As I’ve said before, not all academic jobs are the same.

Some people really value teaching. They do it well. They figure out how to do it better. Seeing students get it is what motivates them.

They are, as Chris Atherton noted recently, “exactly the kind of person you’d want teaching your kids when they go off to university.”

And if you are one of those people, you could do worse than to read all of what Chris has to say in that blog post. (I’m not just saying this because she says nice things about me in it, though I’ll give you fair warning that she does.)

Here are her tips in a nutshell. Do go read the whole post to get the detail.

Be Yourself.

Acknowledge that academia doesn’t encourage sharing or nurture team players.

The absolute best thing you can do is connect with other people who share your passions. (Take charge of your personal learning network.)

She’s got lots of great ideas about how to do the latter.

Also, as a former colleague of mine used to say about media, policy matters. So the way that the financial squeeze plays out in the UK is somewhat different from how it will play out in the US or in Canada.

And one thing to note about the UK, is that there are policy pressures to be good at teaching. They don’t align as nicely with traditional academic values as the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and they haven’t had as much impact on funding so far, but they do exist.

There are also other people within higher education (everywhere) that care about these things. And some of those people are trying to influence the directions of specific institutions and departments.

Building your network is going to make it easier to find those jobs that are more aligned with your values, even if it can’t do much about the overall labour market situation.