University Strikes

[ILikeTrains]

I feel like I should be posting this on the AIBU thread but I'm bloody furious that there's going to be another round of strikes. This will be getting on for a months worth of education that these students are missing out on, this could affect their outcomes over all.

I'm sure the unions have very valid concerns for their members but who is the strike really harming? These students only get one go at this - the staff have their degrees already (and probably not at the same expense that these students have).

I'm so angry that the people most affected by this are the students and the have no control at all over this situation.

I don't think it is the fees. Students have gone through school being taught to the exam. DD has been told by her lecturers that they don't teach to the exam, as they are now at university and not at school.

What about course completion-can you boot people off the course if they’re not working hard?

Students have to pass all their modules before they can progress. I think this must be the case at most if not every university.

Unfortunately DD suffers from CFS and is prone to falling asleep during lectures, especially during the ones where the lecturer speaks in a monotone. She catches up with her lectures by making notes from them when they get put online. It is so frustrating that there is a two day delay.

Just before Christmas she had three consecutive days of three lectures a day on the same topic, each lecture following on from the previous one. As she fell asleep during the first lecture she couldn't follow any subsequent ones until they were all put online - two, three and four days later. She ended up watching them over Christmas.

It’s almost impossible to boot people off for slacking - universities don’t do it because “non-continuation” is one of the measures by which we are assessed and rated.

Results are creeping upwards. It’s pretty rare not to get a 2:1 these days.

Just came on to see if anyone had mentioned professional service staff striking..

Then I saw someone quoting Unison figures regarding a UCU strike, and someone else saying striking staff should get their union to support them. Lots of well informed opinions about this!

How people can crow about the mental health impact on their kids, when their teachers are overwhelmed with work and working conditions is one of the reasons for the strike, is a mystery to me.

Have the high fees had an impact on results-or are they about the same as they always were? What about course completion-can you boot people off the course if they’re not working hard?

There has been significant grade inflation in the last 10 or so years, an inevitable consequence of results (and particularly "value added" - i.e. the gap between A-level and degree attainment - the bigger the better) being incorporated into league table data. There's been quite a lot of media coverage about it, so I don't think I'm saying anything controversial! And it is virtually impossible to boot someone off their course. They would need to fail their modules two or three times where I work (they get the chance to resit, and then, in certain circumstances, a resit without residence). In that situation, yes they would lose their fees.

On recrodsing one of my sons had a lecturer who refused to push the button to record at the start of her lecture.. Both my sons attend their lectures but one in particular finds it useful to hear it later too as people do learn in different ways.

Ours are striking this time - won't be a reduction in the content we have to cover as it's set out by external bodies what we need to know. I'm hoping our staff (who are generally really good eggs) will at least let us know in advance if sessions aren't going ahead - fine with the striking, but if I'm out of the house before 7am to get the train when I don't need to be I reserve the right to be rather pissed off!

Our university policy is all lectures recorded as it helps students with additional needs. Doesn't tend to impact my own course attendance that much as ours is one of those you only really sign up for if you're dedicated to the career path (although I'm skipping a lecture at the moment as not well) - but I think there's a bit of a culture of skiving on other courses... Who then get attendance warnings as attendance is monitored! I'm glad of the recordings as it keeps the ones who don't want to be there and will just talk through the lecture (we're in with another course for one module and there's a difference in work ethic shall we say) in the skiving business so they stop fucking it up for the rest of us!

Hoping they'll put the previous years recordings up for us as a work around if our department staff strike. If not I'm just going to have to research round the missed subjects myself - thankfully the pace of our course (we are in pretty much 9-5) is such that a lot of our contents already been covered so it will be things like assignment support sessions and revision that we lose out on. We're generally a fairly good bunch with self directed stuff - organising study groups ourselves etc - so we should be ok.

Hoping they'll put the previous years recordings up for us as a work around if our department staff strike.

I’d be very surprised if your university did that, as it would amount to strikebreaking (and academics would probably refuse all future recordings).

Hi there

I’m a lecturer at a striking university. I have sympathy for the striking workers because conditions are bad for many. However, I and many others have serious misgivings about this strike and how it has been managed by the union. I have resigned from the union over it and so have others.

When we voted for strike action, we were not told by the GS or anyone else that heavy-handed action like this would be the first step rather than a last resort. We were shocked and dismayed to be called out for 8 days just before Christmas. This round achieved nothing.

Now the union wants to call 14 more days. They have unspecified aims about pay and conditions. Most are wildly unrealistic and can’t be met by UCEA. Things like fixed term contracts are partly a feature of HE due to external funding and not necessarily the universities trying to shaft people. There are problems with conditions but they can be fought in ways that don’t hit students disproportionately.

Additionally, if any of you are students or have kids who are students you should also be really concerned about the threat to free speech that has largely hit feminist academics who are labelled transphobic without any evidence. The General Secretary of the UCU has encouraged bullying of feminist academics and has done nothing to stick up for academic freedom. Whether you agree with what the feminists are saying is immaterial. If you can’t have a debate on a university campus, what’s the point of university? It might be views you don’t like this time but next time, it will be your views that are deemed unacceptable.

I suggest you make your voices heard to the GS and the union, as well as the universities. But I just wanted to let you know that many many academics are really unhappy with this. I am not striking this time but many will feel pressure to do so. As individuals, they are not to blame. The UCU didn’t need to call this action and it should be held to account.

Tbh I would be a lot more sympathetic if students actually turned up to classes. Lots of them don’t and then complain about contact hours. Almost none of them use the extensive office hours and support lecturers provide- last strike they did teach outs and made themselves available on the pickets as well as on non-strike days. Students rarely came.

I do find the levels of contempt some academics have for students absolutely shocking though. We work our absolute arses off on our course, attendance is good and we do any background work required (high percentage of mature students and it's a very career-oriented course). I do get sick of being looked at like I'm something that someone has stood in if I dare to be in the same air space as some lecturers when I'm around campus... I get feeling jaded and pissed off with some who don't want to be there (I'm from a teaching background myself) but there's no need to look at random people like absolute shit just because they're wearing a student lanyard.

My social media at the moment is full of students, yes mainly mature students admittedly, absolutely freaking out at how much course content we'll miss if we get dropped in it (I have faith in our department to be fair... fuck all faith in the university higher up) and trying to work out how we can all essentially teach ourselves the missed topics. Hardly the feckless undergraduates picture being painted on this thread.

Hardly the feckless undergraduates picture being painted on this thread.

But have you actually taught whole cohorts of students yourself? Within every student cohort there are evidently hard working, committed students. In some university courses the vast majority of students are hard working and committed.

However, like other academics my experience is that significant fractions of students, even on highly selective courses, regularly miss lectures and fail to complete assignments. My academic colleagues all around the world tell me that recording of lectures has affected the attendance and performance of such students.

BTW in decades of working in academia I have never come across academics showing contempt for students. On the other hand most of my colleagues work evenings and weekends, take very few holidays, and do their best to help students even when requests are sent outside office hours and/or at very short notice.

It’s a real shame it’s come to this. My DS is taking a languages course which can’t be self taught - the strikes will inevitably impact on his learning. I also think the Union tactics are wrong - university management isn’t hurt by the current strike proposals as the students affected are already signed up and have to make the best of a bad job. For real impact, academics should boycott recruitment activities - open days, interviews, admissions assessments. Now that would really hit the management as income would then be under threat - the current strikes don’t have any impact on income and are unlikely to lead to any changes; they just impact on students who can’t make a difference.

@Gettingthroughtheweek

You are correct. Hit management. Embarrass them. Management does not care about current students. They do care about perception, grants, growth targets, statistics, and their reputation with prospective (especially international) students. Some academics cannot afford to join the strike.

My son has very good teaching. He calls me a lot to talk about his topics and was saying how much reading around topics he does and likes discussing them presumably with his lecturers and it is so interesting that even writing the essays is an interruption into that reading process. It is lovely to chat to him about it as clearly he is getting a lot out of it in the traditional sense of doing i.e. reading for a degree. Not all students are like that and even his twin who always does work set and gets high marks is not quite as into it all.

On the contrary, it’s the height of professionalism to take action to halt the ongoing degradation of your profession. And a large part of our fight is to protect the vulnerable, precarious workers amongst us. As an SL at an RG institution, casualisation doesn’t affect me. Nor does the racial pay gap. But I care about my BAME and casualised colleagues and their futures.

Well said With you all the way.

Totally agree with Gettingthroughtheweek

Why a lengthy strike, which will only hurt students, instead of some sort of work to rule campaign? The latter would reduce all the unpaid labour that affects the things management actually care about.

Right now there is huge pressure around the REF in my faculty for example, along with recruitment and grants -- if people worked only their allotted hours for admin work, they would not be able to devote the same amount of time to these things.

If they really wanted to piss off uni bosses in our uni... stop staffing the monthly weekend open days which are A. Huge. Thing.

if people worked only their allotted hours for admin work, they would not be able to devote the same amount of time to these things.

Isn't this exactly what union members are already doing with "action short of strike" (ASOS)?

But ASOS doesn't have an immediate effect and academics (rightly) fear that such action will have impact on their career progression. This approach can only work if most academics do it - otherwise those who work ASOS can end up just harming themselves.

I agree with @crapediem. DS in first year at northern redbrick uni where second semester starts today (10th Feb and breaks for Easter on 3rd April - 8 weeks). As was the case last term, both his departments will be striking - affecting almost every day of 4 weeks of his 8 week lectures and seminars. He struggled to settle last term (not helped by strike week which followed 2 reading weeks (dual honours)). He, and we as parents, recognise the reasons for the strike but the impacts on many first year students who are trying to make the transition to university life and the very real disappointment of what's being offered as a 'course' (powerpoints…) is far reaching.

This, together with the real lack of access to mental health and counselling support there is frightening … a month's wait to get an appointment in Nov/Dec.

Meanwhile, it appears that we as parents have to just put up and shut up...absolutely livid at government and university management set ups which have led to this ongoing situation.

My dd is only 1st year and going into 2nd group of strikes . She has been told the stuff they miss during the strikes will still be in the exams. She is really struggling

Like it or not it's our right to strike. I'm not sure on the timing of this strike as it's very long and relatively untargeted. But conditions are very poor for us precariat at the bottom of the pile. I've just moved from a ZHC contract to a 3 year one but the cost of that is a 5 h per day commute. It's truly a hustle on a par with the gig economy. The wage freeze means wages are low in areas where house prices have escalated. It's not an easy life, and it's obvious to anyone with international colleagues that it's totally unnecessary. Other countries have not had the same urge to destroy institutions through competition.

I don't get what the push for the universities is.
When train workers strike, company loses revenue. Same for lots of others.
Our university is losing NOTHING because they told students very clearly there will be no refunds.
They are losing NOTHING. Just need to send out emails about strike🤷

Who is actually losing are the students who are losing exam topic lectures and support in their final year. UCU should provide some kind of proper student support on how to get universities to do the right thing. Eg. Issue refunds for time missed or change exam paper. We are losing CONSIDERABLE contact time. In our case it hit the most complicated subjects both times. It is worrying to se a pp say that this years assesment results were lower than last years. I expect same to happen in ours. Which is really shit because it's ever so competitive field and the difference even, if small, can actually affect the future of the student.

I understand , we all do actually, why the staff is striking. Doesn't mean we will be happy about it all.

I've now resorted to scrolling though Twitter for the pocket line photos to try to find out if tomorrow's lectures (we're not timetabled in today because of placements) are going ahead. Haven't spotted any of our guys yet.

No issues with the strikes (I don't want, as a student to cross picket lines -labour upbringing- but the consequences in terms of my degree and student debt mean I will have to), but for us mature students - getting to uni to find out things are cancelled has already cost us childcare, station parking, travel and 2 hours of our day... No one seems to fully get that. (Childcare is paid for the mornings on an ad hoc basis so it's not even booked even if I'm not using it).

Uni are demanding we go in, get attendance logged and then sit there in hope for 10 minutes - kind of fine but annoying if you live on campus but 2 hours away...

That's very demoralising Kuponut. I always tell my students what's happening to try to minimise the impact on them (difficult I know).