It is no secret that the university sector in the UK is experiencing a massive financial crisis. I guess this is why I’m getting new requests to work for universities for nothing. I wrote a post about this 11 years ago, after which the situation got a lot better for a while. I’m not suggesting my post caused that: there was a lot of chat about the issue on Twitter and Facebook, which were useful platforms in those days, and sympathetic academics helped to make the change. But now it’s happening again.

One recent request was from a Russell Group university which made a post-tax surplus of £35m in 2025. This was a lot lower than its 2024 surplus, and I do understand that businesses have to be careful with their money. But it is still THIRTY-FIVE MILLION POUNDS. My own most recent post-tax surplus is £14,545. So what makes it OK for that big and profitable business to ask me to contribute my expertise, which is based on 27 years of research experience and 15 years of scholarly experience, for free?

Of course it’s not actually a university asking me, it’s a person. I don’t blame individuals for trying to find good opportunities for their students, events, colleagues etc. But it is the university which would be paying me (or not, as the case may be). And people in universities need to remember that they represent an organisation which is often, despite its protestations, very wealthy.

If I am invited to work in a university, that means there is nobody on that university’s payroll who can do whatever it is I am being invited to do. The same, no doubt, applies to plumbers, roofers, landscapers, and so on. Do universities ask those professionals to work for nothing? Of course they don’t. So why is it somehow, apparently, once again OK to ask external knowledge professionals to work for nothing?

Fortunately there are still universities which are paying me to work for them. So far this year I have worked for Dublin City University, Nottingham Trent University, Bath Spa University, Ulster University (twice), and Queens University Belfast. I have had an enquiry about my availability for 2026-27 from Birmingham City University, where I have worked every year since 2016, and Brunel University invited me to work there but unfortunately that was on a date I couldn’t do.

Also, I get good feedback. Here are some examples from a creative academic writing workshop I ran at Ulster University in April (I have permission to share them):

Very useful for writers – but also just that the speaker was brilliant and inclusive.

This has been the most beneficial workshop / event I’ve been to since I started in September – it was as if Helen was able to climb inside my head and activate the ‘WRITE’ lever!

I’ve really struggled to get the creative & the academic writing as I couldn’t separate them – and yesterday really was a golden pathway that showed how I write IS good enough. I wrote more yesterday than I have from when I started my PhD in September.

Would appreciate taking points from Helen on how to make workshops more inclusive/accessible. She elegantly addresses them without disrupting the flow of the class nor does it feel like she has to do them out of training.

So it’s not just me saying my work has value.

I will and do work for nothing, but I reserve that for (a) user-led groups with no funding and (b) my own passion projects: the International Creative Research Methods Conference, the Journal of Creative Research Methods, and the Independent Research Ethics Committee.

It seems important to highlight this, not only for my own sake, but also for the sake of the increasing number of independent researchers and scholars. Expertise has value. This means we need to set sensible prices for our own expertise, and – where necessary – fight for our expertise to be valued equally by others.