University Strikes - 61 universities

[LittleLow]

More - What on earth is going on? - than AIBU

The planned strikes seem massive with four weeks of teaching time lost. Students in their final year or those writing dissertations could end up with lower marks potentially impacting on job offers.

What will happen with regard to tuition fees? How about special consideration for exams? There seems to be no help or advice for students & parents. Anyone have any information?

Lets hope it all resolves to the satisfaction of all without messing up the degree courses. The students don't deserve this either. The communication has been rubbish.

I feel terrible about this strike. I really do.

Otoh I am working a 5 day week on a 0.5 junior contract, because my university is refusing to pay me more and I cannot possibly give my students what they need by working less. Despite being a published lecturer with 20 years teaching experience, I know the pension I will be getting for this will not be enough to live on: my hope is to hang on at work as long as I can- and then a heart attack.

In the meantime, the VC earns 23 times as much as I do (yes, you heard that correctly) despite a rather wobbly recruitment and performance league record.

At at least one university, staff are being threatened by a 25% pay deduction for working their contracted hours.

For students who are worried about missing sessions - students at my uni are going to still meet and conduct their own seminars in the rooms that are already booked out for them.

The problem is many of us in the private sector have no pensions at all so the idea that people get an employer paying into a pension (i.e. we - the tax payers are paying into the lecturers' pensions) when we don't have one ourselves already feels a bit unfair; secondly plenty of us will work until we die. i don't know the retirement age for lecturers? 67? But they probably don't have to carry on until their 70s like many of the students and their parents.

Thirdly I certainly support their right to strke but the university will not hvae to pay their wages so the entirety of the saving should go to the students. I am funding the costs of my children including their fees. If they lose say 2/40 weeks that is £462.50 of fees x 2 children = £925. Perhaps I should send an invoice and bring a small claim in a local court.

I was teaching today and am delighted to find that my students were all supportive of the strike and very clued up around the issues. Nice to hear.

My university is striking, I'm not sure if any of my lectures will be affected but I'm not too worried as I can read up on content in my text books.

ZBIsabella. Academics are not public sector workers. See the table on page 5.

Universities are not public sector bodies, so tax payers are not paying into academic pensions.

Also, academic salaries are relatively low in comparison to similarly qualified people on the private sector (and definitely low by comparative international academic standards). The decent and secure pension was the compensation for that.

students are strangely obsessed with us providing lectures when they are the absolute worst way to try and learn anything.

Presumably because they are paying an absolute fortune for them. If they are that bad then the universities should use some of the extortionate fees to find a more effective method of teaching. If universities are knowingly only providing poor lectures then they need to do something about the staffing; in schools teachers manage to provide quality lessons and get good results.

I think you’ve misunderstood both the point being made about lectures and how the whole era of teaching to student satisfaction scores works. Students don’t always want what helps them to learn best. Often they love pretending to themselves that they’re learning because they sat in a room while someone gave a lecture. And they are often much less keen on all the things that really help them learn because they require them to do more.

Not all students, obviously. But quite a lot of them, and enough that when you try to ‘flip the classroom’ most of your module evaluations come back complaining that they didn’t just get lectures. At least that’s what happens in my university.

Not all students, obviously. But quite a lot of them, and enough that when you try to ‘flip the classroom’ most of your module evaluations come back complaining that they didn’t just get lectures. At least that’s what happens in my university.
Tell me about it. We have a module this year where we're experimenting with weekly instead of fortnightly tutorials (and thereby doubling their small group contact time). The student response? Complaints that they have to do reading and prep every week not just once a fortnight...

And much of the problem with the way students engage with higher education is precisely the way they are taught in UK schools...

Today, at a top uni, my partner had 3 students turn up to the first seminar of the term - out of 17. Core module. The three who came were brilliant and inspiring though. This is a subject in which 10-16 hours a week is standard, so not like the students have lots to attend.

They have no pension as they had to opt out as paid so little and have so much debt that they can’t afford to pay in. (They earn £2100 after tax a month). They won a prestigious award for their excellence in teaching. They love their students and work extremely hard to enrich their experience, including at cost to myself (e.g. Taking them to participate in something to enrich their learning or employability, they have to take them in my car at my cost). They are currently online to prepare for an event this weekend.

Students deserve well-paid and well-rewarded lecturers if this kind of passion and quality is to continue.

Taxpayers are not paying into university staff members' pensions!

DH is in the private sector and has a pension which is very similar to uss in it's current form (career average db scheme).

In my institution, and I believe in many, the withheld salary payments from striking staff are donated to the student hardship fund.

So do the universities generate profits such as from spin off companies that pay the employer contribution into the pension fund?

My understanding is that employer pension contributions are part of a university’s overall staff costs, and come out of the regular operating budget.

Yes but that is my money presumably - tax payer money - the regular operating budget comes surely mostly from central Government and/or state provided student loans or tax payer parents like I am who pay the fees direct unless it happens to be a university which owns so much land it has a massive trust income I suppose.

No. Student loans are not the same thing as the government directly and wholly providing funding to universities.

If you chose to pay your child’s tuition fees, that’s your look-out, but it’s not the case that the taxpayers are paying academic pensions.

In universities, we’re less public sector than RBS or the like.... and our salaries and pensions are WAY lower.

@ZBIsabella. You’re paying for a service or product. Put it this way - do you go into M&S or Tesco and ask them to justify their salaries or pensions? It’s not exactly it, but think about it that way.

I’m in Scotland and we apparently get money from government to cover student fees. If only it were that simple.... we now have something called an Outcome Agreement, which means hitting 101 targets, to get our £1200 per head, per year - which isn’t anywhere near enough to cover costs anyway - on essentially a negative marking score.

Want to know more detail? I can bore you all night? It’s 23:20 on a Friday night, and I’m dealing with a student in crisis, in hospital, trying to get hold of her parents (on top of my 55 hour week average) - because I care.

students are strangely obsessed with us providing lectures when they are the absolute worst way to try and learn anything.

Is that any surprise? Other than lectures and access to staff, what exactly are they getting for their £27,000?

showing your ignorance again starrysights?

Journals, books, subscriptions to e-resources, buildings to learn in, heating said buildings, cleaning said buildings, laboratory equipment, computer facilities, student support services (demand for which has increased massively), sports facilities, etc etc.

When other university researchers fill in a survey & it asks about occupational category, what do you put?

I'm not public sector.
I don't teach, so education is wrong.
I'm not a supervisor.
I'm not clerical.
I'm in the no person's land of the Research Scientist.

Nobody at work is talking about strikes (or pensions). I only know strike happening b/c of MN threads.