Lecturers at 68 universities across the UK will start a 10 day walk-out this week over pay and pensions. There looks to be no end in sight to the ongoing industrial dispute between the University and Colleges Union (UCU) and university management. With students looking set to face further disruptions to their studies; a resolution must be found – and quickly.
The University and College Union (UCU) has called the strike due to disagreements with Universities UK and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) over poor working conditions, cuts to pensions, and the lack of pay rises for university staff. The reality of the situation is that universities care as little about their students as they do about their lecturers.
No formal consensus has been reached after the industrial action that occurred in December of last year, staff feel they have no other option than to strike again causing disruption to millions of students’ education. Currently, 68 universities have agreed to the three nationwide walkouts starting on February 14th and if lecturers see no changes to their pension plans and contracts, the future will most likely be filled with more disruption.
All staff should feel safe at their workplace and should not have to be constantly worrying about being able to maintain their quality of life during their retirement, making this a hugely important cause to support. However, with many students feeling abandoned by their university by being given little support with complicated content and having strikes added to their already long list of worries, is it really fair for the UCU to be taking out their frustration on the students? The majority of students stand by their tutors rather than the institutions that seem to work against them. But there is little that students can do to support them whilst dealing with their cumbersome workload made even heavier by strikes. Students should share information across all social media platforms to spread awareness of the cause and do their absolute best to support their lecturers.
Many lecturers have argued that as consumers of the product that the university offers, it is down to us to volley the universities to supply the product that we are paying for. However, without consumer rights, there is nothing that we can do other than continuously complain to the institutions that choose not to take notice of us.
Around 1.5 million students have a student loan, which gets paid directly to the university by the government. This means that most students cannot withhold any money for the services that they are not fully receiving. Removing or refunding the money that the university receives for the services that the students are not obtaining would cause some visible damage to the institution. Students were unable to obtain any kind of refund for the almost inadequate education they received throughout the pandemic, why would this situation be any different? As those at the top of the universities will continue to earn their wages even with the vast amount of student dissatisfaction, they do not need to take our opinions into account.
After losing over a year of education and high quality face-to-face teaching owing to COVID-19, is it fair to be taking even more valuable teaching time away from students that have suffered greatly from the uncertainty of their futures and rising levels of anxiety? At the end of the day, what are these strikes achieving?
Many students are going to gain unequal levels of education and support throughout these strikes. Humanities departments are seeing the largest numbers of lecturers going on strike due to the huge wage imbalance seen between humanities lecturers and their STEM counterparts. With these subjects having the least amount of contact hours to begin with, many students will be missing up to a third of their lessons for this term. In spite of these evident inequalities in different subjects teaching, these students are expected to perform well in their end of year assessment even though they have lost out on time that would have been used to develop essential skills further. Many students will struggle to perform at a similar level as to when they have received a full term of teaching. Our futures are being used as bargaining chips in a debate that should not involve us.
Whilst overall it is clear that the majority of students will not be affected by the strike action taking place, it is those few unlucky students, mainly in arts and humanities departments, that will be left to bear the brunt of the poor communication that occurs between universities and their staff. What are these students actually paying for? An overly expensive library card?
The issues that lecturers and the UCU are raising need to be dealt with by the universities as soon as possible. Current and future students do not deserve to miss out on vital learning opportunities thanks to the avariciousness of institutions and their leaders. This is not about a war between students and lecturers, it is about protecting both parties from the mismanagement of universities.
Words by Amy Britton