No more "Mr Teacher"

Well, I must have applied for at least 30-40 teaching and head of Arts department jobs in Education (with decreasing frequency the older I got) without much success but I applied for one 3D software creative position in industry this year and the company gave me the post but asked me to take on the department manager’s role as they felt I had better experience than the candidates who applied for that post.

Funny, 27 years or so of teaching at University and local college end this month and I’m going back into Industry - pay rise, better and more powerful computer and more responsibility come with the new job. Can’t say I’m sorry - whatever my colleagues at college say - when I started, a full time course was 5 days a week and next September - it will be 2.5 days a week. Mind you - we had less chiefs in those early days and more Indians while these days - the number of chiefs continues to grow and the numbers of those actually bringing the students in and teaching them has shrunk horribly.

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First: Best of luck on the new endeavor @DoobiesOobies.

Second, it seems ironic (and global) that as the number of advanced education degrees awarded in an educational system increase, the number of administrative positions escalate at least comparably (even faster in some systems) while the ratio of pure teaching positions declines. At least in the US, as federal government spending on education has risen steeply in the last 50 years (as have education degrees and administrative positions), our global ranking in education has plummeted. For purposes of this note, I merely point out correlation.

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Best wishes for your career change, @DoobiesOobies

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Congrats and smooth sailing!

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Congratulations and good luck!!!

Edited to add, I taught post-secondary (community college equivalent) for programming and networking. I lasted one year. Found out I was having a kid (yay!) and realized my salary wasn’t enough. I was paid so little compared to industry that within 5 years I had doubled my pay and now make more than triple in the 14 years since I left that job.

I mean, I liked teaching well enough, but that much? No. So I really feel for you.

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@DoobiesOobies : Good luck to you. Industry and Education each have their unique aspects. Having experience in both can provide interesting insights and can be very fulfilling. Just remember that these kind of changes aren’t irreversible; if you feel like you’ve made a mistake, you can always go back…

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I found that hard to live with in the end.
There has been a huge change with people who actually bring the money in and do the chalkface work becoming outnumbered by high salary people with seemingly made up job roles that don’t actually contribute to the student’s education.

Couldn’t do it anymore.

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