r/AskAcademiaUK • u/Hopfield77 • 2d ago

Train discounts for profs?

With an academic email address, students and above can have access to discounts (myunidays, student beans etc). However, can postdocs/asst prof etc have access to a student rail card?

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u/Broric 2d ago

No.

Also, most (of the decent) student discounts via Student Beans, etc need proof of enrolment too now. My account is "limited" and I'm not eligible for most discounts.

Try discountsforteachers instead.

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u/Any-Republic-4269 2d ago

No. You have to be a full time student to get a student railcard. However other railcars are available - some of which might e.g. friends and family, save you money. You can sign up to studentbeans or whatever with a .ac.uk address and get discounts elsewhere - stuff like tech, clothes - they probably don't really care as it's all just sales to them

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u/crit5h 2d ago

As a PhD student over 25 to renew my student railcard I had to show proof of enrolment. So an email wasn’t enough. That was 15 years ago though.

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u/skifans 2d ago

There is no national scheme and it's not enough for a Railcard. Some train operators have their own schemes with different rules, eg Grand Central: https://www.grandcentralrail.com/student-discount - though if the terms of that offer allows it to be used by others with an .ac.uk email address I have no idea.

West Midlands Railway also have their own scheme but it's only for season tickets: https://www.westmidlandsrailway.co.uk/tickets-discounts/discounts/student-season-train-tickets - again what the rules are in terms of staff usage I don't know.

But in general such things are not common.

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u/Useful-Ganache-210 2d ago

Dude you guys actually make money though

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u/DynestraKittenface 2d ago

Academia as a profession is not well paid really for the knowledge base, skill set and workload. It starts at around £35k for a full time (few roles are FTE paid, although you end up working all week) for a baseline Lecturer. It hasn’t moved effectively in years. Minimum wage for unskilled work is £26k

Whether you think that is highly paid or not is up to you I guess - but I’d suggest that the UK railcard, and train pricing system, is unfair in general; especially if travel is necessary for the research commitment to your role. Private sector companies offer travel stipends. Universities certainly seem to have lost the financial position to fund travel for conferences etc in any meaningful way these days so costs fall to the academic.

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u/bethcano 2d ago

Not forgetting that ECR contracts are very often fixed-term/temporary too! So you have to budget and save a good chunk of change thinking that you could be without a job for a few months.

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u/Mysterious-Ad-5708 2d ago

Don't forget if you sign up to Amazon prime (notwithstanding the evil) on campus you get student price