Concerned about strike action at UoN

[JitneyJones]

DD is an undergraduate at University of Nottingham. Staff have announced strike action. I'm concerned how this will impact her and her cohort as this is their final year. She got 55% overall for her 2nd year and is hoping to achieve a 2.1.

Concerned here also. Ds is in Edinburgh in his final year with his career path contingent on a 2:1.

I've no sense of how long they'd be williing to let this run. Ultimately every strike has to come to an end but how much collateral damage before that, not to mention bitterness and anger in the workforce. What a mess.

Isn’t a 2:1 60%? 55% is sitting on a 2:2.

It is not good at all and students are caught in the mess of it all

She said “hoping to achieve a 2:1” not “sitting on a 2:1”.

I know. Year 2 counts for 33% so she's hoping to increase to 63% in year 3 so she can get a 2.1.

Ok! But it’s a big climb up. Hope she does it.

Students often do better in their final year, if they are really putting the effort in and are learning from their feedback so I think hoping for a 2:1 is not unreasonable with the right mindset and focus.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience of staff strikes at university and the impact on students.

There were a lot of strikes a few years ago, which were partially successful, in that seriously detrimental (and unnecessary) changes to the pension scheme were averted.

The effect on students will depend on how many lecturers in their subject are striking.

What's she studying? Depends how unionised her area is. Does she know how many went out on strike last time? Most staff are not in the union.

What an unhelpful contribution.

worrying times (I’m UoN alumna) and the staff morale is undoubtedly going to be affected. But it does depend on her course and the length of time strikes will last ofc on student outcomes. What a sad set up.

Going to university is not essential, like going to school or having an NHS. I would refuse to strike if I were an academic. Higher education is in crisis as it is, they are just talking themselves out of jobs long term. I don’t agree with the huge salaries at the top or the way some moneys are spent, but I think striking now is immensely stupid and they haven’t read the room.

What an unhelpful contribution

I know 🙂

Only half of DS1 second year work was ever marked three years ago at UON. It probably didn’t affect his result but we’ll never know and was completely demoralising.

@JitneyJones let’s play pretend: 55% is a 2:1 then! If work isn’t marked, how do they assume she would be getting 10
marks higher on average in y3? Maybe they will give her 65% in everything in the future just to be kind? Perhaps that’s the big hidden bonus for students?

@MeetMeOnTheCorner
Genuine question. What do you get out of posting on this board?

She got 55% overall for her 2nd year and is hoping to achieve a 2.1.

She's optimistic! Will she put the work in? 55% is a middling 2,ii It'll be hard to pull that up if she's a 2, ii level performer.

I've said this on another thread but academic staff strikes are a consequence of universities treating teaching staff as inconvenient costs (rather than the centre of the university), and home student fees being loss leaders (at my place we lose about £2000 per Home student on average).

We're seeing staff-student ratios rocket, staff are having to cover for colleagues taking "voluntary" redundancy (at my place we've lost between 25-30% of teaching staff, with increased student numbers.

She's optimistic! Will she put the work in? 55% is a middling 2,ii It'll be hard to pull that up if she's a 2, ii level performer

Thank you so much.

I'm sympathetic to staff facing redundancy. DH has been made redundant a couple of times in his career and I'm facing it next year. It's a fact of life and you just have to look for another job - go where the work it.

The university system in the UK is deeply flawed. My concern is that it might impact my DD and her cohort who are borrowing a lot of money for teaching/marking they may not receive.

If the staff on her course strike it will impact her. That’s unfortunately the point of a strike. So she may end up with work not being marked. Or the teaching might not all happen and then she has to submit assignments/sit exams without having had relevant taught content.

I used to work at a uni and in my experience the strikes never last that long - certainly not long enough to impact on students outcomes and hopefully that will be the case this time round.

And to be honest staff who are striking are generally striking because of the unreasonable workload placed on them. People aren’t being made redundant because of lack of work. The work is still there, the university is just adding 50% more workload on people left behind. That’s the issue.

They talk about redundancy being a necessity because of falling student numbers, etc. but a lot of the current financial issue is due to years of mismanagement and wasting money on unnecessary capital expenditure.

You have no idea why they are striking, sadly. Theyve been striking because of the hundreds of unfair redundancies that will take place if they dont strike (not to mention course closures, module closures or the decrease in uni quality). They arent talking themselves out of jobs, they increasingly already are out of one. Uon administration has been messing up for years, and now student support services, course quality and staff are bearing the brunt of a price that shouldnt have been paid in the first place. If you were an academic at uon in their positions and refused to strike, your head would still be on the chopping board next.

When you go into many buildings there are dozens of redundancy letters due to future nottingham plastered on every wall! The only faculties that arent striking are the ones where half their jobs arent at risk (like mech eng, for example). Many students are in support of the industrial action - if theyre even aware, depending on the subject - because everything IzzyLeng has said is completely right, and will continue to get worse in nature.

• *OK so what is the industry standard for offering the students who lose out compensation in return for the high student fees they all now pay?

Because when the railways strike we get a refund on our tickets.
The students who are going now are getting into a lot of debt at huge costs. It is not proportionate to make them miss out on their teaching that they have paid for.

There are methods to do so that the uni and uonsu have been talking about sharing with the student body. If i recall, i think they said the only reason they havent yet is because theyre waiting for strikes to be over so they can get a clear picture of how many hours have definitively been missed. Theyre going to look at previous logs to see which subjects have been most affected by strikes and tally up the hours for each student, whereby said student can submit a claim through the claims form or a seperate website i cant remember because the uni are being predictably hush hush about everything wrong with their administration. I think instead most students will have to lodge a complaint via the office for students, they will get a decent sum then - I remember newcastle students did so last year and got something like £2.5 million total for only 10k students.

£2.5 million total for “only” 10k students? That is £250 per student. I don’t know how much they missed but if it was a fair amount, that is hardly proper compensation for real disruption. Remember the interest accruing of 4.1% on annual debt alone is way more than that.