How's the new academic year so far?

[BirdinaHedge]

Just that.

My place has decided to "rebrand" so we have to use different letterhead etc. But it's not available ...

We also have the most ridiculous new travel policy. I'm not supposed to book my own trains, even though I can book tickets more quickly & cheaply than the university's travel agent. I still do, as I control my own research budget up to a certain amount.

We haven't got enough teaching rooms or staff and our students quite rightly expect value for money from their fees and have been over promised a level of service we can't actually provide. So basically it's business as usual

We have to go through our university travel agent (which is expensive and clunky) for a train ticket as well.

Us too re travel, it's appalling isn't it. Such a stupid waste of time and money. I can't even buy a book online unless from their designated ship which takes ages....

Hhhmm, short staffed and pulling so many six days weeks as I have for so long now. I literally hate the university now and their absolute lack of care for staff wellbeing.

Solidarity all.

We have to go through our university travel agent (which is expensive and clunky) for a train ticket as well.

Key Travel? I feel they deserve a thread of their own . . .

Oh yes.

I sometimes think there are massive back-handers being taken/given across UK HE.

Several people have speculated along similar lines to me . . .

Situation normal at my place. Teaching not started yet, but my plan is head down & ignore the bollocks as much as possible. CBA with trying to change things. I'm too far down the pecking order. I am looking forward to seeing my new students and hopefully a few nights out with the other minions

Key travel are a nightmare. Their emergency line doesn't pick up, they are slow and super expensive. Someone is making a killing.

we had Key Travel until a year ago and everyone complained so much that the university sacked Key Travel and got Clarion (?I think) instead. They are even worse

I don’t understand why we can’t just book our own travel. I can usually get as good a deal as any travel agent I’ve used.

We abandoned Key Travel some years ago. I couldn’t believe how hopeless they were. And slow! Now we book all our own travel and are reimbursed up to certain limits/conditions. If you need to go beyond those, then then HOD can approve payment of the difference.

We started teaching last week. Apparently loads of our offer-holders haven’t confirmed and the central admin is having kittens! I really couldn’t care less at this stage.

We are still sorting out allocations and rooms.

I don't understand why it's such a clusterfuck every year, I really don't

Us too with the travel! We used to have a preferred agent but you could get around it by just buying things yourself anyway and all that happened was you got fussed at. Now they refuse to reimburse and say that any travel NOT booked through the agent and charged directly to a University code, will not be covered by University insurance. Caused a huge headache for me when I was being flown somewhere by a third party - the University refused to cover my insurance, the third party was assuming people's employers would cover the insurance, and we eventually did a massive complicated thing where I booked the travel on a University code that was for something else and then we raised an invoice to the third party (and the invoice people, not part of the decision, made a fuss about it as well, as we couldn't show what service or goods we were providing the third party to invoice them... it was a nightmare, but eventually got sorted). It also means that anyone without funding who previously might have used personal funds to, e.g., go to a meeting to enhance their career and may be get some funding, needs to also use personal funds for travel insurance too.

And yes, everything is more expensive through them, sometimes dramatically (3-4x what I can find myself).

And on another perennial topic:

To vote or not to vote re another bloody round of strikes?

I am clinging to UCU membership (urged on by some excellent gender critical feminist colleagues at other places, who say we need to stay in UCU) but the Rik from The Young Ones actions of the Gen Sec & her Exec make me so angry.

If I don't vote at all, then my institution may not reach the 50% threshold.

If I do Vote, but vote NO to any /all strike action, will that be heard?

What are others who are still hanging in as UCU members doing?

We've stopped recordings after a year of dismal attendance and engagement.

I had 100% attendance for my 10am lecture today.

@BirdinaHedge I'm still clinging on as a UCU member too. I've decided not to return my ballot and hope that national 50% threshold is not met.

Yes I think on balance that's my tactic @LampLass

I still ask myself why I'm a member ...

Students and staff dropping like flies with covid already

Key Travel? I feel they deserve a thread of their own . . .

They do!!! KT are the stuff of nightmares. We get hours of annual training in what colour fire extingisher to use, how not to give our datasets to scammers & how not to have unconscious bias when interviewing... and nothing about how the Fk to book anything with Key Travel. I've been shown how to raise a PO (but I didn't record the instructions which was huge mistake because I totally can't do it now), because I was told KT would hold the hotel + train prices that PO applies to: KT said they never promise to hold the price on anything. After Uni shafted me a few yrs ago & refused to refund me (trip cancelled due to Lockdown, there were funds in the grant, but still refused to refund me) I hate travelling for work now. I literally dread it now. And the hotels KT recommended are shite, while they can't find cheap rail fares. Boo hiss...

Diversity travel are even WORSE

Key travel, apparently cheaper yet always seem to add on £150 at least to any ticket I could have booked myself.

Our teaching hasn't started. My admin role is in full force though and feeling utterly overwhelmed. I technically am allocated 3 hours a week for it and have a professional service support person but I'm doing more like 10 with no support as the PS person never does anything allocated to them and misses all meetings. I've complained but I just got told I can't expect too much. Clearly I can't expect anything.

One week of teaching down. Usual clusterfuck of no one knowing if a student is actually registered until they show up (or don’t) at a class. Huge over-recruitment, again. And no extra staff to manage it. Are Admissions the worst service in the university? Only after the SLT, Comms, HR, Student Services… There is no slack in the timetable due to the over-recruitment. So things have to move online at short notice when there’s a problem, like the coming train strikes. No way to reschedule classes as there simply aren’t the rooms available. Oh and we have to organise/generate the relevant meeting links…

The students themselves are good. But I’ve already had one miss a class because their dog was sick

Yeah. Over recruitment here combined with allocated rooms being too small and a campus wide chair shortage. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Enrolment ducked up and people couldn’t enrol or access the VLE for two weeks. Students refused to attend as they couldn’t enrol so had no student loan payment.

one cohort have already had a major falling out and various students emailing me asking me to ring them at weekends because x has looked at them funny

HR are by far the worst department “service” at my place. I’ve just had a new Postdoc start with me, from overseas. Needed a visa so HR have known about this person and their start date since March.

However, when they arrived , HR had done nothing in terms of a start up meeting, induction, letting the Faculty office know so an office, a computer, a key, email and so on and so forth, could be organised.

I spent the best part of a week doing all of these things because no one else effing would. And my Postdoc is very independent and resourceful so they weeeable to organise quite a bit for themselves.

But we claim to be a top 100 world university and my Postdoc is here on a very prestigious EU scheme which brings a shedload of grant money into the Faculty. But do either of us get support??

Argh! We are the largest academic schools in our (admittedly small) University - we are supposed to have a teaching support team of 3 adminstrators (oddly, other schools seem to have more...). However, it's been only two since the lead admin retired a year ago. Then one of the remaining sadly passed away last spring (I'm still a bit reeling from this - he was a great guy and very young), and they did hire in a second over the summer. But now our only experienced teaching adminstrator is leaving (short notice, at least to the bulk of us - we were all told this week she's leaving friday), leaving us with one adminstrator with a few months experience to do the job of 3 people in the largest and one of the most complicated teaching schools. Already staff are having to do basic admin tasks themselves. I completely understand how she can't do it all, but I don't know how we're going to manage.

Usual chaos here - teaching rooms with broken facilities making teaching difficult, basic services (light, heat, water) not always working. And worst of all, every day the students descend on all the eateries like locusts and clear them out. It's as if the infrastructure was designed only to exist, not to actually be used.

On the UCU front, I am very close to checking out entirely. I'm just putting my head down and getting on with my work. It's hard to judge whether there would be more strikes. I hope not, it has achieved virtually nothing and created a lot of division and strife (for staff) and anxiety (for students). But hey, here's a sticker of a cat!! I also think that recent scandals like the Japanese Shota comics PhD student and the LSE researcher/Mermaids trustee who spoke at the paedophile conference won't have engendered much goodwill from the general public. It just makes us look like weirdos. Dangerous weirdos.