Left’s campus chaos

Call for tuition fees refund as lecturers’ union begins 3-day strike over pensions The bitter irony is their actions hit the poorest students like me the hardest

STUDENTS could get partial tuition fee refunds after their campuses were brought to a standstill by striking Leftwing lecturers.

The Office for Students said compensation for cancelled classes may be ‘appropriate’ after the three-day walkout began yesterday. It also warned universities faced fines if education quality suffered because of the strike, which involves 50,000 staff at 58 campuses.

The industrial action by the University and College Union (UCU) was prompted by a hard-Left faction affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party.

It is the latest blow to students, who pay £9,250 a year and already missed months of face-to-face tuition during the pandemic.

Despite this, the radical National Union of Students (NUS) backed the walkout and was accused of ‘bullying’ youngsters by urging them not to ‘cross the picket’.

There were demonstrations outside Cambridge University and Goldsmiths University of London while at Manchester University, radical students joined the picket waving red flags.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady threatened more strikes in the New Year, saying ‘the level of action seen today is just the beginning’.

Last night universities minister Michelle Donelan called on universities to ‘minimise disruption’ to students. She said: ‘Students should be proud of the resilience they’ve shown throughout the pandemic. Industrial action is the last thing students want or deserve – which is why today’s industrial action is so disappointing.’

In its reasons for the strike, the UCU said Universities UK (UUK), which represents vice chancellors, wants to change the Universities Superannuation (pension) Scheme based on a ‘flawed valuation’.

It is also demanding a £2,500 pay increase and the elimination of zerohours contracts.

The action yesterday was prompted by the radical ‘UCU Left’ faction, which refused to compromise in negotiations with the universities. It is understood Dr Marion Hersh and Dr Deepa Govindarajan Driver, UCU pension negotiators, frustrated the talks by trashing proposals in a blog. A UUK spokesman said they had ‘undermined a union counter-proposal on pensions which could have brought a resolution’. When contacted by the Daily Mail, the union said the attention paid to its UCU Left faction by UUK was a ‘deflection tactic’ intended to undermine the strikes.’

A‘This is just the beginning’

S I WrITE on this cold December day, I can see a crowd gathering outside my college gates at Durham University, some carrying Thermos flasks.

You might mistake it for something rather festive and jolly, if it weren’t for the shouty slogans on the signs they angrily wave. One reads: ‘I’d rather be teaching.’

To which it’s tempting to respond: ‘Then why aren’t you?’

The answer is that some university lecturers appear determined to put their own agenda before what should be their primary role of educating students – paying students, let’s not forget.

Under the banner of the University and College Union (UCU), lecturers at 58 universities across Britain have yet again downed tools, this time striking for three days as they demand improvements in pay, working conditions and pension packages.

Meanwhile, students like me are caught in the middle – the collateral damage of a row that should be between employers and employees.

And let’s not forget: we have already had our education severely disrupted by the pandemic for nearly two years. Like school children, we have struggled through months of limited online learning and sat exams on subjects that many had to teach themselves.

MANY have faced even bigger personal challenges, including mental health problems caused by the isolation of repeated lockdowns and the stress of trying to study without guidance, leadership or peer support.

According to a study this week in the British Medical Journal, one in three first year students has depression or anxiety.

My university years are precious to me – because they are so hard

won. I became homeless at 16 and spent my sixth form years surfing people’s sofas, working three minimum-wage jobs to support myself, often not sure where the next meal was coming from.

But I worked my socks off to get the best A-levels I could, encouraged by some brilliant school teachers who went to incredible lengths to support me.

Some even did my laundry and gave me somewhere to shower and sleep. But, most importantly, they did all they could to encourage me to get to university. They knew that a degree would be my golden ticket out of poverty.

But now it feels that this is being jeopardised – snatched away by some of the very people who are meant to deliver it.

It feels like a slap in the face. Not just for me, but for all of us who worked hard to reach university, only to find that our lecturers are putting their own agendas ahead of the young people they are paid to educate. on the one hand, students are treated as consumers, courted with glossy brochures promising high quality teaching – courtesy of loans that will take decades to repay, if at all.

My debt will total around £50,000 by the time I graduate.

on the other we are treated as assets to exploit. And those promises of first class in-person teaching, seminars and tutorials where we could debate, exchange ideas and expand our minds have all too quickly been dropped.

And it’s not just because of Covid. Students have now been affected by strikes in every year since 2018.

Do lecturers not realise how damaging this is? or do they simply not care?

I am studying law which would ordinarily involve a large number of lectures, tutorials and seminars.

But due to ‘Covid restrictions’ the majority of my teaching still remains online. Why?

There are currently no national legal limits on the numbers allowed to gather inside – and in most workplaces people have returned to their pre-Covid levels.

My university has yet to provide an explanation for why we have to follow rules the rest of the country does not.

And if it isn’t Covid or protests over pensions and pay that are ripping away our education, it’s political point-scoring and ideology.

In June this year, 150 dons refused to teach students at oxford University’s oriel College in protest at the decision not to take down the statue of its benefactor Cecil rhodes.

Punishing current students over the ‘institutional racism’ is utterly ridiculous.

And what’s more, shouldn’t these so-called educators be the first to say that debate is far more constructive than boycott? Perhaps not.

CoNSIDEr poor Professor Kathleen Stock, hounded out of Sussex University for her views on biological sex by some trans-activist students and many of her own colleagues. The general-secretary of the University and College Union – the same union behind this week’s strikes – refused to support her.

Little wonder that vice-chancellors this week claimed that the UCU has been hijacked by the hard-Left.

The truth is that wokery and aggressive personal agendas have become the norm in academia – be it trans ideology, ‘white privilege’ or, indeed, lecturers’ own pensions.

Let me be clear: I passionately believe that people must be free to express their opinions – but why must lecturers always be so quick to strike, dispensing with the students in their charge at the drop of a hat?

The great irony is that it is those from the poorest backgrounds, who Left-wingers always claim to stand up for, who will bear the brunt.

Education was meant to be my key to a better future – they are ripping that opportunity away from me.