University striking

[dearydeary]

Anyone else had this?

DC just told me they will not be marking work or exams ‘for the foreseeable’ but that she can progress to next year.

Is there any redress for the students?

Is this Durham you are referring to by any chance?

No help for your situation, but I was really surprised that staff at Bristol were striking on the open day we attended. It was a couple of years ago and some departments were actually closed when thousands of prospective students had travelled for the open day. Needless to say, my DC didn't end up there.

It does seem disgraceful when your DD will have paid over 9k in fees for the year, that nobody will mark her exams.

We are not your slaves!

I’ll tell you what’s disgraceful, getting rid of swathes of staff and expecting the remaining staff to have their workload increased by 33-50%. That sort of impact on staff will also have a massive impact on students. People have a right to strike and I seriously hope my university goes on strike soon. I would walk out for weeks on end quite happily!

Lecturers don’t strike for the kicks! It’s union action that enabled you to receive equal pay as a woman! You, as a parent, should be educating your children to realise that.

Fully support the strikes at my DS’s university - especially as the redundancy impacts his subject. He may not get his dissertation marked. It’s shit but so is losing your job

My DS did economics at UG and PG and changed unis for PG. He was never ever impacted by a strike. The economics department never striked

I was a zero hours academic for 13 years and left my role in January because my pay was cut to 2/5s of what it had been for the previous 12 years. Because I resigned there was no redundancy pay, though I understood that was never going to be on the table anyhow, they could just offer me no work.

Don't hear much about zero hour academics, there are a lot of us. We only get paid for the teaching or marking hours we actually do and we are often the ones who pick up all the capacity shortages or mark papers when others cant. Flexibility on both sides (I have a consulting business so could fit things around uni work) used to be a win : win

In a busy year I had more contact hours and marking than a salaried Academic because they (academics) have so much else they have to do beyond UG teaching. Not helped by the fact the league tables measure the ratio of academic staff to support staff - which for years now has driven down support staff head count and pushed more work on to the academics.

An academic in HE is not a pleasant role these days, though I have to say it can be amazing fulfilling.

I absolutely understand this. I was just wondering how the students can manage the feelings of paying money for a service they do not then receive.

They need to complain to the university repeatedly. If the students aren’t upset and angry then the university won’t give a shit. And I don’t mean complaining to their lecturers but higher up. When dd was an undergraduate she wrote a 70 page complaint and ended up having numerous meetings with the director of student experience and the deputy pro vice chancellor.

Whilst I wholeheartedly support everyone’s right to strike, frankly UCU are putting everyone’s livelihoods at risk with these strikes. The sector’s on the bones of its arse. Striking simply hastens the closure of the institutions striking. My sympathies are with the students on this one.

What happens if a student fails second year, but doesn't know until midway through year 3 due to delay in marking, and then has to leave the course? Would they still be liable for full year tuition loans and accommdoation costs, which they wouldn't have incurred if they knew they had failed the course at end of year 2.

How widespread is this? I haven’t heard much on it

No announcement from my DDs uni (Edinburgh) yet. DD is final year so not bothered too much as last time there were strikes her future employer (public sector) honoured jobs without degree class (plus she's had marks back for all but 2 modules so pretty sure she's above what she needs). She'll probably join in the protest against university job cuts.

Thanks for the replies

My daughter supports the strikes while on the other hand is miffed about the marking delays

🤷‍♀️

My son is at Durham and the boycotting and marking assessment has been called off.

The university did seem to have plans in place if it had gone ahead though, graduation as going to go ahead with provisional minimal grades issued where necessary. They seemed to have a plan in place too for 1st and 2nd years.

Strikes are annoying design - but you can’t deny people’s right to strike,

Was the Open Day on a Saturday? You know academic staff don't get paid extra, or given a day off in lieu?

We staff Open Days as volunteers. (At my place, we pay the student helpers, but none of the staff is paid).

Thank you.

Redundancy/sacking for academics is really really difficult. It's not as though we can just get another job. We have usually trained at poverty levels of pay (if we're paid at all) at postgraduate level for 5-10 years before a permanent post.

I know when I finished my PhD, there were 3 jobs in the whole country that were anywhere near my field and that I was qualified to apply for. Luckily I was offered one of them. That was in the 90s, and it's worse now. When I advertised a fixed term post (4 years funding that I had), I had 100 applications.

So those academics made redundant are basically lost to the profession - their research and teaching expertise just disappears.

Strikes are only effective when they inconvenience people.

No, it wasn’t a Saturday. It was definitely strike action on a weekday.

I know the student helpers are paid as my dc is one of them at the uni he ended up at.

Well I wouldn’t say I was inconvenienced - we just didn’t decide to go to that uni.

@ParmaVioletTea I worked at a RG till recently. We got time off in lieu for working on weekend open days.

Which inconvenienced the employer ie the university, if it led to other potential customers ie students making the same decision.

And I was also responding to your “disgraceful” paragraph.

If She writes to the university principal to explain how dissatisfied she is, that would be helpful. The lecturers are taking industrial action against the university management, not against the students.

The students can also put pressure on the management. Management pay more attention to student dissatisfaction than that of employees.

100%. The students need to speak out if they’re unhappy. The senior leadership team will be happy for the students to have a shit experience unless it starts impacting on stuff like NSS and admissions.

So someone decides not to go due to an unstaffed open day is a good result!

I saw something on Reddit earlier from a Manchester Uni student saying how uninterested and unsupportive their lecturers are. The student themselves blamed the fact his lecturers are mainly on short term contracts and treated like shit. He said that level of contempt and poor treatment of staff by senior management filters down to students. Manchester are a university with massive endowments and must be much more financially comfortable than many others. I get they can’t keep spending reserves and may need to streamline but for a well established course like engineering I’m struggling to see what the justification for short term contracts is.

live been contemplating my situation over the last few days. I’m definitely going to start job hunting and looking to get out of HE. In the meantime my interest in the job is plummeting and my interest in the students and course is also nosediving. Will I continue to do all the “extra” stuff like reading the 3rd years job applications for them and giving them pointers? No, I don’t think so. I won’t be able to actually do my job/reply to essential emails in such a timely manner as I currently do never mind take in extra stuff. So yes, the student experience will get worse year on year. When the next NSS is likely to be a shit show I won’t actually care. I certainly won’t let my manager berate me over it and ask why it’s so bad!

On the plus side I’ve also decided I’m not failing any students anymore no matter how shit their assignment, I don’t have time to give additional tutorial support or mark resits!