Edinburgh University Strikes Action

[dahlia2]

DD is in fourth year and her dissertation supervisor is on strike for what could be 5 weeks alongside most of her classes not being on as well. She went on year abroad last year but many of her friends have still not had final grades received from the previous academic year due to the marking boycott. Meanwhile younger DD who is in 1st year at another uni has a friend who is considering restarting at another uni next year due to her having only just started yet finding herself having to cross a picket line to attend a cohort meeting with the lack of classes and general structure being hard for them all to grapple with. Student Wellbeing services are also pretty poor and overwhelmed as a whole.

It is a shame as it is a lovely uni city and on the whole DD enjoys it. However, there is so much tumult in terms of the strikes and university management that has been ongoing for years that I would caution other's DC to reconsider before firming although I know similar things are going on at Nottingham so honestly who knows

Our DD is in her 1st year at Edinburgh and has mentioned a couple of times that she might come home whilst the strikes are on, we are encouraging her to stay but she's so fed up and without lectures to attend is a bit lost (except for lots of nights out).

If she had known this was going to happen I think she would have chosen a different uni, although Edi isn't the only one to strike.

Have you or your DC thought about why staff are prepared to forego weeks of (not very high) salaries?

The UK HE system is in crisis. Domestic/home student fees don’t cover costs (the loss on each home student starts at around £1500 and goes up in certain disciplines) and anti-migrant populism has led to a eclipse in international students who subsidise UK students.

Universities are responding by bringing in expensive consultants who apply a factory-style business model, positioning staff as costs, rather than central to university activities. Consultants are guiding many universities to sack academic staff. They did it at my university and we now have lectures where there aren’t enough seats and seminars with 30+ students because we do not have the academic staff to teach in smaller groups and our part-time teaching budgets (to buy in casual staff to teach where we have unexpected demand) no longer exist. We are cutting down on the number of module choices and including more big lecture modules than we would like, because the cut of 30% of our permanent academic staff means we cannot teach as we used to,!or as we would prefer to teach. We want to offer a quality teaching experience to students but external consultants have no concern about this. They see highly qualified and expert academics simply as costs to be got rid of.

That is why academic staff strike.

So write to your DCs’ Vice Chancellor and University Council. Put in FOI requests to find out how much the university is paying consultants. Don’t blame teaching staff most of whom are in fear for their jobs. Or if they’re lucky enough not be culled like out-of-date factory machinery, teaching staff are facing workload increase of around 25% At my place. We’re already working 50 hour weeks for about half the salary of any similarly qualified professional ( in, say the Civil Service, medicine, or law).

@dahlia2is your DDs degree class determined on just her 4th year results? (That was the case for my DDs subject). Solidarity or not with the striking lecturers I’d be encouraging her to do everything she to make sure she gets the degree class she deserves. Has she already met with dissertation supervisor and have a dissertation plan in place? Can she do the readings and other prep eg ethics submissions until supervisor back working. Would she consider a switch of dissertation if there is another willing supervisor not in the striking unions (although I suspect my DDs department wouldn’t have allowed switchers). Would they consider letting her do another taught module this term (instead of diss) and do diss in 2nd term?

My son’s experience at Bristol a few years back was equally disrupted and disappointing. I’m afraid the UK university sector is in big trouble.

UoE ranks as one of the lowest for the student experience, even before the strikes and financial issues. I would advise any young person to apply anywhere else.

DD is in her second year at Edinburgh and the experience above doesn't really reflect hers. As I understand it, this week and next are "full strikes" then the following three weeks only partial strikes (on certain days I assume)

She was unsure what the impact would be, but this week her start of semester cohort meeting and 8 out of 9 hours of her lectures/ tutorials have gone ahead as normal.

The thing that makes it hardest for UoE to do anything are the academics. They are too used to getting their own way, protecting their little fiefdom. I’ve seen projects which would be really good for students being scrapped because the most vocal academics refuse to back it, even though it has no impact on their students.

I am fully in support of the Edinburgh Uni and other university strikes in terms of the courses and staff that are at risk. However I feel there needs to be some parental pushback on the universities for failing to provide a service that our children are currently paying for an being charged extortionate interest levels on. Edinburgh has changed its terms and conditions to reflect the disruption and now will be refusing to reimburse students affected by industrial action. This is unethical and I need to look into whether it’s unlawful. Again, I support the workers and strike action is needed, the university management are at fault here and need holding to account. There will be wealthy parents who will probably be against the strikes but they are being hit in their pockets and not receiving a service they are paying for so I hope they will also agree to put pressure on the management to resolve the strike action and reimburse students. I’m not sure how to proceed but will continue to research.
My son has just started year 2 of an art degree and there are thousands of students across arts and humanities who have had all lectures and contact cancelled. Many many students stand with the staff and union but probably also have no idea how to put pressure on the management.

I would encourage her to stay in Edinburgh and explore the city in all its Autumn gorgeousness. It’s a fab city with so much to see and do. Having no lectures etc is a perfect opportunity to be a tourist 😊

My DD is in 2nd year at Edinburgh. She says that her course hasn’t been impacted by the strikes. I think the Department of Physics is quite a well off department as they provide all freshers with iPads and prescribe start. Maybe they don’t need to strike?

I am one of those out on a 5 week strike at Edinburgh.
Many people disagree with striking, but we are at last resort now. The strikes are all out for two weeks, then teaching staff only for weeks 3-5. This is all becuase the senior management are pressing ahead with the largest EVER cuts in UK Higher Education, of £140m over 2 years. This is at the 3rd wealthiest institution in the UK (after only Oxford & Cambridge.) It wouldn't be as bad if we were actually in defecit; we're not. The senior management refuse to rule out compulsory redundancies, which are estimated to be as many as 1800 staff. This is on top of the 400ish who went on voluntary severence, and the hidden redundancies of cuts to PhD tutorial support, and the ending of fixed-term contracts. Think about that - what will be left to teach students, provide pastoral support, undertake research, and other essential activities? This will have a direct impact on the student body, as this is the learning conditions of all students - and the stress on the remaining staff will mean a significantly reduced quality of all of the above.

You might guess that I'm riled up, and supportive of the action. I can ill afford to lose a month's salary on this (the second significant period of strike action we've been forced into in 2026), but we're at breaking point. We've been blown away by the responses, and support, of our amazing students. They're providing incredible support on the picket lines, even organising with the community kitchen, to feed us all on Friday.

The HE funding model is broken in the UK, but this is 'cultural vandalism' being perpetrated by Edinburgh at present. We all need to continue to put pressure on givernment to fix funding to a better state, but this level of cuts aren't neccessary at such a Uni. If it's happening at Edinburgh, it will be happening elsewhere (Nottingham as quoted, but - knowing the Scottish landscape better - Dundee, Heriot Watt, Glasgow Caledonian, QMU, and Napier, are all curently taking action of some description.)

There are definitely colleagues from Physics out on strike. They might have iPads, but they might soon not have staff to teach the classes..... Every part of the University will be affected with the proposed loss of 1800 staff. Sorry to say

Uhhh 😬 Can I ask why? My daughter was considering Edinburgh. She'll definitely reconsider if that's the case.

There have been strikes ongoing for several years. Even so I think most of the negative student feedback tends to relate to the cost of living in Edinburgh rather than the uni experience itself. Check when any satisfaction scores are from. Those graduating in 2023 were badly affected by covid remote teaching in first/second years then delays in marking final exams meant they did not get degree classifications before graduation. However that was not unique to UoE.

That may be so, but I can only go on what my DD says. She says that none of her teacher so far has been impacted so I have to believe her.
I’m in solidarity with the staff BTW. Can’t be a nice time for you all

Dd had offers for Edinburgh and Manchester and chose Manchester. One of the deciding factors was previous strike action and rumours of course cuts/staff cuts. Threat of further strike action.

The model of higher education is failing in the Uk and I think the whole thing will break before it’s rebuilt differently. It’s impossible for universities to keep getting bigger and bigger with falling student numbers, increasing staff costs and all the rest of the cost of living crisis. Yes edinburgh has reserves and plenty of money, but it’s not going to see us though this crisis as there’s no end date. It’s not like we will be in a better state in 2-5-10 years time if we prop ourselves up in the interim. Between Brexit, the government refusal to fully fund UK students, falling birth rates, etc etc we just won’t be able to have this number of universities with this number of staff. What’s frightening to me is that it’s not very clear to me what else we should or can offer people as an alternative to uni - so many jobs are outsourced, so many career paths are disappearing in an AI wasteland, it’s all very scary.

Student satisfaction surveys mean very little, I have a child at Edin who's loved their time there (untol the strikes because it's impacting their final year quite severely), it's such a fabulous city to be a student. The strikes are going to happen all over the place, not just Edin. I do understand why academics are striking but am also furious at how students are paying for a service they are not getting and having their education impacted.

I do understand why academics are striking but am also furious at how students are paying for a service they are not getting and having their education impacted.

First of all, the opportunity to study for a degree is not a "service," and academics are not "service providers."

And it's not the academics with whom you should be furious. It's the Vice Chancellors and Registrars who are spending millions of external consultants who apply an inappropriate business model to universities and position academics as merely "costs" which need to be reduced.

Without academics, doing teaching and research, using their decades of deep thinking and research to educate the next generation, you have no university. We can teach outside, we can teach in tents, we can teach without layers of administrators telling us what & how to teach (although they've never taught an undergrad class i their life).

But without academics, you don't have a university.

I think Edinburgh is particularly bad - they were on strike on the student Open Day a few years back which gave a really bad impression for us as some of the University was not open because of it and gave me and my DD a really bad impression - because of that it wasn't on her list and is having a great experience somewhere - I get the impression the staff are particularly left wing and anti free speech (which I think go hand in hand these days) - they had a case against gender critical women a few years back.

I have to say that some of the alternative teaching offered actually sound like part of a Monty python sketch. Overall I'm supportive of trying to keep Scottish options available at the University. Ironically my dc having chosen some won't actually be able take them if the strike continues.

Didn't say I was furious with the academics ...

That’s really heartening to hear @Dontgetitt Were so used to being under attack - most recently from our own employers - that I’m probably a tad hypersensitive!

I do want to say here that we've all been blown away by our students, and the level, and types, of support, we've been getting from them. They've joined us on picket lines, have written to senior management, have attended the Student/Staff support sessions in their hundreds, and are coming to us with lots of creative ways of protesting. I was personally super touched by the students who organised (with the community kitchen), to deliver food to everyone on the picket lines last week. One said to me. 'we know what you're giving up here (not just our wages), and we wanted to show our support.'
I think the kids are all right. (Actually, I know they are.)