Anyone in the UCU?

[Closetlibrarian]

And striking at end of Feb?

I joined UCU after the last strike, so this will be my first. Even though I voted in favour it, I'm now in an utter quandary. I have an absolute monster of a semester coming up and I'm fretting about all the lectures, tutorials, etc, I'll have to cancel as part of the strike.

If you've gone on strike before how did you present it to your students so that they didn't just get really pissed off with you for cancelling lectures (that we're then, according to UCU, not supposed to reschedule)?

Also, how did you mange with the loss of income? I'm the 'breadwinner', so 14 days of strike action is going to massively impact us (i.e. I'm not sure we'll be able to pay our bills).

That’s really scary user - that UCU don’t have the expertise to assess a proposal. How the eff is any progress going to happen?

It's UUK that don't have any actuaries.

As pp wrote, UUK need to agree to an honest consultation period, and use the considerable actuarial science expertise that is available within the sector (i.e. following the suggestions in Imperial's VC Alice Gast's letter).

One cannot expect an agreement with details to be hashed out within a period of days, because implications of increasing contributions do have to be costed very carefully, according to a range of assumptions, for best and worst scenarios. As Athene Donald wrote yesterday, this has to be done transparently, with all assumptions on the table with the projections.

Yes, it's UUK that don't seem to have the required expertise. UCU definitely do. Sally Hunt may not agree with various proposals from UCU members with actuarial science backgrounds, but at least UCU has that expertise there. Not sure it is represented in the UCU negotiating team, though.

I don't think anyone thinks that this can be solved without a compromise from all sides user. But, given the whole "pensions holiday" situation, I do think universities have a moral obligation to do their bit towards paying in a little more, as well as members accepting changes. I don't shy away from the fact that this may mean belt-tightening at some places, either.

Genuine question: are universities able to convert assets into cash to pay in a lump sum towards what is 'missing'? Or are there rules preventing them from doing this? Maybe we could start by selling things like the VC's gratis house

One of the things this reveals is what a mess pensions are in the UK. I'm not surprised at what you say about complex mathematics that even those centrally involved at UUK can't grasp. I have friends who work in surveying who have similarly pointed out that the UUK portfolio is also very weak in areas like property and looks unbalanced.

This is a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea, but it strikes me that if we put together the expertise of many of the academics in the pension scheme, we might well obtain a much better result from it than leaving it in the lands of the likes of UUK!!

This is a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea, but it strikes me that if we put together the expertise of many of the academics in the pension scheme, we might well obtain a much better result from it than leaving it in the lands of the likes of UUK!!

Indeed - this is why academics working in actuarial science have put forward their own proposals to USS/UUK.

are universities able to convert assets into cash to pay in a lump sum towards what is 'missing'? Or are there rules preventing them from doing this? Maybe we could start by selling things like the VC's gratis house

Leaving aside the rules, the required assets aren't there for most universities, without taking a huge hit on buildings and estates. Many of the pre-1992 universities have seen huge expansions and their estates have not kept up. Selling off chunks would not be feasible.

As I wrote, I do know in detail the finances of at least two universities. Paying more in will mean staff cutbacks over the next few years, in addition to those that were already planned, given the likely freeze in tuition fees.

Can you name explicitly any institutions that won't have to belt tighten?

BTW let's suppose a VC's gratis house is around a million. It gets sold - leaving issues of how to entertain visitors (that are solvable, but may cost money).

A million is utterly trivial in the context of university budgets and paying pension contributions for thousands of staff. My own department's annual income is 15 million+, for example.

And to add - even if there is belt tightening required, this is imo what the outcome should be, to protect reasonable pensions for everybody. But the details are something that cannot be worked out in a couple of days. The UCU negotiators have to admit that - although I can understand why they won't cancel the strike until it is clear that there is a binding agreement (binding, somehow!) for open and honest negotiations to find a fair outcome involving DB.

I was joking about the VC's house

All I am saying is that I think the financial impact will vary from institution to institution. I do not imagine Oxbridge will be forced to the wall by paying more into a pension scheme, and (if it were possible) I do not believe that selling some of their vast portfolio of land in places that are very far from Oxford or Cambridge would really damage them that much.

Other institutions who are already facing challenging times might find themselves having to make far deeper cuts.

I do not think there is a blanket statement that can be made about the impact of higher contributions that will be true for every single one of the 200+ highly variegated employers.

(This information would suggest that even within Oxbridge, there is a high degree of variability about asset ownership from college to college)

whoownsengland.org/2016/09/25/what-do-the-oxford-colleges-own/)

There needs to be a change in the mindset of those controlling the finances of universities so that providing fairly for staff comes first, rather than last as it does now. At the moment the argument is that they can’t afford pensions after they have paid for everything else, it should be the other way round, because a university IS its staff. At my university there is unnecessary spending on poorly managed capital projects, some of them essentially cosmetic vanity projects. It can’t be the only one. Catering is fantastically expensive and very poor because all external suppliers have been eliminated from the campus so there is no competition. We have managers on huge salaries who don’t seem very good at managing financial matters.

I do not believe that selling some of their vast portfolio of land in places that are very far from Oxford or Cambridge would really damage them that much.

The very rich Oxbridge colleges, such as Trinity or St John's in Cambridge, heavily subsidise the other colleges. It would damage student bursaries if there were forced to sell off assets, as income from such assets underpins the heavily subsidised rents in Oxbridge (very low compared to the rest of the sector), student bursaries etc.

And yes of course there is widespread variation between wealth of Oxbridge colleges. That is why there is partial wealth redistribution, at least to support undergraduate activities. There is also plenty of "fat" to cut in Oxbridge relative to other places.

It is also true that Oxbridge could easily make up the gap by increasing fees further for international students, running more cash cow pg courses, expanding further conference provision. But even at Oxbridge there would need to some belt tightening if pension contributions increased significantly. I don't think there is any institution that could be blasé about the actual percentages involved and agree without seeing details.

At the moment the argument is that they can’t afford pensions after they have paid for everything else, it should be the other way round, because a university IS its staff.

I partially agree with this - there is indeed a huge "management" culture and many non-academic staff doing roles that seem redundant.

But in reality a very large fraction of income is still going to pay staff. Any increase in staff pay across all staff adds significantly to costs and does rapidly drive institutions into deficit. Cutting capital projects and "unnecessary" non-academic staff doesn't entirely eliminate this problem, though it definitely helps.

The trouble is that the marketisation of university education leads to competition for students, and hence building facilities to attract students/spending a lot of money on marketing and related staff. This is money poured down the drain.

At my university there is unnecessary spending on poorly managed capital projects, some of them essentially cosmetic vanity projects

I also partially agree with this. Across the sector there seems to be considerable investment in facilities that are apparently to attract students, but seem to be mostly vanity, while academics are left in poor research facilities.

On the other hand, even if you pull out "vanity" projects, there is a basic issue: the government is not funding much construction/repair work for university facilities out of other money (apart from fancy labs in the Golden Triangle) and thus just to maintain estates drains a huge amount of a university's money. In the expansion period of the 1960s a lot of low quality buildings were constructed that are now desperately expensive to maintain; replacing them is often better value in the medium term.

I am wondering if the author of this is on here! Grauniad: Striking to stop the slow death of public education.
I am really hacked off on behalf of my daughter and her fellow students, whose extremely high-earning V-C has not deigned to meet with members of their UCU nor the students occupying their Senate House in support of the UCU's strike action. There is no way I blame the academic staff for this impasse, though, blame lies clearly with the university management who wish to turn HE into "big business".

Blame also lies heavily with the government (this one and preceding ones) for the increasing marketisation of higher education.

I'm really beginning to despair, what with the announcement of the introduction of 'consumer ratings' for university degrees. WTAF. Degrees aren't products you buy. Students aren't consumers. Why, why, why WHY does anyone think that marketising higher education could ever be a good thing. What the fuck is wrong with people? Are they actually stupid? Or are they just wilfully trying to destroy UK HE?

Yes - rating courses according to graduate income. WTF precisely
How are they going to do it anyway? Will graduates be asked to declare their salaries?

I feel like the strike has dragged on and they weren't even rushing to be table to talk (UUK at least), and yes seems some VCs are standing back.

Twitter rumours have it that there’s a deal being prepared today. Will be put to the UCU HEC tomorrow.

Closet, I just posted on another thread about the same thing.

I listened to R4 this morning and nearly cried. Nick Robinson challenged the minister on whether students are best placed to judge the quality of teaching, and the minister sounded like even more of a dick when he failed to give a coherent defence. The thing is it's ALREADY entirely evident that marketization is not working for anybody, and they want to do more of it.

It feels as though this government want to destroy everything: higher education, the NHS, the economy, the lot.

Yes - rating courses according to graduate income. WTF precisely
How are they going to do it anyway? Will graduates be asked to declare their salaries?

They've been asked their salaries for years!!! However HMRC data can now be used. It is only at 'experimental data' status though as it's nowhere near robust enough to be regarded as an official statistic.

Incidentally there's a much higher correlation between A level results and salary than there is between degree and salary.....

I don't understand the salary thing other than thinking it's bollocks. Will they take a snapshot in time (if so, when) or sort of average this out over people's life span? Will it relate only to UK students? I guess it must if HMRC. (We teach lots of Chinese students. Judging from the cars they drive, I would imagine including their salary data would skew the figures somewhat. But it would definitely make our degree course look potentially very lucrative!)

I don't understand the salary thing other than thinking it's bollocks

I concur

HMRC have released data 1, 3 and 5 years after graduation. (They tried to look at 10 year data but could barely match 50% so rendering that timescale utterly useless.) And yes, it's UK students only.

Worth remembering HMRC does not hold data about how many hours a week people work....

Thanks titchy. I developed my excellent analytical skills and strong powers of expression at university. But I don't earn very much so it was all a big waste of time.

I hope they judge me on my PhD student’s salary. He’s from Saudi Arabia and already earns way more than me.
Our students mostly go into chemical engineering jobs but will earn less on average than courses where most engineering graduates go into finance. So we will lose out for inspiring our students to stay in our discipline.

I caught the tail end of that interview too and had to pinch myself to see if I was in a nightmare.

Turns out I still am ...

Where we are if you look at the cars parked on campus usually the crappiest cars are the lecturers'...