F inalienable year students affected by marking boycott

[fUNNYfACE36]

How is your final year student being affected?
Dd(dutham) will graduate on the planned date with a transcript of grades so far ,but not receive a classification until October.

[titchy which for solicitors is interesting because our regulator (in its infinite wisdom) has decided uder the new SQE ( exam) system you don't have to study law even for a single day to take and potentially pass the SQE1 and 2 exams as long as you have a diploma or degree (even 3rd class or dinary degree) in any subject whatsoever - bizarre but apparently increases opportunities...... You can study yourself at home or do an LLB or law conversion or nothing and SQE1 (the main academic professional exam) is 100% multiple choice - amazing]

Well, they're doing what you're recommending - they're withdrawing their labour.

Sure - I've no problem.with that. It just means the 35 days' leave (not in my place anyway) can't be taken at face value.

If I had a child at university, hoping to graduate this year, I would advise them to ask what measures management are taking to get work marked.

Lots of marking is already done as paid piecework. People move / fall ill / retire quite often. What's stopping universities from allocating resources to prioritise final-year marking?

Staff aren't stopping your children from graduating.

They have worked so hard,and had a very difficult time with the pandemic etc ,can’t believe their work is not going to be marked by the academics in their department
Very low behaviour,can’t imagine taking such a cavalier approach to my clients

Wondering too

Students pay a fortune. What’s going on?

@SunnyEgg I'd love to know what they are spending the money on too. It's not staff, that's for sure. My colleague lost his dad earlier this year, he had two weeks off and had to return to work because we were all so stretched anyway we couldn't pick his workload up. We all do additional hours each week- and expected to do more and more, for no extra money.

If I had a final year child now, I would be furious.

(My son is in his first year at a RG university. He says given how few contact hours he gets, and how distant the lecturers are, he and his friends barely notice when the staff go on strike anyway. So he is not sure where this so-called heavy workload comes from.)

As if any of this affects the government. They don’t care. It’s just these young people in their final years getting their future plans ruined. I don’t know how the lecturers can live with themselves.

Where does the government come in? Students pay a fortune and get sub standard service back

What do they actually want

I agree with you btw

Presumably the university income comes partly from government funding councils?

My son gets such poor value for money. Dull uninspired lectures. It’s been a real disappointment. He is a pretty bright boy and went with such hope for discussion and debate.

We even worked out it would be cheaper from him to commit from London, given how few contact hours there are.

And now they are refusing to mark work. Appalling.

Maybe 25% is spent on staff salaries (incl overheads) where I work. Less in many depts.

Universities have the means to pay to get work marked if they choose to do so. Maybe they prefer to act like victims and blame the strikers.

If you want your children to graduate into an employment market where they can't defend their terms and conditions through legal strike action - sure, blame the lecturers.

But even if you blame the lecturers, take it up with the universities. They have the legal obligations. They have the means and tools to fix this.

Maybe 25% is spent on staff salaries (incl overheads) where I work. Less in many depts.

I absolutely guarantee your university spends a fuck of a lot more than 25% on salaries - 60% is the norm. Don't forget income hasn't increased since 2012.

I have every sympathy for the strikers but do feel like the wrong people are paying the price.

This cohort has had strikes, covid and strikes.
DD now a masters student and despite paying full tuition (and rent etc) has not had a single year without disruption.

It's not right

To add-in her first two years she had 10 weeks of F2F

10 weeks in two years but paid in full.

this was strikes-before covid

Yes, my twins started in 2017. In year 1 and year 2 they had strikes. In year 3 they were sent home by the state under lockdown laws of which I did not approve and lost their last term forever. 4th year (post grad) was 100% online although I paid rent for one because he was in another city. Year 5 finished last year (post grad) was fine as both living at home and not affected by strikes or covid and they could go in.

On the universities should hire external m arkers - I agree although it will depend on the subject if they can find someone who can do that kind of marking to the right standard which may not be that easy in specialist subjects. I used to mark law exam papers when a young lawyer but that was post grad exam papers and there was a pre existing external marker system.

What students will want is absolute certainty and clear statements. Eg on exactly what date will some kind of transcript be available (some careers require transcripts of your marks in every module and online systems do not really allow for exceptions or special cases). On exaclty which day will I know if I have a 2/`1 (plenty of job offers are conditional on 2/1). Some post grad courses start in Sept will require uploading of proof of passing degree etc etc. So students need to know precisely what will be available by what date at their institution.

No student should be left in the dark about where to turn up for an exam and if it will be an online exam or not or what their log in codes are.

I mean just academic salaries, teaching related - sorry, should have specified.

We didn't do less work during COVID either (to other posters). What savings could we have offered students then? We were still workimg whether face to face or not (and didn't enjoy it either).

"Students pay such a lot!" They do... But compare tuition fees with private school fees, and you'll see it's not "such a lot".

Lecturers don't just lecture. And they're broken, and leaving. There is no massive queue of people to do this underpaid, overworked, uncertain job.

This is the government's fault. All the government.

Don't get me started on Covid. We worked so hard transforming all our courses to online, with a full raft of pre records and live sessions and interactivity. We all had to undertake a massive training to make this work and we perfected it for the second iteration. We went above and beyond....you snarky moaners don't have a clue,

I think we reached a stage with COVID where students who (reasonably) wanted the face to face experience should have made a decision to interrupt studies and wait things out.

The intensity and isolation of our working conditions then still affects us now. As in the NHS: "it's a crisis and we will all drive at it with infinite energy and goodwill", works once, works twice, can't work forever. People can see that the same VCs who could rely on our dedication and goodwill to slog through COVID are now happy to try to starve us back to marking with 100% pay deductions.

If there had been less of this bullying, VCs would have a clearer picture of what's going on with marking, and they'd be better able to mitigate it. It's their job to do so.

I was against all lock downs so would have just had staff continue to lecture in person and only those students who had major health conditions stay away if doctors said it was unsafe for them. I would not have cancelled GCSE nor A level exams either.

I think @Xenia you have forgotten that many lecturers were vulnerable too, including a couple of my colleagues who did not survive the period.

Sure - with the right protections for vulnerable staff and students, most people I know would have been much happier with this approach. Timetabling socially distanced classes was a nightmare and another huge drain on time and energy, though. But we don't make law or infuence policy much.

A lot of students wanted to get through thelr degrees one way or the other. It sounds as if your children who started postgraduate years during the pandemic felt that way.

It is just odd that the sector can deal with pandemics and frozen fees and every random change the gov't throws at it but ooh no, no way to handle a marking boycott. I don't buy that.

You are totally misinformed. The pension has been significantly downgraded to in some cases 1/3 (that’s ONE THIRD) of what it was even fifteen years ago. That’s one of the main reasons academics have been striking. The vast majority of the lecturers who are striking will not be on anything near 50k+ - in fact large amounts of teaching and marking now are done by precarious, part-time, junior and and hourly-paid staff with few rights and very low pay. Working hours in academia are routinely 60-80 hours per week, with huge admin burdens, and a lot of low paid staff doing the majority of the work while a very few elite research or management staff get the higher salaries.

That’s the reality of the sector at the moment - not some kind of right wing fantasy about summers off and lavish pensions.

My DP is a lecturer. He is not part of the union and is marking as normal. He has had flack from colleagues about this, but doesn't give a damn.
He is fed up with strikes messing with students hard work.

Meh, everyone had to buckle up during Covid apart form those that were furloughed.

So much moaning from privileged academics but little empathy for service users. Post graduate course fees also have rather gone up in recent years😔.

You are totally misinformed. The pension has been significantly downgraded to in some cases 1/3 (that’s ONE THIRD) of what it was even fifteen years ago.
This is the case across industries, many benefits have been capped and conditions are on the whole less favourable than before 2009.