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?

"surely those doing the valuation have to follow set rules"

Ah, if only. Look up at who is running the regulating body, look up who that is married to, look up who is running USS. This is a political question underneath.

But regardless of that, the USS was ready to propose a better scheme in September - DB, with slightly increased contributions and sligtly decreased benefits cap. Then Oxbridge asked for a lower risk and lower benefits scheme, the although other unversities found the September proposal acceptable, the USS changed the proposal to suit Oxbridge.

We were so close to a more reasonable deal. I hope we can go back there now that this new information is out in the public.

And as librarian said, universities are funded in many different ways. People who have external grants (which they applied for and got themselves, the university doesn't do that for you) are giving a large part of those grants to universities, and some of the grant goes towards their sallary. When such a person is on strike, they don't get their sallary, but the university happily keeps the cut of the grants.

I think the PP is not quite aware of just how well qualified the university staff are. These are all people who were all without exception top 1% at their university, then maybe did masters and certainly a PhD, then were top 10% in that. Such people had CHOICES. The HE job market is hugely international. There are much better paid industry jobs. If the UK continues this way, it will simply become unattractive to the best of those people - there are other countries with universities. They will either go to industry or to other countries, and the UK students of the future will NOT be taught by world class academics, while they will be paying >>9K for this.

The majority of uni admin staff will not be in the USS pension scheme so no. Nice try but you’re not striking for them. You’re striking for you

That's absolute bollocks. I'm striking for all those in USS, not me. I'm retirement age so the change won't affect me, but it'll affect my younger colleagues and future generations to come

Advantage Miss B. Your shot!

Generally I don't support striking as it doesn't hurt the right people. I'm a teacher and am not in a union (bad idea!) due to the fact that I don't feel I could follow a union call to strike - especially if the strike fell on a day I was supposed to be doing something important or special.

But the lecturer's strike does seem to be pretty justified and I do think an organised, well motivated student should (depending on the subject perhaps) be able to deal with it without it damaging their degree prospects.

One thing though. Is this:
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)
a typo? Did you mean £1200 after tax? Because £2100 after tax is a very good salary. I get around that amount (Head of Dept in an independent school) and that equates to a salary of just over £40K - which is pretty big really, compared to the majority of people. I am paying student loan and pension but I looked online and, even if the £2100 came after paying absolutely nothing else, it looks like a good salary of £32K.

I genuinely though academics were on about £20-£25K? (I don't think they should be on that amount, btw, I just thought it was a low salary and had that kind of figure in my head.)

manic lecturers start at about £32k. But bear in mind that is after a minimum of 6 years in education (BA + PhD), but usually longer (9 in my case - 3 years BA, 2 years MA, 4 years PHD). And usually a stint doing very low paid, precarious sessional teaching (essentially zero hours contracts) and/or low paid postdocs. Most lecturers are in their mid-30s by the time they start earning £32k (and start paying into a pension).

The point about the salary being low isn't that it is low compared to the national average. But that it is low relative to the level of education and experience. And much lower than most academics could earn in the private sector. Especially those in STEM subjects, law, economics, etc...

I’m on a fixed term contract work approx £28k, but it’s only 10 months and it’s pro rata, so I don’t get paid in the summer. So my real terms income is £24k, which is taxed, so take home around £21k. I could honestly earn more in a much less stressful job. I did 8 years of degrees. Only reason I can afford to work for so little is that my Phd was funded so I wasn’t increasing my debt but was actually paid about £15k a year to do it. IF I wasn’t funded, I’d have had to have moved into a different line of work.

PS I’m in my 30s and can’t afford to have kids. Fortunately, I’m passionate about teaching the next generation or else it wouldn’t be worth the sacrifice!