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.

This. Despite the amount students pay, it is not even remotely the full cost of the degree. In some universities 9k covers less than half of the cost of the degree, which is cross-subsidised by other funds in the university - for example conferencing income generated from summer business.

Presumably the university income comes partly from government funding councils?

No, this was withdrawn by the government when full tuition fees were introduced, apart from in a very few STEM areas. And even the full tuition fees don’t cover the full cost of the degree.

I’m not on the MAB this year, but historically it’s been one of the few ways staff can apply pressure on the universities in the face of catastrophically declining conditions in the sector. Those who still think it’s a job with nice hols and pensions and decent salaries are decades out of date. Junior academics can often expect to do merchant banker style hours for around 30-36k if they’re very lucky, and for below minimum wage piecework or a series of one year fixed term contracts if they aren’t. And no, this isn’t clear upfront when young people begin on a PhD which may take up to 6-7 years to complete.

Pay has declined in real terms by more than 30 percent just since the financial crisis. Use of precarious staff has rocketed. Stress is horrendous. And no, we were not furloughed during Covid - we were online delivering even more content electronically. Whilst still homeschooling, etc. No recognition of this by managers, who largely pretended it wasn’t happening (my manager did not ask me even once how I was during the pandemic despite working insane hours and having Covid twice).

If you’re going to get pissy at lecturers, at least get your facts right about the sector. If you just think they deserve the low pay and crap conditions because they “chose to have low market value” (something which was actually said outright to me once in a meeting by our chief financial officer), then at least own it. Why aren’t the serfs doing their job? They chose these conditions, so why are they complaining? My child expects what they paid for! Only, then you also need to acknowledge that it’s you who is being entitled — to treat education like a “package” you buy in Sports Direct no matter how the shop workers get treated. That’s what you’re going to get, though, if that’s how you treat it.

Right, so, according to your own logic, if it turns out you’ve paid for a crappy product from crappy workers, then you should have done your due diligence before you bought it in the first place. Play “market value” games, win “market value” prizes.

That’s the logic of the right wing: caveat emptor, so why are you complaining?

There are principled people on both sides of any nuanced argument, and that's been my experience of these strikes and of the boycott.

I'm sorry your husband is being criticized by colleagues for his position. One person's "strikes messing with the students' hard work" is another person's conditions deteriorating for staff and students alike without strikes. Both respectable arguments.

The whole ideology of “messing with students’ hard work” as a position is implicitly right wing, though. Within universities too, one way of forcing staff to accept really poor conditions is to lean on them heavily with emotional and ideological blackmail about “the poor students”.

But this is to accept the contradictory position that it’s “market values for thee by not for me”. Parents, government and management alike like to say workers in the sector should accept their “low market value” and buckle up. Yet this is inevitably the reverse when it comes to the idea that students are “customers” or “service users” (and the right can never de use whether education is a service or a product, when actually it might be neither). Suddenly the student, parent, etc. is owed some nebulous duty of care/parental oversight/ideological responsibility by lecturers when they feel like it, even though the ideology the rest of the time is “consumer rights”.

It makes no sense to say students are “customers” and lecturers chose to be poorly paid, and then turn around and complain that lecturers owe students some kind of ideological care for their hard work. That’s like expecting the girl on the shop floor at Sports Direct to care if your son’s trainers fell apart.

If you want lecturers and staff to care about your children’s feelings and hard work and wellbeing, why are you so keen not to care about theirs? Lecturers aren’t some kind of paid replacement Mum for your kids — and if that’s what you really want, why aren’t you reciprocating? Why don’t you see how entitled it is to expect staff to be treated like shop workers, but still somehow deeply care about your kids’ educational wellbeing, feelings, future careers etc.?

The whole ideology of “messing with students’ hard work” as a position is implicitly right wing, though. Within universities too, one way of forcing staff to accept really poor conditions is to lean on them heavily with emotional and ideological blackmail about “the poor students”

I agree with this if one takes the ideological position you describe - that any resistance to worsening conditions is unacceptable because of the effect on students.

But - one could feel that the strikes were unlikely to succeed, that some of the premises were unreasonable, and that action which (among other things) might damage students' interests was not worthwhile.

I don't know many people at my place who are entirely for or entirely against striking. I would certainly resent the implication which I've seen on other threads that those who strike don't care about students. There's room to care about students (without sacrificing yourself to the institution) on both sides.

Agree absolutely with you re ideological blackmail and that's what many VCs are doing.

We have withdrawn our labour - a legal right. Those concerned about "service users"? The university guarantees the service. If we are ill, if we retire, if we move, if we die, if we give notice of lawful action - the university guarantees the service. Talk to them and ask what they're doing about it

It’s a shame students are so impacted. Whether it’s being confined to rooms in Covid, all online and no f2f or lacking lessons at all there’s not much they can do.

Other services you can just choose another outlet no issue and the first loses custom. Students have little voice in all this, I really feel for them.

I have very little sympathy with the lecturers tbh. I know and understand logically why they are doing this, but emotionally it feels really underhand and nasty. The only people that suffer are their students who you'd think they'd care about.

It's not 'blackmail'. Its literally the lecturers job - or a huge part of their job - and they are not doing it, despite students going into huge personal debt to secure their services. Its wrong.

Not really. I am sorry for the COVID generation but they are graduating into a hard cold world whether we strike or not. Strike action now may (we hope) protect conditions for current and future students and workers.

Trains, nurses, royal mail, junior doctors, teachers, paramedics etc have all been on strike. Alternatives aren't obvious there either. But nobody loses so much pay lightly.

Workers need a voice too, as students will find in the workplace. (Many know this already).

Universities have options to solve this problem. Students might use their voices (via SU or direct to university) to ask for action.

Well this is clearly not the case as I remember lecturers striking when I was at uni 40 years ago. There will be some other reason in 5 years time.

Strikes don't solve everything for all time, no.

Nor do they achieve nothing.

There will have been better conditions for both staff and students at universities between now and the mid-1980s - depending what your lecturers were striking about, they may have succeeded, in their time.

Well, they will lose a lot of goodwill over this.

Goodwill doesn't stop burnout, or pay the bills.

You can't pay bills on 42k a year? Wow.

Until this year - since my university wasn't involved in USS pension disputes - there has been on average 1 strike day every four years, for me. Far more snow days. It's not exactly the shipyards of Gdansk here in the UK HE sector.

As lecturers, I believe we have a duty of care not just to current students but to future students who deserve to study in a place not on its knees from decades of under-investment. The situation for students is untenable. For those complaining how about few contact hours your students have - yes, you are right, this is shit and it’s getting worse. It’s because student numbers are going up and and up, and staff numbers and working conditions are going down and down. If you think it is bad now, it will be terrible later. We are considering moving to group dissertation marking because there aren’t enough staff to supervise 1-1 anymore. This is a terrible situation for the students.

Striking is never done lightly, and marking boycotts least of all because of the impact on students. The union has held off from a MAB for years for this reason, and has worked tirelessly to try to negotiate an acceptable deal but UUK (universities uk) has just not responded and are pushing universities into a way of working that academics feel is totally unacceptable for students.

As parents of course you care about your own kids more than unknown future kids, but as lecturers we have to have an eye to both. Nobody does this lightly. It’s going to cost me at least £1500 and mean I can’t take my kids on holiday this summer, and my uni isn’t even cutting salary as much as some, but I strongly feel it’s the only way.

But when the job has been reduced to “providing services”, why would you expect lecturers to care about students, any more than a shop worker or a plumber cares deeply about you?

Voters have voted for governments who made it clear they want marketisation and consumerisation, not just in education but in healthcare, social work, etc. etc. The obvious and logical consequence of that is that those sectors no longer can trade on some kind of nebulous goodwill, caring duty or service ethos of their staff.

Why is there some kind of assumption that education staff must somehow owe “care” or some kind of magic serf-like “public service” duty to students? The entire last few decades has been an exercise in removing that from every possible sector.

That’s what I mean by “play market value games, get market value prizes”. If you think students are “consumers” or “service users”, you don’t then get to act outraged when it turns out those providing the “product” don’t any more regard the job as a sacred duty of public service or “care” for the feelings and future of the “customer”.

The “service providers”, to be blunt, aren’t paid any longer for the extra emotional labour of “caring” about your precious kiddies. If you wanted “education” and “care”, you should have voted differently.

If you don’t like the result, take it up with the Tory government and university management in the sector, who all have a vested interest in paying staff shit wages for the work — just like the managers of any marketised companies do.

It's really not underhanded, @Cazelet . There's been open discussion of this boycott for months, and clear notice served weeks ago. Universities have had time to respond - whether by negotiating or by putting alternatives in place for marking. Do they care about students?

Btw, if I didn’t care, I’d not participate in industrial action as this is cripplingly expensive and has had a negative effect on my family. I’d just allow things to carry on without protest, whilst getting ready to switch to a (much more highly paid) job in industry like many of my former colleagues. But I care about students and education and so I stay and fight for it.

It FEELS underhanded. I'm sure it has altruism at it's heart.

The “service providers”, to be blunt, aren’t paid any longer for the extra emotional labour of “caring” about your precious kiddies. If you wanted “education” and “care”, you should have voted differently

You are unwittingly providing education and care whether you like it or not. Your students are dependent on you for their future. Very disingenuous of you to pretend that this isn't the case.

Yes, some altruism - also some self-preservation, and some solidarity, I would say.

Not much naked self-interest - we could all leave the strikes and loss of pay to other people!

How else can we protest (after exhausting internal mechanisms) except through our legal right to withdraw labour? I hope students don't feel betrayed by this. I see a range of reactions but I am sure they differ by place, political background, relationship to the university etc.

We’re paid to educate. Mostly we do care for our students, but this is not part of what we’re paid to do. This is part of the goodwill over and above aspect of academic life that has been ruthlessly exploited by senior management for years.

And by “it feels underhand”, do you mean that you pay no attention to what is going on in universities so weren’t aware of this? It’s been all over the press for months.

But when the job has been reduced to “providing services”, why would you expect lecturers to care about students, any more than a shop worker or a plumber cares deeply about you?

Depends where you look. An employee in professional services who cares little about losing clients won’t last long. They’ll be let go.

Unfortunately students may pay but they don’t have the same clout.

😂 That’s hilarious! I’m afraid I’m not at all providing care. That is nowhere in my contract, and nowhere in any expectations for promotion, etc. I’m merely paid to “deliver” X amount of “product” in the form of X hours of lectures, seminar teaching, REF points etc. There is no moral duty or reference to that old-fashioned idea of “education” to be seen anywhere! This is all enshrined at every level in HE now.

You are absolutely deluded if you think higher education has any relation to “care” any longer. This has been totally rooted out of every area of the sector. My manager explicitly said to my face that I was “only worth a low market value” and if I had wanted to be paid more and treated better, I should have done a more “high value” job. That’s the default attitude to staff now: our head of department is very keen on telling us that we “can’t expect any goodwill” from the institution because we are “just employees”. That’s the fully explicit ethos of the sector management everywhere. You won’t find a single manager talking about the care we owe our students 😂 That hasn’t even been on the table for a long time!

If you didn’t know that, you’d better get used to it, because the days in which lecturers were assumed to be public servants with a duty of care are very long gone. That’s what the Tory government promised, and what the voters got!