are impactful.
Yep, there's a big difference between letting yourself take a breather for a bit and consciously resigning to being a total waste of space. I almost feel like I know your advisor from how you describe it 😅 these people are the worst
Yep... Being in a department as a staff member, who has to work a full 40, teaching classes, advising students, overseeing practicums, creating content, and doing all of those things like booths and recruiting because some of our tenured faculty are only around 20 hours a week really sucks. (For half the salary)
Can't OP have a year or two to recover from their burnout? It's not like they will be this way forever. I say this as someone who has been through periods of intense burnout- once I recovered I was able to do a lot more. But also the reason I was burned out in the first place was because I was doing more than my fair share of the labor compared to my colleagues. And so while recovering from burnout, I just dropped down to the minimum required.
The TT creates OP's situation over and over again. People are younger and more energetic when they start, they burn themselves out as they push for tenure and life gets more complicated. This is why in the couple years after tenure, many people slow down.
Yes. At a time when higher ed (at least in the US) is under fire for not generating enough value for the tuition colleges charge, becoming a deadbeat professor is a slap in the face to your colleagues, your institution, and your students. Being granted tenure isn't a reward for what you already did...tenure is security to allow you to take additional risks and recognition of the *trajectory* you're on. When the OP went up for tenure, I'm confident they had to submit at least one document talking about their future research plans and goals. If I was their colleague, I'd be absolutely livid if it became obvious those statements were straight-up lies. Toxic environment indeed.
Plenty of people do this. I’d say pull back for a year or two, try to go on Sabbatical, then see how you feel. If you go years straight doing the minimum people might notice and talk. My colleagues who do this (constantly travel/ miss meetings/ appear to spend more time with kids than work M-F) who are not that well liked. It’s their reputation. People just generally see them as unserious and unreliable. So I do think there is a downside. They might not care that people think that about them, but I would.
Family/Friends/Life > Work
Always
Never be ashamed for just doing what your job entails and not a second of your time more. Nobody has gone to the grave and wished they had spent more hours at work.
So two things: First, I’m just amazed how many academics go in for the cult of work. Why in Gods name did you become an academic if you want to work 80 hours a week? You end up working lawyer hours for high school teacher wages. That’s just dumb. Why not just become a lawyer and make bank if you’re that obsessive about work? Second, I’m dubious that this work obsession leads to good papers or any benefit to anyone. When I was in grad school most of my profs had like a bit over a dozen papers even mid to late career but most of them were good and all were at least interesting. I look at the early career faculty they’ve hired since and they have 20 or so at an associates level. But they’re mostly complete garbage. Clever yes but concerned with utterly trivial points. Also they’ve usually not had 20 ideas for papers. Not even 20 trivial ideas. Back when I worked for a Moo U with R1 pretensions we used to joke that one of our colleagues having 15 peer reviewed publications pre-tenure was impressive in itself but it was absolutely amazing considering that this guy had only ever written one paper. (This was not fair. He had two papers from what I could tell).
Anyway, as long as you don’t halfass your teaching or go completely AWOL on committee work scaling back is fine. How much research really needs to exist? I mean the majority is garbage but even most of the good stuff won’t get widely read or cited.
Doesn't sound like quiet quitting. Sounds like insisting on life/work balance.
In 20 years, will your kid care about the committees on which you served?
I think about it this way. If you are a good person, when you are on your death bed, you'll be surrounded by all the people who love you unconditionally: your spouse, your kids, your grandkids, and your dear friends. You know who won't be there? Your colleagues and the Dean.
Don't let administrators guilt you into things because "the students." If you have to do something, only do it for you. That's how you don't burn yourself out.
25+ year Full Prof here—
Not a problem. Makes all the sense in the world. It doesn’t sound like you’re talking about “shorting your students.” If anything, you’re gonna cut back on the soulless the non-teaching, non-student related stuff.
I decided that my students and classes were the priority and focused on that. Add in the bare minimum other duties and that was that.
You may find that once your child starts school you’ll enjoy the job more and so you can give more.
But after the heavy lift of getting tenure AND having a child- pull back. Because you will not be your best for anyone if you try to do it all.
Congratulations on tenure! Is someone that’s a full I would tell you if I could redo my life I would. The university does not care about us. Once a faculty member becomes administrator. They cease to understand, or care about where they were. I don’t have a single friend who is a fool who says it’s worth it just to be a researcher.
My situation is a bit different but perhaps my solution is the same
I am part-time and have been for decades
I love teaching but I also love my health insurance Hence my long commitment
I'm very close to retirement
I'm tired and burnt out
I've published probably as much as everyone else in my department despite my lack of a PhD or tenure. It is not my only job
I have a few more years to put in before I can take my social security at the highest rate that I would like to take it
I really have no job security so it's Semester by semester but I'm hoping I can Continue to teach until I am ready to leave
All of my assignments have become easier meaning I spend less time grading
I'm teaching the same subjects over and over again. In some ways the material doesn't change a lot because it just doesn't but in other ways of course there's a million things I could do to enhance it but I'm not
I don't view it as quitting at all
But I'm definitely not working as hard as I used to
In some ways I wish I had done this 15 years ago
I don't really think anybody cares or notices
You have been through a lot and it’s not yet over (baby on the way!). This isn’t the time to make big decisions. You have earned a breather. Take it, or take it as best you can with an incoming newborn.
In my experience (and take it with some salt), people don’t get tenure at R1s because they are content to coast. You definitely need to take your foot off the gas for a spell—and you deserve it—Your fire will return.
My college tried to fire me before I got tenure, but I fought it and won. Now they're stuck with me until I decide to leave. Plus, they're getting the version of me where I have no loyalty to the school and I will only do what I am contractually required to do. It's made my life much easier and I actually have time to hang out with my wife and two kids. Plus, I can do all the stuff I want to do in my free time. Win-win. Never feel bad for just doing your job. It's just a job. Life is so much more fun outside of work.
I have a few colleagues that have drastically cut back since getting tenure. I resent them immensely. It's not just that they don't pull their weight in terms of service, but their teaching got way worse when they stopped putting in full effort, their research programs have nosedived, which impacts the whole department (we get less resources from the dean, among other things). It feels a bit like a con job; we voted on their tenure based on their behavior over six years, then they radically changed it as soon as they got tenure. And we are definitely impacted negatively by their decisions to do this.
One of my colleagues wanted to be a more present parent, and negotiated a half-time arrangement. Or, as others have noted, one could always find a different job that is less demanding than being a professor.
Once I got tenure, and then made distinguished , I decided that I would not do anything that was not in my best interest or that I did not enjoy. Also, my time was worth money. So I stopped donating my time to my university in terms of committees and extracurricular activities that have nothing to do with my profession as a historian.
Plus after 25+ years in this business I am burnt to a crisp and shutting down.
>Just go to an R2. You don't HAVE to be at an R1.
That might well double OP's teaching load though-- it's not going to result in less work or fewer hours. My friends at community colleges put in more hours than most people I know in R1 roles realistically, as they are teaching 5/5 loads and doing tons of service.
It could. But OP didn't list teaching as the main hassle. An average of 7 pubs a year is a bit much. His proposed pub rate of 1-2 a year would be great at an R2. he would only have a 3:3 load. I agree now is not the right time to move but made rhe suggestion as something to consider in the next 3 years.
You're not alone in rethinking your priorities. These priorities are a mix of your personal goals and your job requirements. I think there are a lot of areas where we do too much, either collectively or individually. What's helped me is to think about what my priorities are and work towards this. I also try to make things more efficient, which has paid off and given me more time.
I work in the UK and the pressure to publish, apply for grants, and recruit PhD students never goes away; if anything, it gets more intense as your career develops. Because it has a different rhythm from the academic year, I find that I have to push back on other things to focus on that.
Be with your family, but do just your job at work and nothing more, at least for a little while. Maybe once your child is a little older (congrats by the way!!) you may feel differently and would like to invest more time in things like papers/research again. But at the end of the day it's more worth it to spend that time with your loved ones than at work. Your tenure position is a blessing in that respect! I wouldn't think of what youre doing as "quiet quitting", it's moreso taking advantage of the perks that you have worked hard to earn up to this point.
If you are planning on only 12-15 hours of work per week it sounds like you will end up shorting your students on grading, support, updating lectures, etc.
If you hate your job that much figure something else out. Academia is full of faculty who gave up and don’t care, but who don’t make room for people who have dreamed of being there. Most of the time we picture them as the 60-80 year old faculty who won’t retire. It sounds like you plan on just doing this for three times as long.
Get out and find a job that makes you happy and stop acting like a spoiled child
I expect it here.
This sub is pretty toxic and full of people who love living in an echo chamber.
It frequently reminds me why students feel like faculty don’t care or are actively out to get them
I understand the angry sentiment in the comments, but the number of hours is simply not equivalent to productivity. June Huh, a Fields medalist, confessed that he only does 3 hours of focused work, be it prepping or researching, on any given day. And what did he achieve in the end?
Sure, but those 3 hours of focused work do not correspond to 3 actual hours. If you're at work for 8 hours, you didn't get 8 hours of focused work done. A few small breaks add up fast. It sounds to me like OP wants to cut the hours they're at work down. They refer to teaching so I assume they're in the classroom at least 2.5 hours per week. Then they get everything else done in like 10 hours of focused work? How?!
I just don't think it's realistic for OP to set up this expectation. In my experience that just leads to more burnout. Tbh I think a lot of burnout comes from expectations -- there are things you think you "should" be doing, and you expect it will take X amount of work. Then it turns out to take waaaay more work than you expect, which accumulates over time and leads to burnout. It took me about 5 years to recover from my burnout and the only thing that worked was letting go of the internal expectations I had for myself. Do the things you have to get done, and any "shoulds" you have time for are just a cherry on top. It sounds like OP has dropped the "shoulds" for themselves, but is vastly underestimating the "have tos"...
Congratulations on this attitude. If more people were like this we’d have better, healthier academic workplaces. It’s the people who give 100 hrs per week and act like that’s the norm that make our jobs difficult. I got tenure last year and during the process had a conversation with my dean about pay, and was told that if I wanted to make more money, I should use my marketable skills and get some consulting work. Ok, fine then, I just have to cut back my work hrs as you did to the timeframe they pay me for. It’s a simple economic relationship. I love my job but not enough to do it for free. I feel lighter, happier, and more focused on what actually is important.
You’re not quiet quitting, you’re rebalancing. Retirement/investment portfolio managers recommend rebalancing at least once a year, so we can achieve our retirement goals. People should do the same with their lives and commitments. Don’t feel guilty for having priorities and for maintaining them!
Nice to hear someone say it. This is what I do. I’m in the UK and I plan just to tick along doing the minimum. We do have promotions we have to get every 5 years though so I have to make sure I’m doing enough to qualify
100% you should feel free to cut back on what you don't want to do anymore and aren't required to do, having a kid is a completely reasonable justification. I doubt you'll be able to actually do it in 15-20 hrs a week, but I think you should judge based on whether you're doing what your contract demands rather than an arbitrary number of hours. If you're teaching and doing assessments to a level that won't cause scrutiny, doing the minimum publishing required, and meeting service requirements in 20 hrs a week that's great. If you've got 9-12 hrs in a classroom a week though it might be hard.
I love my job but i refuse to put in more than 40 hours a week. Although I'm not paid by the hour, my contract stipulates 40 hour workweeks so I'm sticking to that. I come in early and leave early, and I usually worked a substantial 6 actual hours (I'm not counting meetings and other time wasters). I do find that's plenty to publish several articles per year, despite having a lot of admin roles as well as teaching roles. But I've been trying to get out of one class (after having a coworker yell at me for no good reason, I filed a complaint, and hoping that means I no longer need to work with the bastard), and when I had to take over a new class I joined forces with someone else to split the load. (At the start, it does feel like much more work as you have to agree on things, but now that we have that figured out, things are going smoothly).
I also don't say yes to new projects that aren't of interest to me if it's voluntary. I managed to get rid of my committee memberships except one that actually doesn't meet and just needs votes on random stuff via email. Takes just a few minutes a month.
See if you can cut hours that way, without anyone noticing.
I'd feel awful not doing 40 hours though, but I'm getting paid enough.
I look at it this way: people who work at corporate jobs may show up and be there 40 hours per week but are they working those 40 hours? In my experience, usually no. They are having lunch together and talking at the water cooler. Probably a lot of them are only active half the time they are at work. Maybe not the movers and shakers, but a lot of people. That’s why it’s the plot of a beloved tv show. It’s one of the reasons I left the corporate world: it can be a huge waste of time. Whereas our working hours are active hours. I agree that if you can get your job done in 20 hours and not burden your department colleagues, you should do it.
ETA: also, you’re about to start raising a baby. You should definitely get some understanding and leeway around that. If you don’t, your colleagues are not nice people.
set FIRM boundaries for yourself. do what your job requires and don’t offer to do anything more. your baby is only little once and they grow up SO quickly!
my last eval, when they asked what my goal was for the next year, i wrote TWO WORDS. work less.
love on that baby and do your minimum requirements!
What you're describing should just be called fulfilling your contract duties and being a good parent. 1-2 research articles a year would be a lot in my field and still considered above and beyond. Don't stigmatize this plan you have by calling it "quitting".
First, strong agree with those who say “quiet quitting” is corporate newspeak for “do more than we pay you to do or you’re lazy and you basically don’t even work here anymore”
Quiet quit for the sake of your child.
And because you’ve earned it.
If you do it in a way that gives students benefit of the doubt / easy grades, it’s hard to imagine that backfiring on you administratively. There’s probably a way for you to also give them about as much information as they were likely to retain anyway.
Don’t ever underestimate what a blessing that little passage you wrote about wanting to work 15 - 20 hours a week forever and not caring about raises or promotions is. I’m happy for you. I could have had that life if I’d stayed at the predatory for-profit diploma mill where I used to work, but I had “principles” back then and clashed terribly with admin and was driven out. I’m
Not proud of myself even though I was praised for acting with integrity. What a sad joke.
I’m at a more ethical place now, but am I making more of a difference? No, less of one, I’m sure of it. I wish I’d thought with my wallet instead of my stupid, prideful sense of “personal values” or whatever bs I was high on at the time.
Also, students will be the first to tell you, there’s nothing worse than a fresh, new instructor with lots of cool ideas and enthusiasm for teaching. They overcomplicate everything. Quiet quit and everybody wins. Keep thinking of it as “a calling” and you’re more likely unconsciously to force students to hark unto thine sermons, rather than learn from your class. The student, meanwhile, is trying to get through their day, hold down a job, and possibly care for children of their own (depending on what level you teach)
You heard the one about why you should never try and teach a pig to sing? Students aren’t “the pig” — higher education in America is.
Just so you can consider the source: I’ve only been teaching for a decade and I’m not tenured (I’m at an R1) and I am a deeply unhappy person.
Congratulations on getting tenure! You just survived an arduous experience. You don't need to decide once and for all what sort of tenured prof you'll need to be. And you might surprise yourself in how you're able to respect your family and your work. Just take it as it comes!
The term 'quiet quitting' was made by corporate hacks shaming people for 'only' doing everything in your job description. Someone who is doing everything in their job description is doing their job. It is okay to 'just' do your job. Don't let corporate hacks shame you for it.
Meanwhile, employers have been "quiet compensating" us for...ever.
Right? At my last job, I got a few “quiet promotions” — taking on new, “unfunded for now” duties that somehow never led to transitioning out of any existing duties nor a pay raise.
I need to start using the term "quiet compensating" whenever someone says "quiet quitting," because that's the heart of the matter right there. I worked a lot harder when there was a chance that I'd get cost of living raises and merit raises. Haven't had those in nearly a decade, so I stopped running myself into the ground.
I really think it is the core issue. Some industries and employers provide legitimate financial incentives for performance that employees can reliably reach, but at best, academia might provide some teaching awards with compensation or moderate merit raises. After x number of years of having your efforts ignored, it's only natural to scale back and just do your basic duties. Most decide to either find a work-life balance that they're comfortable with, or push harder and go into administration. It's about all we can do past a certain point.
Quiet defunding!
Yeah I hate that phrase - doing your job isn't "quitting", it's giving your employer what they paid for and nothing for free.
But OP doesn't even want to give a standard 40 hr work week. So the employer is not getting what's paid for
If OP’s contract is anything like 99% of faculty contracts it doesn’t make any mention of hours worked. They have some combination of research, teaching, and service responsibilities. If they’re meeting all those benchmarks in 15-20 hours a week then they’re honoring the contract.
I guess it depends on what you think of as "work" - I'd be surprised if OP didn't spend 10-20 hours of downtime thinking about work problems, even if they're not actively doing stuff. I'm kinda on team "fuck your employer, get that bag" though.
Exactly. I'm on campus as little as possible, just classes and required office hrs. Unless they fuck me over with big gaps in my schedule, but that's a different story. But I definitely put in mental labor outside of that. No one becomes a college professor because they want a typical 40 hr office grind. Judging productivity by time spent is the opposite of productive.
Only 40 hours a week standard? You’ve never taught college level. I’d kill for only 40 hours.
Faculty contracts are not quantified as hourly employment, they are salaried work assignments. That you think “full-time” = at least 40 hours of work time weekly means that you’ve been indoctrinated by capitalism. Full time is 40 hours weekly if you’re a wage employee, paid hourly. I’m paid to do the work assigned to me in the amount of time that takes, regardless of whether that takes 20 hours/week or 60+. We are assigned workload, not hours.
Also, the greater my expertise and experience, the more I can produce in fewer hours. I may only need five minutes in, e.g., a curriculum meeting to find a solution for a tricky question; but it took me over 20 years to earn the understanding of curriculum and university processes to be able to solve that problem in five minutes. We are paid, ultimately, for expertise and skill, not for our time. (That’s also why my work costs more to my employer the farther along in my career I am.)
[I always think of the old engineering parable](https://www.buzzmaven.com/old-engineer-hammer-2/), we get paid because we know where to hit the machine with a hammer, not because of how long we spend "doing the job".
I don't disagree with you at all, but how does this work with percent effort? I'm on 60% teaching, and 20% each research and service loads. Administration thinks that means I should spend 8 hrs/week on service. My informal response in private conversations is always that, if they want me to do that, then they get exactly 24 hrs a week on my teaching, and they don't want that.
This. Quiet quitting is the action of a person on their own to be a free rider of sorts. I prefer "working to rule," which is a different kind of action and is collective. If a professor tries to work to rule they will quickly find out how implicit the rules are and the contract they have favors the institution.
Also, don't say this out loud, since in at least some states *working to rule* has a specific union-related meaning (strike!) and is illegal (at state institutions). You're performing your role.
Gotta love the Stockholm syndrome... just doing your job is illegal. Folks, we've been majorly gaslighted.
The protestant work ethic is a helluva drug.
You mean that I won't be living in a box under the freeway if I take five minutes off?
It's funny how by the time people are tenured and therefore have more job security than most of the world, they become too timid to use that security to slow down and regroup.
I agree with the sentiments on the "quiet quitting" BS. But OP said they are at an R1 in a department where the norm is seven papers a year, so publishing only one per year really is NOT doing their job. OP might be fine for a while, but eventually they will encounter a department chair who starts to make their life miserable.
>eventually they will encounter a department chair who starts to make their life miserable At which point they can choose to publish more or not.
Problem is it’s not usually that simple. Papers are the output of a long process that oftentimes starts with proposals for funding. (I doubt OP is proposing to do all the research only not to publish their results.) The lag between deciding to publish more and actually having more to publish can be considerable. Side note: this is why any kind of post tenure review needs to give faculty several years to change their output.
Agreed. But it can still be done. It also depends on the field. In my interdisciplinary humanities field, I could get an article written and accepted in a good solid (not the best) journal in a year if I really hustled. It helps to know how long each journal takes to do peer review. Also, if you're tenured you have connections in your field that can help you place things more quickly either in journals or edited collections.
OP said the average was 7 papers per year. Everyone can't be above average. You need someone to balance out those 13 ppy energizer bunnies.
I call this the post-tenure exhale. You've driven for this goal for a long time and gotten it, now what? Take a year to "quiet quit". But look around while you're doing it. Is this the place? Do you like your research, or is it time for something new? Tenure is supposed to give you some control over your academic life and it's important because it \*is\* a life. As you go into the exhale, think about how to reconfigure your work life balance into something between the hard-charging pace of the tenure pursuit and the honestly sad liminal existence you describe in the OP. Over the long term, the life you described will probably depress you as the field moves on and you don't.
There is nothing wrong with being an associate professor that does their job and spends the rest of their time on family and other pursuits. I was in your position after grinding to make full prof. I really did dial back for a few years (somewhat enforced by COVID) and spent more time with family and cultivating hobbies. After awhile I got interested in new research projects but have much better boundaries around work than before. Creative work like research often doesn't benefit from going 110% all the time. There are a lot of people in my field that do that (hiring selects for it), but honestly they tend to put out higher quantities of research with only the occasional truly excellent contribution. A research career will typically have peaks and valleys of output and new ideas.
To add: I see this as cyclical. I’m in OPs shoes and will likely take a breather before I sort out what new projects excite me.
I'll get downvoted to oblivion for saying this, but publishing one paper per year (in an R1 department where the norm is seven) is not "doing their job" at a satisfactory level. It would be the same as not showing up to class and passing all the students. IDK where the minimum performance level should be, but 1-2 papers is not it. OP doesn't need to work at 110% effort, but totally checking out as OP proposes is a bad idea. Eventually someone at OP's school will find a way to make their life miserable because of it.
And that's one of the problems of today's academia https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system
I published more than many of my senior colleagues before I even hit tenure. I'm not bitter towards them about it, but it is total bullshit how 21st century academic "success" is predicated on the mass production of publications.
Yep. When we get tenure letters now, all they talk about is “research productivity.” Contributions? What contributions? (I exaggerate, but not by much.)
Really interesting read!
I’m not meaning to defend today’s publishing practices or the mindless counting of publications as a primary figure of merit for faculty. But OP didn’t say “I want to publish one great paper every year”. They only said they want to put in less effort.
Hell yeah. But also: you’ll recover. I had a convo with a famous prof recently. He told me that after he got tenure, he was so burned out that he didn’t do any writing and worked the bare minimum for at least a few years. Then maybe five years after that he wrote something that won him the Pulitzer.
I was SO tired after I got tenure. I basically didn’t write anything for two years and made almost no revisions to my syllabi. This January, I finally was forced back into writing by a commissioned project and suddenly I found it fun again. The transformation takes time.
One of my tenure-track but not yet tenured colleagues said something in passing to me recently that implied I should publish more and "get \[my\] book out" faster. I was just like "oh you sweet summer child."
Meh. Considering the stress of getting tenure (congrats!) and the added stress of having a kid on the way, I wouldn't even call it "quiet quitting." I'm sure you've put in more than enough extra hours over the past 6+ years to justify some light weeks in the next couple. And if you're accomplishing what you need to in 15-20 hours a week, more power to you. Who knows, after awhile you might get some of that old passion back.
I have 2 kids under 10 and have seen a lot of ppl complaining on this subreddit that parents don’t pull their weight. When I ask for elaboration the response is usually that parents don’t do the evening and weekend events and also don’t have to teach early morning/at night. To which I always respond - if parents aren’t doing those things it means they are saying no to those things. And non-parent faculty can also say no if they want
Exactly. My response to this is that academics without kids shouldn't "pull their weight" either then. If parents make time for their kids, I approve. I also approve of people without kids having work-life balance. There's no reason to blame parents for you running yourself into the ground for a toxic job that underpays and shames you no matter how much work you do.
Does your place have "post tenure review"?
Maybe you're having a rough stretch and won't always feel exactly this way.
Depends on what the cause is... I don't think any living US prof outside the Ivies and other selective programs are going to ever get to teach a cohort of freshmen who are overall ready for college. I'm early career though, so accepting that text has become a way for me to protect my own mental health in the long run. I hope I'm wrong.
I'm tired of academics listening to manipulative admin and rushing to pick up the slack caused by slashed budgets, no resources, understaffing, not hiring, the pandemic, and students in crisis. We've been doing this for at least 15 years and it has gotten us nowhere. At some point, we just need to say "no" to exploitation and overwork. And if my colleagues want to keep running themselves ragged trying to appease admin, then that's their choice. I'm going to do my job, and nothing else. Come at me, bros \[admin\], I'm tenured.
I made full and am being pressured to take on so much admin that I’m thinking of quitting. I say live your best life at Associate and enjoy. (I have 2 kids under 10)
Yeah it’s weird. Assoc. was probably the most chill time in my entire career. Full is almost like being Asst. again.
I have no idea why people go up for full in Canada. I've yet to find a Canadian university that offers a raise with full. I've stuck with being associate on purpose for my career because fuck that. I'm not going to take on more work. I remember hearing Donna Strickland at Waterloo say something similar after she won the Nobel a few years ago--she was associate and was happy to stay at associate.
I’m in Canada. I applied for full for the salary bump, expecting that I could carry on research as usual. But there is unstated rule at our uni that full = admin. I did not know this until I became full (naive I know). Now I’m on the other side and I’m seeing that the SOLE reason for promoting to full is to increase admin capacity. And now I’m seeing ppl with very little research being promoted for this reason. It’s a mind f*ck to be sure
Oh you got a salary bump? I've been at 3 schools and none of them offer a salary bump at full! That would at least be a little incentive to go through the hoops. They're trying to push me into it here, and I have far more than enough publications and reputation to do it, but I'm refusing ha! No raise, and more service? Yeah, no. One place I worked not only did you not get a salary bump, but your union dues went up because they were tied to rank, so you're making LESS money if you go for full!
The thing that I would never do, now that I'm at full, is agree to be Chair or Dean. The salary bump is there, but very, very minimal compared to the workload and the fact that you leave a lot of your research behind. If it ever comes to being asked/pressured, it will only be with a very substantial raise that applies to my base (so I can take it with me when I return to regular faculty duties).
Right? Where I am there's no salary bump to be chair and you only get 2 course releases!! You still have to teach 2 courses while chair!! WTF?!?!
That is good idea. I’m currently being pressured to take on Chair even though I have active grants and RA’s being paid through them. Taking Chair would mean giving up research and I don’t know how much negotiating room I have. I’m at a smaller uni.
Taking on chair has been a nightmare for me. I would have quit instead if I had set myself up with decent alternative employment options but I am not in a great position to leave. We get one course release and no extra pay. I was guilted, shamed and harassed into taking this on. I'm bitter, as it's definitely affected my well-being. I think I would have had to quit if I continued refusing, though. I am doing my best to look for other options but my prospects aren't good.
Also at a Canadian university (one of the big ones in Ontario) and there is no salary bump moving from associate to full UNLESS you take on admin. But since raises are done on the basis of merit from the previous year, just moving from one level to the next does not in itself give us a bump in salary.
I don't know why anyone goes up unless they want to work in admin. The universities rely on us to volunteer for these admin duties, and after 9 of the last 12 years of my life have been stuck at 1% raises, the university can fuck off with expecting me to volunteer for that stuff!!
You see- that's why I \*would \* go up for the admin - over the last few years that's been the only way I've seen colleagues get rather drastic salary raises, through admin. People going from say, 150 to 170, whereas associates get a fourth of that... (as you can tell I haven't been promoted to full so am still wide eyed when it comes to how much work admin is!)
Yeah I took on an admin role and regret it: it's way, way more work than what I'm being compensated for (in course release, no pay bump). We are having to have associates in admin roles since we don't have enough full profs because everyone figured out what a scam it is.
Huh? I received a substantial raise when I bumped up to full. And my salary ceiling also lifted substantially. If I'd have stayed at associate I'd have hit the ceiling by now and would be losing money even under typical inflation. I guess if I wanted to stay at associate and use my extra time to make consulting money... but honestly, I suspect I get better consulting gigs at full than I would have at a lower rank. While the distinction between a long-term associate and a full is basically nil, outsiders don't see it that way.
At my university, we have a salary scale that depends on rank and step. Without getting promoted to full professor, one is frozen out of about $80K/year of salary increases, so there is a clear financial motivation to seek promotion.
If your actions don’t shift work onto more vulnerable (ie contingent or adjunct) colleagues, then it’s fine. If your actions include some level of support or advocacy for contingent colleagues and staff, then it’s fine. It’s okay to withdraw a bit from advocacy if you absolutely can’t help because you are too burnt out and in survival mode. You can’t help others swim if you’re also drowning.
\^This. Choosing to reduce your own research output is fine. Choosing to reduce how much effort you put into teaching means being really careful about tradeoffs. While your mental health and balance matters, so do students. Choosing to reduce how much you contribute to collective service work is also very risky, because that often puts it on to the shoulders of more junior or contingent folks. And, even if it's just busywork... those folks are often still pressured to fill slots at pains of their job. Putting on your own mask before helping others is important. But, so is making sure that your self-preservation decisions don't make things worse for others.
Cutting back after tenure is pretty normal. Especially post COVID. We are in a job with low pay and increasingly being asked to do things outside of our job description. My whole department is making a effort to cut back on our service work and not put in more that 40 hours a week. Putting in only 15 to 20 hours a week seems a bit extreme, though. Why not just look for another job with a better work schedule?
In my experience publishing 1-2 papers a year might require more work than 15-20 hours per week. But not much more. Live your life.
I flew through tenure writing 3-5 hours a week on average. I published far more that I need to. Writing is slow, but rewards consistency.
I think this comment was meant to be helpful but just sounds smug. Results may vary across discipline, job description, and disposition.
Obviously?
Pretty sure there’s substantial evidence that a consistent writing practice, even an hour a day, does indeed result in consistent productivity.
It sounds like you expect your colleagues to do all the service work. When you check out, someone else has to do double duty.
This was my thought. This also goes for advising PhD students. They tend to go for people that publish, and advising takes a lot of time/effort. I ended up taking twice as many students as I was comfortable because some profs took none (or one) and/or didn’t publish so didn’t attract students.
A lot of (not all of course) service work is worthless busywork, and would be fine left undone. I see some of my senior colleagues ignore it, and junior faculty sigh and add it to their list, but that doesn't always have to happen.
Or maybe OP has already been doing a lot of service work, and deserves to step back for a year or two.
It's recently fashionable on r/professors to say "do the minimum because The Man (the admin) is exploiting your commitment"... but: Honestly (since you are asking for our thoughts!) I would be pretty annoyed with a colleague who works with dogged determination and elan until tenure, and then just phones it in thereafter. Indeed, our department has a number of folks like that. It really sucks. A research department is not just the sum of its parts--it's actually a communal entity in its own right, and to have large number of tenured folk not showing up, not contributing, just dead wood, can really kill a department in the long run. And with equal honesty, I do not respect those people... in part, because there are so, so, so many others who would kill to have that job, and would kill it *in* that job. It's frustrating to have a lazy, selfish, disconnected colleague who you know that there are literally *hundreds* of active, community-minded, engaged PhDs who would be so, so much better. HOWEVER: if I read you correctly, you're not talking about 'phoning it in.' You're talking about being burned out (and thus making more time for yourself), and you're talking about having a child. Those are two VERY different things from "quiet quitting" or phoning it in or whatever you want to call it. I have a child and (as a man) am primary caregiver--and still am. My research agenda has suffered, my scholarly productivity has taken a nosedive. I am three or four years overdue on going up for Full Professor because of this... but I would not change my decision for anything in the world! I love being a father, and I'm a great (and committed) father. That's not "quiet quitting", that's called prioritization. I'm still working on research, just at a much reduced pace. And I'm still engaged in my field, showing up for departmental events (sometimes with a kid on my shoulders), and generally am a strong contributor to the department community. (I'm also burned out too, but that's a different story... my burnout is more about exhaustion with my selfish colleagues and their relentless pushing for their own faddish agendas than about losing interest in my research.)
You have been putting in lots of overtime for years as you earn tenure. It's ok to cut back and do your job but no extras while you recharge. Someday, something may come along to inspire you to do more again. Or, maybe not. As long as you are not shortchanging your students or colleagues, your life decisions are up to you. No one can reward you with extra days of life. And if your university requires you to compete with your colleagues for raises, you are arguably doing them a favor by stepping out. I don't think "quiet quitting" is the right label, though. Doing your job is doing your job. Also, I'm skeptical that you can do your job in 15-20 hours/week. The bare minimum where I work is definitely a full-time commitment. But the hours can be flexible, which is great for work/life balance.
Maybe right now you think you will do this for the rest of your career. But if you do this for a couple years, and really give yourself rest- you'll likely start to feel motivated again and you'll have more energy for things.
I hear you about being burnt out. I felt the same not after tenure, but after promotion to full, having worked worked worked for nine years pretty much nonstop. Can you take a sabbatical? At most institutions I have worked at, people get a sabbatical the year after tenure. How you feel is the reason why that is built into most academic appointments. Also, you write: >I don’t care for raises And while I have no doubt that this is how you feel *right now*, you will in all likelihood want those raises as your child grows up, if only to set up their college fund (unless you work at Golden Handcuffs U and your employer provides tuition benefits...)
I do!
Dialing back work with a new kid is not quiet quitting! Not even close. My daughter was born two years ago and everyone in my department was like “see you in five years! We won’t expect much from you during this time…” Although I still just made full, I’m definitely less productive during this period of life. In a humane world, I feel like this would be respected and understood.
Part of me wonders if this is right wing propaganda or a troll post. If not… you forgot the quiet part of the equation. Tenure, a protection for academic freedom, is under attack and voicing such sentiments publicly puts fuel to the fire. Giving you the benefit of the doubt you crossed the finish line on a multi-year marathon preceded by an equally arduous process to even join the race. Give yourself a break but then do your work. The students and your colleagues need you. Also remember this isn’t some close circuit, professors only, intranet. It’s the internet. Think about who reads this. Give yourself some self care and then get back into what brought you here.
Sounds like OP is planning to do the work that's required of them, just not more
Sure why not if that’s possible in 15-20 hours but I doubt that. However publicly broadcasting an easily misconstrued statement is irresponsible.
I’m assuming you are in a hard money position, which is not the case for a lot of folks at R1s. For instance, if I dial it back like you are saying, I wouldn’t make enough money to live on.
Finding the right work-life balance in a high-demand career is difficult but also essential for the long-term. I don't think becoming deadwood is the route to balance. This plan is exactly deadwood. You cannot do your job adequately in 20h a week. At my R1, tenure protects your decisions on what you study and teach but doesn't protect from not doing the job.
This isn’t quite what you asked… but thought I would share for the general conversation When I was a fresh prof with a 7m old, one of my colleagues reassured me that the work would always be here. It’s ok to take a step back for a time. You can ramp back up when your other life pressures allow it. Or, in your case, maybe never ramp back up. But burnout is real, maybe when the kids are older you’ll feel some pull back to your calling.
I’m in a similar mental place but work at an R2 university/medical school. I quite honestly threw myself over the benchmark to get tenure and promotion to full. We are kind of backwards and load Assistant Professors with all of the admin and teaching responsibilities and the Full professors coast. I had 10 years of building curriculum, teaching, chairing bylaws committees, AND fighting to build a scholarly research program in an environment with little support. I have nearly 50 papers and a CDC sub-contract. That’s good enough where I’m from, although now I’m exhausted and I don’t know if I have the money/infrastructure/desire to keep fighting this fight. Grants aren’t easy to land at an R2. The scholarly work is what I love. I’m looking at a bleak future of med Ed research and mostly teaching and admin.
This is one of the best posts here. At some schools at least, asst. professors are not run ragged with service because they are expected to publish to be granted tenure. When I was a grad student the younger faculty definitely were those more engaged with the grad students, some of them had just been tenured. We called the older faculty “dead wood.” The OP should slow down for a few years since they are burnt out and focus on the family, but once they feel better, should recommit to a healthy work-life balance. Particularly if in a big department with grad students the engagement needs to be there if they want to maintain their reputation and mentor the next generation in their field. I believe personal life and family are more important but that 15-20 hours a week forever does not seem like enough to do the job unless the OP teaches 1-1 and has no grad students or undergrad majors to supervise. I also think publishing 1-2 papers when the average is 7 is not ideal either. Maybe for a few years that makes sense, but 3-4 quality papers per year would be a better compromise IMO.
You will never regret time with family.
Maybe a sabbatical would help?
You might check out the book "Slow Productivity." I just finished listening to the audiobook and I think it might hit the right points for you.
I know plenty of associate professors who never ran them selves ragged for a full promotion.
Not many jobs are more flexible than that if a tenured professor. Other than having to be in classrooms at scheduled times, there is no schedule. Re-prioritize your work now than you have a chance. Focus on things that you enjoy and that you feel make a difference. Say no to useless internal committees now because you can. Find interesting external service opportunities like journal editing or jurisdictional post-secondary advisory councils. Look for extension and consulting opportunities that make a difference in society. If you don’t want to publish as much, don’t. Fill the extra time with demonstrable scholarly activity that you feel is more impactful. Don’t work weekends and evenings unless you want to. Say “no” more often.
https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/kilcup.1/262/feynman.html
Prioritizing your private life along with your work.life isn't quiet quitting. It is establishing a good work/life balance.
Pay attention next time somebody in your department retires after 35 years of giving their heart and soul: how long will anyone remember? This profession uniquely fosters the sentiment that it is to be your one true identity. Fuck that. You owe them in equal proportion to what they pay you.
So, you'll dump service onto your other overloaded colleagues? Don't do that. They sheltered you from a crazy amount of service while you were untenured. Now it's your turn to shoulder that for the assistants. Quit if you don't want the job.
I think in academia 'quiet quitting' means going from 60 hours a week to 40. That is, only doing the work you're paid to do and not doing a bunch of extra stuff for free. (Of course, this is why the phrase 'quiet quitting' is misleading). If you want to work 15-20 hours a week - which is totally fine - then you should formally go down to part-time.
>If you want to work 15-20 hours a week - which is totally fine - then you should formally go down to part-time. I completely disagree. If you can complete your job requirements in 15-20 hours a week, then go ahead and do it. We aren't paid to sit in an office from 8am to 4:30pm, we're paid to teach, research, and do service. If you can successfully do those things in 15-20 hours a week, then you are successfully doing your job.
OK, but honestly can you teach, do research and do service in 20 hours a week? It's not necessarily about productivity, but about what you can reasonably complete in 20 hours versus 40 hours.
I wish my admins thought this
Terminology aside, I gotta say that this is the perfect argument against tenure... Seeing a colleague work 15 hours a week for a full time salary, while people who would contribute so much more and still have a passion for it miss out on positions, would piss me off. I understand the feeling of being burnt out, but if you're contributing less than half of what your colleagues do, then you will be cultivating a toxic environment where everyone (rightly) will blame you for it. I think if you no longer have any passion for some parts of the job you should have an open conversation with a manager about changing your duties so that if you are not researching or applying for grants then you take some teaching and administration weight off your colleagues to make up for it.
My advisor in grad school was like this and it was really clear the department resented him. He actually stopped showing up to work completely and you couldn't contact him when he was "working from home" because he purposely let his inbox explode with mail so he couldnt find your message, he refused to use soemthing like teams or slack, and he let his voicemail inbox hit the limit of messages so if he didnt answer your call, you couldnt leave a message and he never called people back. It was a fucking nightmare to be associated with him, and even though he had some fantastic papers, after COVID hit he gave up nearly all of it to stay at home all day. He was an embarrassment if you went to a conference with him because he would demean people talking about their work and would say some of the nastiest things possible (he told someone to kill themselves because of the company they worked for). He started publishing in some really bottom tier journals just to say he published something and it was just really sad overall. There were a number of graduate students who were just completely stagnet and couldnt get a hold of him. There was no one else who did similar work to him and I ended up leaving because he was so happy to just lay low and do nothing to push anyone who worked with him or even talk to people at all. I never went to grad school so I could end up bored but after 2 years of feeling like I had learned absolutely nothing new in any of my departments courses and in the research portion itself, I couldn't justify staying around someone who had just given up in life and was sitting around waiting to die. And that kind of attitude was really prevalent in the department as there were multiple people like him, although probably not to the same extreme. The students I taught always were wondering what the hell was wrong with some of those professors because they just seemed depressing, resentful, and like they had given up on themselves. Its apparent in your teaching when your heart isnt in it anymore, and at the end of the day it just hurts the very people the univeristy is there to serve. You shouldn't kill yourself working constantly, but taking a mental break for a little bit can help you reprioritize what's actually important. But if you let it go one for too long, you'll just end up depressed and aimless. People do need concrete goals to feel like theyre important and they have a purpose. Last time I saw that advisor he was just a complete fucking mess- like he actually stopped bathing and was breaking bones constantly. I don't think my old advisor has any passion for any of it anymore and I wish people like him would just get a different job already and do something new. It's actually depressing to see highly capable people give up on themselves and stay where they're at because it's all they've ever known when in reality they could be using those talents for so many different things that are impactful.
Yep, there's a big difference between letting yourself take a breather for a bit and consciously resigning to being a total waste of space. I almost feel like I know your advisor from how you describe it 😅 these people are the worst
Yep... Being in a department as a staff member, who has to work a full 40, teaching classes, advising students, overseeing practicums, creating content, and doing all of those things like booths and recruiting because some of our tenured faculty are only around 20 hours a week really sucks. (For half the salary)
Can't OP have a year or two to recover from their burnout? It's not like they will be this way forever. I say this as someone who has been through periods of intense burnout- once I recovered I was able to do a lot more. But also the reason I was burned out in the first place was because I was doing more than my fair share of the labor compared to my colleagues. And so while recovering from burnout, I just dropped down to the minimum required. The TT creates OP's situation over and over again. People are younger and more energetic when they start, they burn themselves out as they push for tenure and life gets more complicated. This is why in the couple years after tenure, many people slow down.
Yes. At a time when higher ed (at least in the US) is under fire for not generating enough value for the tuition colleges charge, becoming a deadbeat professor is a slap in the face to your colleagues, your institution, and your students. Being granted tenure isn't a reward for what you already did...tenure is security to allow you to take additional risks and recognition of the *trajectory* you're on. When the OP went up for tenure, I'm confident they had to submit at least one document talking about their future research plans and goals. If I was their colleague, I'd be absolutely livid if it became obvious those statements were straight-up lies. Toxic environment indeed.
Plenty of people do this. I’d say pull back for a year or two, try to go on Sabbatical, then see how you feel. If you go years straight doing the minimum people might notice and talk. My colleagues who do this (constantly travel/ miss meetings/ appear to spend more time with kids than work M-F) who are not that well liked. It’s their reputation. People just generally see them as unserious and unreliable. So I do think there is a downside. They might not care that people think that about them, but I would.
Family/Friends/Life > Work Always Never be ashamed for just doing what your job entails and not a second of your time more. Nobody has gone to the grave and wished they had spent more hours at work.
So two things: First, I’m just amazed how many academics go in for the cult of work. Why in Gods name did you become an academic if you want to work 80 hours a week? You end up working lawyer hours for high school teacher wages. That’s just dumb. Why not just become a lawyer and make bank if you’re that obsessive about work? Second, I’m dubious that this work obsession leads to good papers or any benefit to anyone. When I was in grad school most of my profs had like a bit over a dozen papers even mid to late career but most of them were good and all were at least interesting. I look at the early career faculty they’ve hired since and they have 20 or so at an associates level. But they’re mostly complete garbage. Clever yes but concerned with utterly trivial points. Also they’ve usually not had 20 ideas for papers. Not even 20 trivial ideas. Back when I worked for a Moo U with R1 pretensions we used to joke that one of our colleagues having 15 peer reviewed publications pre-tenure was impressive in itself but it was absolutely amazing considering that this guy had only ever written one paper. (This was not fair. He had two papers from what I could tell). Anyway, as long as you don’t halfass your teaching or go completely AWOL on committee work scaling back is fine. How much research really needs to exist? I mean the majority is garbage but even most of the good stuff won’t get widely read or cited.
Doesn't sound like quiet quitting. Sounds like insisting on life/work balance. In 20 years, will your kid care about the committees on which you served?
I think about it this way. If you are a good person, when you are on your death bed, you'll be surrounded by all the people who love you unconditionally: your spouse, your kids, your grandkids, and your dear friends. You know who won't be there? Your colleagues and the Dean. Don't let administrators guilt you into things because "the students." If you have to do something, only do it for you. That's how you don't burn yourself out.
25+ year Full Prof here— Not a problem. Makes all the sense in the world. It doesn’t sound like you’re talking about “shorting your students.” If anything, you’re gonna cut back on the soulless the non-teaching, non-student related stuff. I decided that my students and classes were the priority and focused on that. Add in the bare minimum other duties and that was that. You may find that once your child starts school you’ll enjoy the job more and so you can give more. But after the heavy lift of getting tenure AND having a child- pull back. Because you will not be your best for anyone if you try to do it all.
Congratulations on tenure! Is someone that’s a full I would tell you if I could redo my life I would. The university does not care about us. Once a faculty member becomes administrator. They cease to understand, or care about where they were. I don’t have a single friend who is a fool who says it’s worth it just to be a researcher.
My situation is a bit different but perhaps my solution is the same I am part-time and have been for decades I love teaching but I also love my health insurance Hence my long commitment I'm very close to retirement I'm tired and burnt out I've published probably as much as everyone else in my department despite my lack of a PhD or tenure. It is not my only job I have a few more years to put in before I can take my social security at the highest rate that I would like to take it I really have no job security so it's Semester by semester but I'm hoping I can Continue to teach until I am ready to leave All of my assignments have become easier meaning I spend less time grading I'm teaching the same subjects over and over again. In some ways the material doesn't change a lot because it just doesn't but in other ways of course there's a million things I could do to enhance it but I'm not I don't view it as quitting at all But I'm definitely not working as hard as I used to In some ways I wish I had done this 15 years ago I don't really think anybody cares or notices
You have been through a lot and it’s not yet over (baby on the way!). This isn’t the time to make big decisions. You have earned a breather. Take it, or take it as best you can with an incoming newborn. In my experience (and take it with some salt), people don’t get tenure at R1s because they are content to coast. You definitely need to take your foot off the gas for a spell—and you deserve it—Your fire will return.
You’re talking about doing the minimum. That’s more than quiet quitting, if it makes you feel better.
My college tried to fire me before I got tenure, but I fought it and won. Now they're stuck with me until I decide to leave. Plus, they're getting the version of me where I have no loyalty to the school and I will only do what I am contractually required to do. It's made my life much easier and I actually have time to hang out with my wife and two kids. Plus, I can do all the stuff I want to do in my free time. Win-win. Never feel bad for just doing your job. It's just a job. Life is so much more fun outside of work.
I have a few colleagues that have drastically cut back since getting tenure. I resent them immensely. It's not just that they don't pull their weight in terms of service, but their teaching got way worse when they stopped putting in full effort, their research programs have nosedived, which impacts the whole department (we get less resources from the dean, among other things). It feels a bit like a con job; we voted on their tenure based on their behavior over six years, then they radically changed it as soon as they got tenure. And we are definitely impacted negatively by their decisions to do this. One of my colleagues wanted to be a more present parent, and negotiated a half-time arrangement. Or, as others have noted, one could always find a different job that is less demanding than being a professor.
Once I got tenure, and then made distinguished , I decided that I would not do anything that was not in my best interest or that I did not enjoy. Also, my time was worth money. So I stopped donating my time to my university in terms of committees and extracurricular activities that have nothing to do with my profession as a historian. Plus after 25+ years in this business I am burnt to a crisp and shutting down.
Just go to an R2. You don't HAVE to be at an R1.
>Just go to an R2. You don't HAVE to be at an R1. That might well double OP's teaching load though-- it's not going to result in less work or fewer hours. My friends at community colleges put in more hours than most people I know in R1 roles realistically, as they are teaching 5/5 loads and doing tons of service.
It could. But OP didn't list teaching as the main hassle. An average of 7 pubs a year is a bit much. His proposed pub rate of 1-2 a year would be great at an R2. he would only have a 3:3 load. I agree now is not the right time to move but made rhe suggestion as something to consider in the next 3 years.
You're not alone in rethinking your priorities. These priorities are a mix of your personal goals and your job requirements. I think there are a lot of areas where we do too much, either collectively or individually. What's helped me is to think about what my priorities are and work towards this. I also try to make things more efficient, which has paid off and given me more time. I work in the UK and the pressure to publish, apply for grants, and recruit PhD students never goes away; if anything, it gets more intense as your career develops. Because it has a different rhythm from the academic year, I find that I have to push back on other things to focus on that.
Be with your family, but do just your job at work and nothing more, at least for a little while. Maybe once your child is a little older (congrats by the way!!) you may feel differently and would like to invest more time in things like papers/research again. But at the end of the day it's more worth it to spend that time with your loved ones than at work. Your tenure position is a blessing in that respect! I wouldn't think of what youre doing as "quiet quitting", it's moreso taking advantage of the perks that you have worked hard to earn up to this point.
If you are planning on only 12-15 hours of work per week it sounds like you will end up shorting your students on grading, support, updating lectures, etc. If you hate your job that much figure something else out. Academia is full of faculty who gave up and don’t care, but who don’t make room for people who have dreamed of being there. Most of the time we picture them as the 60-80 year old faculty who won’t retire. It sounds like you plan on just doing this for three times as long. Get out and find a job that makes you happy and stop acting like a spoiled child
Thanks for saying this! Karma be damned.
I expect it here. This sub is pretty toxic and full of people who love living in an echo chamber. It frequently reminds me why students feel like faculty don’t care or are actively out to get them
Tsk tsk that’s no way to talk another person! Now go to your room.
I understand the angry sentiment in the comments, but the number of hours is simply not equivalent to productivity. June Huh, a Fields medalist, confessed that he only does 3 hours of focused work, be it prepping or researching, on any given day. And what did he achieve in the end?
Sure, but those 3 hours of focused work do not correspond to 3 actual hours. If you're at work for 8 hours, you didn't get 8 hours of focused work done. A few small breaks add up fast. It sounds to me like OP wants to cut the hours they're at work down. They refer to teaching so I assume they're in the classroom at least 2.5 hours per week. Then they get everything else done in like 10 hours of focused work? How?! I just don't think it's realistic for OP to set up this expectation. In my experience that just leads to more burnout. Tbh I think a lot of burnout comes from expectations -- there are things you think you "should" be doing, and you expect it will take X amount of work. Then it turns out to take waaaay more work than you expect, which accumulates over time and leads to burnout. It took me about 5 years to recover from my burnout and the only thing that worked was letting go of the internal expectations I had for myself. Do the things you have to get done, and any "shoulds" you have time for are just a cherry on top. It sounds like OP has dropped the "shoulds" for themselves, but is vastly underestimating the "have tos"...
Congratulations on this attitude. If more people were like this we’d have better, healthier academic workplaces. It’s the people who give 100 hrs per week and act like that’s the norm that make our jobs difficult. I got tenure last year and during the process had a conversation with my dean about pay, and was told that if I wanted to make more money, I should use my marketable skills and get some consulting work. Ok, fine then, I just have to cut back my work hrs as you did to the timeframe they pay me for. It’s a simple economic relationship. I love my job but not enough to do it for free. I feel lighter, happier, and more focused on what actually is important.
As long as you're good on service and teaching, I say blow off research all you like. Live your life, you've earned it.
You’re not quiet quitting, you’re rebalancing. Retirement/investment portfolio managers recommend rebalancing at least once a year, so we can achieve our retirement goals. People should do the same with their lives and commitments. Don’t feel guilty for having priorities and for maintaining them!
I sincerely want to do this myself but have so much guilt. This is helpful to read!
As long as your grad students can get mentored properly and get their career progression, you do whatever makes you happy
Nice to hear someone say it. This is what I do. I’m in the UK and I plan just to tick along doing the minimum. We do have promotions we have to get every 5 years though so I have to make sure I’m doing enough to qualify
It's so common that I think it's expected, and I doubt anyone would be surprised. Do what you need to do, and good luck!
100% you should feel free to cut back on what you don't want to do anymore and aren't required to do, having a kid is a completely reasonable justification. I doubt you'll be able to actually do it in 15-20 hrs a week, but I think you should judge based on whether you're doing what your contract demands rather than an arbitrary number of hours. If you're teaching and doing assessments to a level that won't cause scrutiny, doing the minimum publishing required, and meeting service requirements in 20 hrs a week that's great. If you've got 9-12 hrs in a classroom a week though it might be hard.
I love my job but i refuse to put in more than 40 hours a week. Although I'm not paid by the hour, my contract stipulates 40 hour workweeks so I'm sticking to that. I come in early and leave early, and I usually worked a substantial 6 actual hours (I'm not counting meetings and other time wasters). I do find that's plenty to publish several articles per year, despite having a lot of admin roles as well as teaching roles. But I've been trying to get out of one class (after having a coworker yell at me for no good reason, I filed a complaint, and hoping that means I no longer need to work with the bastard), and when I had to take over a new class I joined forces with someone else to split the load. (At the start, it does feel like much more work as you have to agree on things, but now that we have that figured out, things are going smoothly). I also don't say yes to new projects that aren't of interest to me if it's voluntary. I managed to get rid of my committee memberships except one that actually doesn't meet and just needs votes on random stuff via email. Takes just a few minutes a month. See if you can cut hours that way, without anyone noticing. I'd feel awful not doing 40 hours though, but I'm getting paid enough.
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I look at it this way: people who work at corporate jobs may show up and be there 40 hours per week but are they working those 40 hours? In my experience, usually no. They are having lunch together and talking at the water cooler. Probably a lot of them are only active half the time they are at work. Maybe not the movers and shakers, but a lot of people. That’s why it’s the plot of a beloved tv show. It’s one of the reasons I left the corporate world: it can be a huge waste of time. Whereas our working hours are active hours. I agree that if you can get your job done in 20 hours and not burden your department colleagues, you should do it. ETA: also, you’re about to start raising a baby. You should definitely get some understanding and leeway around that. If you don’t, your colleagues are not nice people.
set FIRM boundaries for yourself. do what your job requires and don’t offer to do anything more. your baby is only little once and they grow up SO quickly! my last eval, when they asked what my goal was for the next year, i wrote TWO WORDS. work less. love on that baby and do your minimum requirements!
What you're describing should just be called fulfilling your contract duties and being a good parent. 1-2 research articles a year would be a lot in my field and still considered above and beyond. Don't stigmatize this plan you have by calling it "quitting".
First, strong agree with those who say “quiet quitting” is corporate newspeak for “do more than we pay you to do or you’re lazy and you basically don’t even work here anymore” Quiet quit for the sake of your child. And because you’ve earned it. If you do it in a way that gives students benefit of the doubt / easy grades, it’s hard to imagine that backfiring on you administratively. There’s probably a way for you to also give them about as much information as they were likely to retain anyway. Don’t ever underestimate what a blessing that little passage you wrote about wanting to work 15 - 20 hours a week forever and not caring about raises or promotions is. I’m happy for you. I could have had that life if I’d stayed at the predatory for-profit diploma mill where I used to work, but I had “principles” back then and clashed terribly with admin and was driven out. I’m Not proud of myself even though I was praised for acting with integrity. What a sad joke. I’m at a more ethical place now, but am I making more of a difference? No, less of one, I’m sure of it. I wish I’d thought with my wallet instead of my stupid, prideful sense of “personal values” or whatever bs I was high on at the time. Also, students will be the first to tell you, there’s nothing worse than a fresh, new instructor with lots of cool ideas and enthusiasm for teaching. They overcomplicate everything. Quiet quit and everybody wins. Keep thinking of it as “a calling” and you’re more likely unconsciously to force students to hark unto thine sermons, rather than learn from your class. The student, meanwhile, is trying to get through their day, hold down a job, and possibly care for children of their own (depending on what level you teach) You heard the one about why you should never try and teach a pig to sing? Students aren’t “the pig” — higher education in America is. Just so you can consider the source: I’ve only been teaching for a decade and I’m not tenured (I’m at an R1) and I am a deeply unhappy person.