The Lecturer: EASIEST job of 2013?

Southampton academics were left incensed after a recent poll conducted by American business website Forbes announced the position of ‘University Lecturer’ to be the least stressful job of 2013. The […]


Southampton academics were left incensed after a recent poll conducted by American business website Forbes announced the position of ‘University Lecturer’ to be the least stressful job of 2013.

The job title appeared at first place in a list of ten jobs which included such roles as librarian, drill press operator(?!) and hair stylist.

According to Forbes:

Unless they teach summer school, lecturers are off between May and September and they enjoy long breaks during the school year, including a month over Christmas and New Year’s and another chunk of time in the spring. They don’t spend too many hours in the classroom, and although for tenure-track professors, there is some pressure to publish books and articles, deadlines are few. Working conditions tend to be cozy and civilized and there are minimal travel demands, except perhaps a non-mandatory conference or two’.

Naturally, staff here at Southampton are appalled. One lecturer from the Faculty of Humanities commented:

The writer really appears to have this impression of the gentleman academic from the 1930s who has some sort of lofty superiority which he somehow manages to express by doing very little, but nobody like that would survive more than 10 minutes in higher education in the United Kingdom. It does not really have any relevance to the UK situation: there is probably greater similarity between the situation of many of my colleagues and road sweepers, than there is between the same colleagues and tenure track professors in American universities.’

So in true Tab style, we open the debate: Is the life of a University lecturer really as simple as long holidays and the odd clip-art sprinkled PowerPoint? And if not, which title would you place as the least stressful job of 2013? Answer in the comments below!