Growth of academics on such terms precedes pandemic.
According to a fresh set of figures on university staff from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 32.4 per cent of the academic workforce in the country were employed on a teaching-only basis in 2019-20, up almost 2 percentage points on the year before.
The share has been rising consistently since 2015-16, something that has been attributed to the upcoming research excellence framework and its policy that all research-active staff should be submitted for assessment. It is thought that some universities have been employing more academics on teaching-only terms to restrict the number of submitted staff to those with the best research records.
Most of those employed on teaching-only contacts are part-time staff and more than half are women, although the share of men and full-time staff on such terms has been growing year-on-year.
