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I'm a valedictorian of a university and wanted to continue the research path by applying for a teaching assistant position at my faculty. After submitting the profile, the faculty announced that I must wait for the official position because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They let me teach a few classes and only signed a contract to lecture, pay by class (because they don't have enough lecturers), and promised to recruit me in the near future (it's been half a year since then).

But I have just realized that the other faculties are still recruiting full-time teaching assistants normally. So I may have lost a lot of benefits like salary per month, health insurance, fund, ... during a semester. Is this a trick to take advantage of fresh graduates? What things I can do right now? I have ignored a lot of opportunities because of these lies.

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    Just out of curiosity: what kind of advice do you expect from us? Have you tried to directly ask your department about the situation?
    – Greg
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 6:57
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    > ...wanted to continue the research path... Have you read the Wellcome Trust's "What researchers think about the culture they work in"? Yes, very likely you're already being exploited from the start.
    – Lou Knee
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 11:38
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    Fig. 5: Barely two-thirds of late-career researchers were positive about research as a career choice. And AIUI that's after the statistical skewing of the ones who already baled out or were forced out not being included in the survey sample. Go read that report and make sure you're at least making an informed choice. I'd love to end on a positive note, but those are hard to find in this sector...
    – Lou Knee
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 12:46
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    This could be entirely reasonable if there are different risks for students with different Faculties. The impact of COVID could be quite different for different things, depending on the way students come together or don't. Different faculties might also be constrained financially in different ways. This is, therefore, a local issue. They might be abusing you. They might be doing you a (career boosting) favor.
    – Buffy
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 13:09
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    I guess you could compare whether the "full-time teaching assistants" in other faculties are teaching on-line or in-person vs. yourself, as a measure of back-to-normal. And it could even be that the impact of COVID on your specific faculty has left it in financial difficulties, hence not allowed to hire. But none of that is an excuse not to be upfront with you about the situation. Either they have the money and should hire you, or they don't and should be honest with you.
    – Lou Knee
    Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 13:26

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the faculty announced that I must wait for the official position because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They let me

"The faculty", "they" ... let's speak clearly: it is probably one very smart person not doing any decisions, because they can count on you being the dirty job. So for them you are Business as Usual. They may have the moral excuse that some regulations is preventing them from doing a direct call to hire you, although this seems not to be the case from what you refer about other faculties.

Not only you are harming yourself, you are also harming others, because you are setting a possible precedent for the next person taking over your role (please do not take this personally, I am just thinking from the system perspective).

It is well known that among CEOs there are more people prone to psychotic behavior and social disorder ... faculty head/department head are kind of CEO of the faculty.

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  • Thank you for letting me know that. I don't know who give the decision that hires me or not, I only converse with the secretary of the faculty, another lecturer I knew can not give me any information. So sad when knowing that this is a dirty job, I worked as others and only have low salary per class.
    – Monad
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 12:12
  • "I don't know who give the decision that hires me or not" you can start defending your rights when you know your rights. Get in touch immediately with the student association, with the ombdusman, even with HR. There may not be a direct person that decides to hire you, but there is for sure someone responsible for arranging and providing that all the bachelor and master courses your faculty is offering are covered by someone teaching them, so ...
    – EarlGrey
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 16:20
  • This answer seems to not understand how university budgets work… often you have different pools of funds available to hire different types of staff. Different departments can also be given different allocations. Our department always has money for TAs and adjuncts and only rarely can hire more advanced positions.
    – Dawn
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 20:15
  • @Dawn having to apply for external funds to hire more advanced position is not an acceptable excuse for the faculty to say "that OP must wait for the official position because of the COVID-19 pandemic". Different budgets are different budgets as much as different persons have to apply to different budgets. Stop providing excuse for despicable behavior from "leaders" that (most likely) passed through the grinding machine themselves and learned nothing.
    – EarlGrey
    Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 12:28
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    So I think this is attributing their behavior to malice (talking about honesty/lies) It is just as likely that the department head thinks they have clearly communicated to the OP, but it was not actually clear because the head thought that the info about the pots of money and their lack of control was obvious (because it is obvious to the head). The head may just have forgotten what sort of info a new grad needs and isn’t explaining as much as they need to.
    – Dawn
    Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 19:17

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