NUS launches Postgraduate Employment Survey
NUS is delighted the launch its first major piece of research for the new Postgraduate Campaign in collaboration with UCU: a Postgraduate Employment Survey.
You can access the survey here
The Postgraduate Employment Survey seeks to find out:
- what kinds of higher education employment roles postgraduate research students undertake within and outside their institutions
- the quality of the postgraduate higher education employment experience in terms of information and support
- how postgraduates’ experience of being employed in a teaching role compares to their experience of other kinds of paid work in higher education
The results of the survey will be used to inform and update the NUS/UCU Postgraduate Employment Charter and produce a Guide to the Charter for the use of unions, scheduled to be released in early 2010.
Please disseminate the link to the Postgraduate Employment Survey widely and encourage as many doctoral or recently postdoctoral researchers as possible to fill it in.
You may wish to use the email below as a model:
Dear researchers,
NUS and UCU have recently launched a Postgraduate Employment Survey which aims to uncover the experiences of postgraduate researchers who are employed in academic or academic related roles in higher education institutions in the UK.
Employment can be anything from teaching undergraduates to exam invigilation to library work to lab demonstrator to research assistant, as long as it was undertaken in a UK university between September 2008 and the present day.
If you have undertaken any kind of employment since September 2008 for your own or another institution as a postgraduate research student, please take this opportunity to complete the survey and let us know about your employment conditions, good, medium or bad.
In particular, if you have undertaken a teaching role as part of your postgraduate employment experience, NUS and UCU are interested in what kinds of support and training are offered to postgraduates that teach and whether you feel confident and well-resourced in your teaching role.
The survey should take no more than 15-20 minutes to complete. All researchers who complete the survey will be given the opportunity to be entered into a prize draw to win £50 of Amazon vouchers.
Access the survey by clicking the link below:
http://surveymonkey.com/s/BRYX8QQ
Aaron Porter, VP (Higher Education), NUS, Ed Bailey, UCU, [insert the name of your Education Officer here]
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