I'm slightly surprised to hear, contrary to what I'm so often told about bureaucracy, RAE targets and under-pay/funding, that these are good days to be going into academia, according to Warwick economist Andrew Oswald in The Independent (and on his website). Too bad my job-hunting has so-far been unsuccessful, but at least if he's right I'm not heading down a dead-end in my current projected career.
For what it's worth, his advice to aspiring academics is: be different (while lottery-voting is hardly paradigm-shifting, it does seem to be somewhat off the beaten track, and strike most people as at least slightly crazy), do teacher training (again, check - I took a Learning Institute course this term), stay away from media until later in your career, and try to get stuff published (running out of time on that one - I need to get the thesis done asap, while still funded).
Keep up the good work.
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