Mary, martle feels every sympathy with Richard. But I don't agree that universities are necessarily bad places for creative people. Often they seem to do everything in their power to seem as if they are, but there is always potential for good work - even in today's bureacratic and penny-pinching times.

The very nature of higher education is changing rapidly in many ways. In earlier times, there was a certain default deference towards lecturers and professors, a tacit agreement with the notion that they knew what 'was best' for students to learn, and a less intensive workload to allow plenty of time to pursue one's research. Nowadays, with the expansion of higher education (and let's bear in mind that it wasn't until around the 1960s that hardly anyone other than those from very privileged backgrounds were likely to be able to go into higher education at all, in much of Europe) and the emergence of a new generation of students, there are different demands, and a new level of competition between institutions to attract them. Whilst one side of me would like to go back to the old ways, I'd find it hard to make a concrete case for a system where the students' views and desires are little taken into account. And this nowadays seems to take the form of demands for more job-prospect/skills-focused learning, a demand for 'relevance', and in terms of music, a relative dethroning of the position that early music and new music in particular, and even 'classical' music in general, occupied within university curricula. It takes a lot of adjustment for those of us who had a more traditional university education to adapt to this new situation, which isn't likely to change. But I do wonder if this isn't some form of revisiting of the debates of the 1960s, when in a similar manner students expressed their discontent with traditional teaching and the like?

That said, there are many very real problems in contemporary academia, most obviously to do with funding, but also - especially in music (often a little amateurish in British universities) - a devaluing of serious scholarship, with some gaining research degrees and publications for producing dressed-up journalism or material more noteworthy for its rhetoric than its research.

Of course this is a personal matter (it is for me, too, as I also work in academia), but when there are lots of voices saying all that's wrong with academia today, why does a different view become a 'personal obsession' - or is that just a rhetorical term for 'a view that does not agree with mine'?

Seeing your tendency to resort to ad hominem attacks against those (by no means just me) who don't just tell you what you want to hear, I'm not entirely surprised that you don't feel at home in academia.

I've had plenty of doubts about staying in academia during the 5 years or so during which I've been involved in it. But it's a privilege, not just a luxury, and I feel that if I cannot make a compelling case for how things should be different (and then try and play some small part in bringing that situation about), then the onus is on me or anyone else to adapt to new circumstances. It's probably very hard, though, for those numerous people in academia who see the teaching as nothing more than a way of subsidising their research.

Is that the best you can do? Do you not think I and many others might have also faced the types of things that are bothering you at the moment, but might have arrived at other conclusions?

I think it's far more straightforward than that - some people are suited to some jobs and some to others and like everyone has said, if you don't like a job you get a different one.  I've done a little classroom training and hated it - my voice is quite soft so I was perpetually straining it trying to be loud enough, so now I write the material instead, which I'm better at and prefer.

And this thread is for being supportive and empathetic, surely?  Yes we all have problems but we all need a rant sometimes too.

I am not an academic, but for me the difficulty of academic life is relentless pressure to publish in good journals while doing all sort of routine teaching, preparation, meeting with students, meetings, lectures.
Where do they think people get time to do serious research? In their sleep?

And there is no time for family at all.
Many people on the department have nervous break downs. And not only people who work have break downs, their partners can not take it too. I know many people like that here and elsewhere.