French academics launch campaign against low pay and insecure university jobs

A new campaign in France is drawing attention to low pay and insecure employment among university teachers and early-career researchers, calling for better working conditions and more permanent academic positions.

The movement, called Je suis Léa, was launched by Carina Bury, a French-German academic with a PhD in international law who teaches at two universities in Paris. Bury works as a temporary hourly paid lecturer, an arrangement that leaves her paid only for the time spent teaching in the classroom, while other academic responsibilities remain unpaid.

Bury earns around €40 per hour of classroom teaching. However, she does not receive additional payment for activities such as marking examination papers and supervising exams. She has also described difficulties meeting basic living expenses, including groceries and medical costs, despite her academic qualifications and teaching work.

Her experience reflects a wider employment arrangement in French higher education. The country has more than 150,000 hourly paid teachers, according to a government report published in 2025. These temporary workers, known as vacataires, are often brought in to teach while pursuing other professional activities. However, the arrangement is also used by aspiring academics who take on hourly teaching assignments while seeking permanent university positions.

The 2025 report acknowledged that gaps in available data make it difficult to determine how many hourly paid teachers face financial insecurity. While some hold other jobs, others depend heavily on temporary teaching work.

Bury said the lack of permanent academic positions and the financial uncertainty associated with temporary contracts had made it difficult for researchers to build stable careers in universities.

Je suis Léa calls for higher pay and permanent academic positions

The Je suis Léa campaign seeks to bring together university workers facing insecure employment and push for changes to the conditions under which temporary academics work.

Its 12 demands include a parliamentary inquiry into precarious employment in academia, an increase in hourly teaching pay from around €40 to €80 and the creation of more permanent academic positions.

The movement has also begun collecting accounts from university employees. Within its first month, it had received hundreds of testimonies from workers describing their experiences of job insecurity and difficult working conditions.

The campaign takes inspiration from Germany's #IchBinHanna movement, which highlighted the lack of permanent academic positions and the uncertainty faced by researchers working on temporary contracts. The campaign gained support among academics and became a wider public discussion about employment conditions in German research institutions.

Bury has said that speaking publicly about precarious employment can be difficult for academics, particularly those who depend on supervisors and institutions for future opportunities. She has also criticised responses that place the responsibility for managing work-related stress on individual researchers rather than addressing the employment conditions behind it.

For academics seeking permanent university positions, temporary teaching work can become a prolonged period of uncertainty. Bury is also preparing for France's Agrégation, a competitive national examination that offers a route to a permanent university professorship. Balancing this preparation with teaching responsibilities and research makes taking up full-time work outside academia difficult.

The campaign has emerged as France approaches its presidential elections in April 2027, bringing employment conditions in universities into a wider political discussion.

Although the figure of more than 150,000 hourly paid teachers indicates the scale of the employment arrangement, it does not establish how many are experiencing financial hardship. The government's own report notes the limitations in available data, making the extent of financial precarity difficult to measure.

The campaign is seeking to make those working conditions more visible and press for changes that would give temporary university teachers and early-career researchers greater financial security and more stable career prospects.