Lecturers' Strike threatening to derail graduations this summer

[MillyMollyMama]

DD has just phoned home to say one of her lecturers told the class she could be on strike when marking of the finals papers takes place. DD contacted a couple of friends at other universities and found some knew about the strike because the university had officially told them, but others had no idea at all about it. Does anyone know more about this any why it is not universally known about? Thanks.

I used to work for a local authority. I know all about low pay. However, my DH had a 95% earnings cut in 2008/09. That really caused some grief and cost his company a lot of staff. It is not easy for very many of us. Thank you for your input. I think most students think they are the sharp focus of a lecturer. I would, on the whole, prefer that my DD did think about her work coming back rather than not being bothered. She is engaged and interested. She is not one to rush to the rule book either. She was just interested in getting the mark back.

Yes, it's a recession and it is tough on a lot of us, this is certainly true.

And I do agree with you that the issue is that most students think they are the main focus. That's not a bad thing, necessarily - at worst it is understandably self-centred and at best, as you say, it's a sign of motivation. The difficulty is that, of course, there's a lot else going on. I do think your DD needs to read the rule book, though. That's what it's there for. When she gets a job, no-one else is going to take the time to tell her what she should be able to find out - and her lecturers probably don't like doing it now.

I do get where you're coming from, that she's enthusiastic and she wants to know how she did. Can she maybe go to an office hour to get some more general feedback? Or, if she looks at the handbook again, she would be able to check up on the guidelines for what she should be doing, and this would give her a bit of feedback?

I hope the lecturer marks it soon, anyway.

madeofkent, "With all of those student fees coming in, you would think they would pay the lecturers decent salaries"

Universities don't see any more money than they ever did, though - the source of those fees has just shifted from government purse to the student purse. Further, in research intensive universities, only about 60% of the budget is from undergrad fees, the remainder is from research funds (which are being constantly cut, but which staff are under a lot of pressure to obtain), overseas postgrads amongst others. Each (decent sized) research grant takes about 1 month full time to write and has about a 10% chance of being funded - this means that staff are spending a lot of time writing grants for funding, which contributes to the Universities' overall income.

Bear in mind, most academic staff will have graduated as some of the best in their cohort as undergraduates, will have done a further 4 years of postgrad study and finished as the best in their cohort for PhD too. They will then have had (often) 4-6 years plus on temporary postdoc contracts during which time they will have spent ridiculous hours building up their research profile and gaining a decent publication record before finally securing a tenured position as academic staff. By this time, most are in their early thirties or older and will then be offered salaries little more than your average teacher (without additional responsibilities) is getting. Many staff will never get permanent contracts and universities are using zero hour contracts and "teaching fellows" (temp, even lower paid contracts) to carry out teaching.

The lecturer, btw was under no obligation to discuss her intention to strike with the students and some universities advise staff not to enter into dialogue with students about their intention to strike or not for precisely the reason of students putting staff under pressure for exercising their right to strike.

At my university, it's 20 working days to return work, but working days don't include student holidays and this doesn't include dissertations. Three weeks is not that long to be waiting for a bit of work if the lecturer also has other commitments.

I already started another thread looking at how this might impact students.

As far as I know, the strike will go ahead unless there is a pay rise and their other issues are dealt with. I support their right to strike, as I do think higher education in this country is under attack from the government, and too much is expected of lecturers for them also to have year on year real terms pay cuts.

Lecturers are usually experts in their specific fields, and the government is always justifying banker's bonuses in this way. Surely we should be paying top accademics and researchers even more in order to make sure their job is still attractive?

All that said, as a final year student, I hope it doesn't affect me too much!

Portmanteau reply.

I really doubt that your DD's lecturer is on a paid lecture tour of the US. It's far more likely to be an unpaid conference presenting his/her research, for which if the lecturer is lucky the university will stump up part of the costs.

To be considered research active, lecturers generally need to attend conferences as part of their work. I attend at least 3 international conferences a year US, Europe, (Hong Kong later this year) and so on. I get a "generous" expenses allowance for research of a bit over £1,000 because my current workload is officially at least 25% over the standard workload points in my institution (and that's just the official calculation), but that does not actually cover even the costs of just one international conference (flights, transfers, hotel, food, registration for conference usually around £200, and so on).

Re the new fees: when someone says upthread With all of those student fees coming in, you would think they would pay the lecturers decent salaries it really drives me crazy. Sorry, not personal against that poster! -- just an indication of how little anyone outside of universities understands the privatisation of the university system a couple of years ago.

The fees that students pay are simply a replacement (and actually not quite enough of a replacement) of public, taxpayer-funded funding which was removed (except for a 20% retention for STEM subjects & some coverage of Modern languages). So 80% of public funding was removed from teaching activities in English & Welsh universities, to be replaced by a student-funded tuition fee. There is NO MORE MONEY. Indeed, the new system actually funnels less into the chalkface, and will actually cost the government more in the long run. Go figure (and neo-liberal economics is not ideologically driven? Give me a break).

Academics do not get more money. Also remember, most academics on a standard academic contract are on what's often referred to as the "three-legged" contract: teaching, research, and administration. Our employment contracts require us to do these three things (I'm a really highly paid file clerk on occasion), and our income and employment security (we don't have tenure in the UK) is dependent on meeting what are now very high standards. My mainland European, Australian, and American colleagues now gasp at the workload that a lot of really excellent academics have now in the UK.

OK rant over. I now have to travel to another conference, for which I am paying my own expenses, because it's an important small select international meeting in my field ... Luckily it's just in the south east of England, so only 3 hours travel.

Oh, and everything margratgarlik says.

Look, we do this job because we love it, but the conditions are getting worse and worse, and I'm sorry, but the students while lovely individuals are far less resilient, or prepared to really learn, than I & my cohort were 30 years ago. And I'm a far better teacher than some of the people who taught me, and systems are far more student friendly today. But far more students are, I'm afraid, snowflakes. EG the email I received the other day asking me how to watch a VHS tape in the Library. I hope that they actually realise that they need to take far more initiative & grow up when they graduate ...

I understand why this year's finalists might be upset that they may not get their results in time for a summer graduation. But many of them have not really thought their concerns through.

If lots of students are in the same position, it won't have that big an impact. The big graduate recruiters are highly unlikely to just cancel their training programmes, and it is much more likely that employers will take them on regardless of the fact they have not received their final result yet. Especially as it is not the students fault. Summer graduation events may need to be delayed, but this is not exactly a major catastrophe either.

Marking boycotts are the most effective weapon we have to draw attention to the crisis in higher education.

Unless something changes soon, future students will be in a far worse position.

Agree with Upthechimney & others on this thread that the lecturer is very unlikely to be getting paid for her trip to the US - US universities don't normally hire overseas academics to give paid lectures because of visa issues. Even famous and internationally renowned scholars would likely not be paid for guest lectures except for expenses. It's likely this is a series of unpaid guest lectures/seminars or conference papers and the lecturer will have to fund all or part of her own expenses to do it - though this is an expected part of the job, giving papers at international conferences. I should think the lecturer mentioned this just to point out to the students that she does have stuff to do during what is the students' vacation.

As others have said, the workload for lecturers now in the UK can be astonishing, especially for younger scholars: I've worked a 65-70hr working week for over ten years now, and it only drops to about 45-50 in the so-called "vacations"!

traininthedistance is correct about workloads. I work "part-time" on 60% of full time. This lets me ensure I am seldom in for more than 4.5 days a week (8 - 5.15) and I only do three or four weekends a year. Only retired staff and part-timers work the official 35 hour week.

I think my DD felt the lecturer had time for her American audience but not for her own students in their final year.

Sadly, though a lot/most academics deeply dislike this, the direction of UK university management by government and internal management in the last few years has been to privilege research over teaching. Lecturers are hired, promoted and stay in their jobs on research performance (such as giving papers in the US or publishing); good or attentive teaching is not rewarded. The system has explicitly incentivised a focus on research at the expense of teaching - very knowingly. Lots of people don't like this, bug they have no choice if they want to keep their jobs - as magrat says, many lecturers under 40 are on fixed term contracts and under heavy pressure from their departments to be returnable for the REF (research excellence framework assessment).

I have always been very dedicated to teaching but my career has suffered massively be ause of it - you help yourself to survive by focusing on research at the expense of everything else: I was even explicitly advised to do this by my departmental managers and colleagues (one of whom took me aside early into a previous - fixed term - contract and actually said (verbatim): "if you want to get a permanent job you should teach mediocrely, avoid a much admin as you can and focus only on your research" - he became HoD two years later ;))

All the hazards of working in an environment where your students and your employers have two completely different sets of expectations which are often in conflict. Students think you're there to focus on them; your employer thinks you're there to publish, do admin, bring in grants, increase your research profile so you can be REF-returnable, and by the way do get through your teaching as well on the side, but make sure you keep your focus on the research. If you spend too much time on your teaching you'll be quite explicitly regarded as a liability, a professional failure, a cost to the department, and a fool (all things I have heard aid about teaching-focused colleagues), and you may even be downgraded onto an even less well paid "teaching only contract".

Very difficult to explain to students that the university doesn't really care how well you teach them; in fact will effectively punish you for taking the time to do it well.

This may not be the situation in some universities, I don't know - my only experience is in the very REF-focused end of the Russell Group universities, which put their staff, especially younger, less established staff, under very acute pressure.

Sorry, typing quickly on phone so lots of writing errors!

I'm young, naive and irritating (and lucky with this particular class), but it's not all students who think like this. I had to get essays back within a week at the end of term, because of when my teaching fell in relation to the start of vac, and they did seem completely aware that was a big ask.

I'm looking back over this thread and what bugs me so much isn't undergraduates not being too aware of what lecturers do outside of teaching (because I'm sure I didn't have a clue!). It's the idea that being proactive, going and googling the strike, going and reading the course handbook, is not only unnecessary but actually something good little students don't do. I mean, why the heck is the handbook there if not to be read? The idea that it's 'running to the rule book' to check up on the basics that it's their responsibility to know ... it's bizarre.

What train said.

I was actually lucky enough to get a permanent contract fairly young (after only 3 years of post doc contracts) and resigned over a year ago because I'd had enough of being pulled every direction and feeling like I was doing the job of 4 people. When I resigned, quite a number of my colleagues quietly came to say they were also looking to get out and several more were leaving for positions overseas.

I was also given a talk by one of the PVC's at my institution when I first started to say, publish lots, never miss a grant deadline, don't forget you are only ever as good as your last conference lecture and make sure your teaching does not attract complaints, but you will not be promoted on the basis of good teaching. I actually enjoyed teaching, didn't like this attitude and worked as hard in my teaching as in my research, but ultimately that meant I frequently put in overnighters to get through my workload, this was not appreciated by management, or even realised by students (despite my answering emails at 4am etc).

Just to reiterate, your daughter's lecturer is not only very unlikely to be paid for the American lectures, she will probably be subsidising the trip out of her own pocket. We have a very limited budget for conference attendance, etc: £500 per year. Sounds ok, till you realise that we are expected to participate in 2-3 conferences per year, many of which will involve travel overseas, flights, accommodation etc, not to mention the added childcare costs involved in being away from home. Any career developing opportunities like that sort of overseas trip which can't be met from that budget have to come out of our own pockets. I reckon I spend up to £1000 a year of my own money on work related expenses - and they aren't tax deductible.

If any of you are interested in exactly what working as an academic really means, this is a really good account

Thanks for the link creamteas.

I'm a mature student in a 1994 group uni and fully support this action. My lecturers are knowledgeable, passionate and enthusiastic about their work. They deserve better than what they're getting. Our Warden is on a banker's salary, while our lecturers earn what I did in the charity sector at a much easier job.

To be fair, I was promoted to senior lecturer in an RG, research led, university on the basis of teaching, admin and civics, it only took 20 years . I feel the tide will turn somewhat towards teaching in the near future, it is already doing so where I am. However the inertia of the senior academics promoted on the basis of research only, who frankly despise UG students, makes this change difficult.

Timely blog on the over-committed, under-resourced academic experience:

occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2014/03/26/living-on-the-edge-of-equilibrium/

But let's not forget that often a good researcher is also a good teacher (at least in the broad field within which I work). If I go by my rank, grants, and student feedback, I do both those things quite well. And having held various "leadership" roles, I'm a pretty darn good administrator too.

Excellence in research and excellence in teaching are not mutually exclusive -- well, certainly not in the humanities.

Well having just arrived at my destination and not quite managed to do all the work I needed to do on the train (so there goes the lie-in till 7am tomorrow), that blog post is so so so true!

UptheChimney definitely not mutually exclusive - but teaching is certainly not rewarded in career terms or by management. The most successful and promoted people in my department / field are by far those (and they are usually men) who are known for neglecting their teaching (often as a sort of badge of pride - "far too busy with research" and all that - and are somehow behind the door or strangely out of the room when the admin tasks are given out. Most of my colleagues practice some variant of "strategic incompetence" in teaching and admin, with the happy result (for them) that they don't get asked to do much

our local guidance is to mark and hang on to the results.

I would be querying that with UCU people higher up. You could get in trouble if someone finds out you have actually done the marking but aren't giving the marks back.

I am on a 0.6 contract, and have fixed days work. DH took a few part-days to enable me to go away for just over a week for a far distant collaboration, but clearly this meant I worked extra days to my normal 0.6 (working with my collaborators all week, plus travel and collaboration on weekend days, and several evening meetings). On my return I noted in our annual leave request that X and Y days would be my TOiL days from this trip. I was dragged into a meeting with HR to tell me that there was no such thing as TOiL and why wasn't I working every weekend and evening (the implication being that I should normally also be working every weekend, evening, and of course my "days off").

So basically we are supposed to work 24/7, and this applies even if we don't even nominally work full time.

We are supposed to turn coursework around in 4 weeks by the way, regardless of holidays; if I travel during that time I often have half a suitcase full of essays. But I've also spent my own money for work travel.

I am getting slightly irritated that a conversation with my DD has now provoked posters into saying things about her that are deeply unfair and bordering on rude. She is not a 'snowflake', she is more than capable of googling and doing research for herself. We just had a conversation, Mother and Daughter. You are all beginning to take this a bit too seriously. I had already said the student handbook was silent on return of work. This is a very small class and really she would not quote the rule book to the lecturer. She gets on well with the lecturer and enjoys the lessons.

To LRD who thinks she is a "good little student" , said in a derogatory and mocking way, and that she needs to "take far more initiate and grow up", you really, really do not know her. I deeply resent that you have inferred this from my post when I did say she had contacted friends about what their universities had said about the possible strike. The strike has not been widely talked about, anywhere, recently. I can assure you that a student who has been Head of House at school, ran the first ever MFL Ball at Uni and is now on the committee for the Graduate Ball, has completed 8 mini pupillages, volunteers for the National Trust, prepared information packs for the Games Makers at the Olympic Games and is shortly volunteering for the CAB is not deserving of your nasty comments. It is bizarre that you make assertions with so little knowledge.

I am sorry to have upset you.

In all honesty - and I'm sorry, but I suspect you will prefer this to what you thought I meant - I do not blame your DD. You, as her mother, think it is bad for students to read and to be able to quote the rule book. It isn't. It's a necessary part of doing a degree.

I am not making a judgement on her when I say this, because as you say, I do not know her. She sounds pretty sensible - she called her mates when she found out about the strike to gather information. But you are writing as if you think that it is actually bad for her to be proactive, or to consult the course materials. It isn't. It's important!

The strike has been widely talked about. Your DD has certainly talked about it! And it has been in the papers.

I understand that you're worried. I understand that she's worried. But I don't think you are helping her by encouraging her to see it as 'bad' to consult handbooks designed for her own use. And sorry if this bothers you ... but quite a lot of students, especially female students, suffer because their parents or schoolteachers have made them feel they should be 'polite' and passive. It is not a good idea.

That is what I was trying quite hard to get across, when I said that she should be reading and responding to the handbook.

My DD is polite, but passive? Absolutely not. We don't do passive women in this family! I am well aware she knows of the handbook but she and her friends do not go around quoting it or memorising it. She has got to the end of a dual honours degree perfectly well and is an extremely capable and well organised person. I appreciate your concerns,LRD, but I have always encouraged her to read the relevant information. I have encouraged her to take command of her own life and she went to a school that greatly encouraged the girls to think for themselves. She does. Do you think an overly passive and polite person is capable of kicking ass and organising student balls? Or able to obtain and complete 8 mini pupillages?

I merely wondered if people on this forum knew about the possible strike. I do not see how that degenerated into an attack on my DD by people who should know better calling her names and suggesting she should grow up!