Ignore The Unis: Lecturers We Love You
For an institution that takes £9k from domestic students and up to £38k from international students every year, how can universities justify the mistreatment of their staff? Short answer: they can’t.
I assumed, perhaps naively, that the purpose of the £9k I pay my university every year was to pay the people sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm with me a good salary that reflected their degree(s) and potential PhD. I knew it would also be used to pay for the buildings and the staff who run everything behind the scenes, like receptionists, cleaners, and campus security, but I thought the primary focus would be for the people directly providing the education that I’m paying for.
Yet the staggering amount of money that universities take in annually isn’t being distributed fairly.
As you might have heard, another wave of university strikes began on the 14th of February just 2 months after the short strike that took place in December 2021. The reasons for the strikes are serious, worrying, and urgent. An article released by the University and College Union (UCU) this February states that university employers continue to push staff into casualised/zero-hours contracts, have cut pay by 20% in real terms, and are planning to cut 35% from the guaranteed pension of university staff.
3000 members of staff were made redundant during the pandemic- when times were already distressing and uncertain enough for everyone, without adding sudden unemployment into the mix.
That lecturers don’t get paid for the days they strike should be evidence enough of just how badly universities are treating them- why else would anybody give up nearly half a month’s salary by choice?
I’ve seen discourse on social media that many members of the public feel students are being unfairly punished by the strikes, but actually we ‘overwhelmingly’ support the strikes; on many campuses across the country they have joined staff on the picket line, bringing snacks and protest banners.
Lecturers are passionate about their subjects- can you imagine studying for so many years to become an expert in a subject you weren’t passionate about?- and, as I’ve heard from every lecturer I’ve come into contact with over the last 3 years, lecturers love to teach us. The bare minimum we can do in return is help them secure good contracts, retirement funds, and salaries.
Call me crazy, but maybe we could even help them secure contracts, retirement funds, and salaries that are better than good; after all, what hope is there for us to get flourishing graduate jobs if the people responsible for us graduating aren’t being allowed to thrive, too?
