Welcome classes for students at the University of Edinburgh this year didn’t focus on the lectures, seminars and essays expected. Instead, students were told about how their education was going to fit in around the strikes planned for this year, which for many will effectively wipe out a term of teaching. Currently, I’ve got no teaching for five weeks,” said Theo Warshaw, 22, in his final year studying geography at Edinburgh, where staff are striking over budget cuts and compulsory redundancies needed to bridge what the university’s leaders have said is a £400m shortfall.
I would obviously rather it didn’t happen but I do get it. They do it because they love it. They don’t want to be striking.
They just want a little bit of job security,” said Warshaw. But similar conversations are taking place at universities across the UK, as administrators grapple with tuition fees eroded by inflation, a drop in international recruitment and changing patterns of demand as students shift away from arts and humanities subjects towards more vocational subjects in science, law and business. When University and College Union (UCU) staff in Edinburgh launched their industrial action, their colleagues at the University of Dundee were embarking on a five-week strike.
And this week UCU staff at the University of Nottingham announced a further round of strikes starting on Monday 5 October and lasting until the end of the semester in December, a stretch of 10 consecutive weeks. Strike ballots, marking boycotts and votes of no confidence in leadership punctuated campus life in spring and summer, as universities announced course and department closures and redundancies, leading one UCU officer to note that it was easier to list the universities that had avoided being in dispute with their staff so far. Lopa Leach, professor of vascular biology and immediate past president of Nottingham’s UCU branch, said: “The word is carnage, it is carnage what they are doing now – at the local level and also at the national, senior management level in the UK.
Why are they thinking about the destruction of higher education?” Nottingham’s industrial action has been brewing since its management declared that an £85m deficit required dramatic restructuring, including a plan announced in May to cut nearly 10% of its 7,000 effective full-time positions and suspending entry to all modern language and music courses for new students. Nick Clare, the current branch president, said that while the strikes were frustrating for students, the uncertainty was being caused by the university’s demands for restructuring, which had left hundreds of staff unsure of their future, while watching colleagues take voluntary redundancy and leave. Honestly I’ve never seen more support or solidarity from our students, having been at Nottingham for more than 10 years.
Returning students get it, new students get it, it’s amazing in that regard.” Clare said that the university’s offer of voluntary redundancy had probably been popular enough to wipe out the deficit, leading him to question why the administration was insisting on going ahead with steeper cuts. Clare warned of a potential “death spiral” hitting the university if its cuts went too far and harmed its standings in international league tables and research income, causing it to shed students and talented staff. Leach and Clare both warned that the cuts planned at Nottingham were likely to be repeated across the UK because of the nationwide similarities in funding.
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