LANCASTER: Defending Education – Day of Action: 21 June 2010

Congrats to Julie and her helper(s) for their Alexandra Sq action on the 21st June. I was out of the country all last week, but heard it went down quite well. Here’s a paste of their text from the day:

Defending Education – Day of Action: 21 June 2010

Education sector unions are planning a Day of Dissent on Monday 21st June, the longest day and also the day before the new government emergency budget is announced which is set to cut public spending yet further. Staff and students’ organisations have united to form an unprecedented sector-wide coalition in further and higher education, “United for Education”. Bringing together UCU with other education sector unions, this coalition aims to be a vehicle for uniting the entire further and higher education sector to call on the new government to stop the cuts and defend education..

Education is Under Attack

• Over £1bn has been cut from higher education budgets over the next three years.
• £200 million has been cut from adult learning budgets, with a further £300 million expected.
• Thousands of jobs already gone.
• Thousands more are at risk.
• For the first time in decades our education system is shrinking and the barriers to access are rising.
• Now, the new coalition government is threatening yet more cuts to public spending.
• Current and future generations are at risk of being locked out of our education system.

We are calling on all staff and students to unite with us in lobbying the government. We want the sector to speak with one voice to say that enough is enough-it’s time to stop the cuts and to invest in the future of education.

Counting the human cost of cuts

• 200,000 qualified applicants could miss out on a university place this autumn.
• 70% of FE colleges are planning to close courses.
• If the cap on top-up fees is removed, current and future generations of young people will be priced out of university education.
• 1 million 16-25 year olds are unemployed and not in education or training.
• 7 million adults in Britain are illiterate, and 14 million innumerate.

Education is an engine of economic recovery and social mobility, but it also changes the lives and builds the hope of individuals, families and communities.

What you can do to help:

• Show your support: join us at our stand in Alexandra Square on Monday June 21 between 12.00 – 2.00 and help us to hand out leaflets and raise awareness.
• Sign the petition calling on the government to stop the cuts.
• Help us to build a united sector. Find out more.

——————-

Meanwhile, the budget has been announced and we can all plainly see the utter depravity of  “our elected leaders”.

Unite!

😀

W

The Current Crisis of Higher Education

The Current Crisis of Higher Education

(Briefly)

Recent events in Europe and the UK have forced us to face the fact that Higher Education is currently in crisis: intellectually, financially, politically. Research and teaching have become disaggregated; employment has become increasingly insecure and exploitative, with a rise in “casual” contracts; knowledge production has become thoroughly dependent on the possibility of pursuing revenue, and intellectual concerns have largely become a management matter. Meanwhile, students are paying more and getting less. Modules, courses, whole departments are being closed down. The university has lost all cohesion and the intellectual community is fast-dissolving. More worryingly, as of yet there has been little organised resistance; what resistance there has been has appeared isolated, fragmented, and easily put-down.

A striking, but by no means isolated, example of these trends is the recent closure of the internationally renowned Middlesex University Philosophy Department, discontinued for undisclosed “financial” reasons. Given the everywhere-acknowledged fact of this department’s excellence, this decision clearly demonstrates to us the precedence in the Academy of a “business-like” mentality over intellectual judgment and integrity. The stark results of this are everywhere on display. Worse, this intellectual crisis in turn disclosed to us a deeper political crisis, when staff and students at Middlesex were suspended following (peaceful) protest actions. More worryingly, these attempts to forcefully end protest by the University were backed up by a High Court injunction against the protesters, just as had occurred several months earlier in response to protests at Sussex University (in March 2010). In this connection we might also note the High Court interference with RMT rail workers’ and TUC British Airways strike actions, and identify a disturbing trend.

At Lancaster University we are beginning to feel the effects of this crisis, particularly in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Recently we have experienced cuts to travel funds, the incongruous merger of the philosophy, religious studies, and politics departments, the last minute scrapping of core Music Studies modules, and the closure of IAS – to list just a few examples. Whilst new buildings rise-up around us, and perfectly serviceable slabs are replaced with granite, staff face increasing pressure in relation to research, teaching and administrative duties. Other “casual” staff, including research associates and postgraduate students, find themselves taking on increasing responsibilities whilst remaining grossly underpaid and unlikely to find full-time lectureships. Meanwhile, students find themselves attacked from above as the weakest link in the chain: whilst the little education they receive becomes steadily more meagre, increasingly worthless, their Vice-Chancellor is everyday courting the Government and media with speeches suggesting that tuition fees over £7000 per annum are acceptable. All decisions and changes occur with little or no consultation. A state-of-exception prevails; we are told that we face “difficult times”; we are told to consult the news and to blame politicians. But, we don’t need to consult the news because we are already everywhere confronted in our daily working lives with the fact of this crisis, with our complete alienation from all decision making processes, and with the threat of worse to come.

[Feel free to distribute this]

Higher Education is in Crisis

Higher Education has, over the last year, been steadily and increasingly heading toward utter crisis. It is clear that this point has now been reached. Total cuts to university budgets will be over £1.5 billion. It is clear that the disaster set in motion by New Labour is being accelerated by the Conservative Coalition.

The Effects:

These are all stories reported by the BBC during the last five days:

Due to underfunding by Government, it is estimated that at least 250,000 university applicants will be refused a place for economic reasons. Spending cuts have reduced extra university places at a time when there has been a huge surge in demand. The number of applicants not getting a place will have doubled in two years.

Meanwhile, Colleges across Britain are suffering from the huge cuts to funding, from decreased student numbers (due in part to cuts), and from competition from new academies. Why the Conservative Coalition are investing in new buildings and new school colleges and not in exisiting facilities is certainly a cause for bafflement.

In response the Government has suggested (as did New Lab before them), condensing courses into two years. This from the party that, in recent memory, bemoaned “mickey mouse courses”. It seems, when the choice is between HE and big business, the Tories are happy to make fools of us all. UCU has emphatically voted against these “sweatshop” courses, but unfortunately that won’t stop a host of related trends, such as the move toward “distance learning”, “part-time” courses and other such thrift measures, which speak loudly of a lack of Government funding for Universities and of a lack of financial support for increasingly beleaguered students.*

As a result primarily of the financial meltdown, but also of other smaller factors – increased competition, for example – the Golden Promise that HE guarantees better employment has dissolved. At the same time that tuition fees have massively increased (and are set to increase more this year), students are finding that they are unable to find jobs. Not only is this because of a lack of jobs, and a flooded job market, but students who aspire to careers such as journalism, publishing, even the police and teaching, are increasingly finding that they are forced to gain extensive work experience, or to work in underpaid trainee or casual positions. In Higher Education this is also manifest in the current policy of covering teaching-hours gaps with causal-contract work, rather than employing new lecturers. As a result many Postdoc students are finding that they cannot find proper academic jobs, and are instead being paid salaries around £5000 per annum for “casual” work. As a result, they are forced to undercut their own labour. They are not only being steadily proletarianized, many of them are actually living in poverty. Whilst teaching seminars to perhaps 30 or 40 students and giving course lectures to perhaps 100 (each student paying £3500 for a years study), they are making ends-meet only by undergoing the humiliation of applying for housing benefits – a long, arduous and unrewarding process.

Is it any surprise, then, to hear it reported that calls to a university helpline have increased by 25% over the last year? My only fear is that the next story will report a 25% increase in suicide rates amongst academics. I’m not joking.

Finally, then, is it any wonder that University and College staff are considering a national strike? The only wonder is that it hasn’t happened already. Above and beyond the complaints already listed, staff and students across the country are watching in horror as decades of hardwork is being swiftly destroyed. Courses are closing at many universities, including at Lancaster. Whole departments, even extremely successful ones, are being closed down – most notoriously in the case of Middlesex Philosophy department. Other departments are being merged into incongrous joint departments, such as the infamous merger of Politics, Philosophy and Religious studies at Lancaster. As senior academics retire they are no longer being replaced, whilst new staff aren’t being taken on, leaving departments across the coutnry increasingly reliant on under-experienced and underpaid causal labour. Those who do have full lecturerships are finding themselves without job security, and increasingly pressured by new “impact” criteria, reduced funding, more paperwork, more teaching work, and less support.

Students don’t have it any better, finding themselves with increased tutition fees, yet less choice, less quality, less time, more pressure. Postgraduate students, meanwhile, are being used with open cynicism as cash-cows, following Government limits on undergrad student numbers. Whilst their fees are massively increasing, the minuimum wages paid by jobs they work to try to fund studies are not. Quite frankly, the fees will reach a natural limit because very soon students will not actually be able to pay. Indeed, this is already the case, to a large degree. Friends doing PhDs are working three or four jobs and only scraping by. Research time is pushed to the margins. Meanwhile, one of their jobs may well be teaching two classes of undergraduate seminars. Despire the increased fees paid by undergraduates, postgrad teaching assistants are not paid enough to even nearly cover their own fees – in effect, their wages are worth less than nothing. Meanwhile, preparation for seminars, for which, in reality, they are often not paid, eats into their remaining research time.

It really is past time, then, for an active and forceful student protest against this Government induced crisis. It is past time for students and staff to recognise their common problems and to engage in collective action. We need strikes, and we need them now. We need more than strikes. Where is the NUS in all of this?? It is too busy pandering to politicians in exchange for future parliamentary work experience. As students we need to look to UCU and co-ordinate with lecturers’ actions. We also need to stand on our own feet and co-ordinate effective student protest. It is plain that NUS is no longer a forum for this. We will have to tear it down. It is irrelevant. What is relevant is student solidarity, solidarity with lecturers and other staff, and solidarity with all those workers who find themselves similarly to be paying for the Bankers’ crisis.

Go go go go!

W

*Note here, that UK courses are already amongst the shortest in the world. Soon European and and US universities will no longer take our degrees seriously (despite Bologna-attempts). (Avg timescales: UK: UG 3-4, Masters 1-2, PhD 3-4; Elsewhere: UG: 3-5, M: 2-5, PhD 4-8+; cumulatively, an English student may earn a PhD after 7 years, whilst elsewhere in Europe and USA it will be at least 9 years, and quite probably a good deal longer. Correct me if I’m wrong).

Subtext2: about

Subtext2 is a newsletter and blog-space produced and maintained by a group of postgraduates, postdocs and teaching assistants from Lancaster University (UK).

It takes its lead from Subtext, a now disbanded (?) newsletter produced by a small group of Lancaster staff and students detailing the subtext of developments at the university.

Subtext2 is also the product of an ongoing set of dicussions by PGs, PDs and TAs about the problems and difficulties they encounter in pursuing their research and  teaching: about their working conditions, about the cuts, and about the various Government and university management strategies that are detrimental to us and to the university as a whole. The purpose of these discussions is to create a body of PGs and TAs capable of articulating demands. Our aim for this academic year is to reach a stage where we can call a general meeting of PGs and TAs.

Subtext2 is not, then, the mouth of this group, but a parallel project carried out by a few of those who take part in these discussions. As such, it is able to move beyond the remit of the discussion group to address not only those issues facing Lancaster staff and students, but our higher education system as a whole, and indeed the political situation as a whole.

Hope you find it informative.

Best wishes.