Striking university lecturers were condemned last night for inflicting ‘academic sabotage’ after union bosses ordered them not to assist students who ask for help during a 14-day walkout.
The militant leadership of the lecturers’ University and College Union even told members not to hand out reading lists.
Students, who fork out more than £9,000-a-year in fees, last night told The Mail on Sunday that staff had refused to give them any assistance during the row over academics’ pay and pension pots.
Students, who fork out more than £9,000-a-year in fees, last night said staff had refused to give them any assistance during the row over academics’ pay and pension pots. Grace Withers (pictured) is doing a master’s at Nottingham University and is set to lose up to a third of her teaching time left
On its website, the UCU told picketing tutors: ‘You should refuse to reschedule [lectures or seminars] or share materials that would have been covered in the class or lecture when asked.’
Tory MP David Morris said: ‘This is a cynical ploy to inflict maximum damage on students’ education.
‘They’re already causing disruption to a million students by cancelling classes and seminars, and whatever the merits of their strike, that should be sufficient to get their point across.
‘But to instruct lecturers not to make any attempt to lessen the damage from the strike amounts to academic sabotage.’
If strike isn’t cut short I will sue the university
Isabel Jezierska, 22, turned down the chance to study for free in Estonian to come to the UK and said she will be forced to sue her university due to the strikes
Isabel Jezierska is in her second year studying philosophy at Sheffield University.
The 22-year-old came to the UK from Estonia for a better education and has now said she will be forced to sue her university due to the strikes.
Isabel, who turned down the chance to study for free in the Estonian city of Tartu, said: ‘Now I’m spending money on tuition that I’m not even getting.
‘I still have to be in the UK and pay for rent. I work part-time in a start-up and so I’m just working now, but what for?
‘If this strike is not cut short, I’ll be forced to sue the university.
‘We need them to do something about the demands otherwise the strikes will just continue.
‘Universities here in the UK actually have money but they have decided to spend it on new buildings and cut lecturers’ pay.
‘When potential students see how the lecturers and students are treated by the university, why would they come here?
‘I am completely for the strikes and what they stand for. But right now the university doesn’t seem to be scared about the consequences of the strikes.’
Despite more than 60,000 students signing petitions demanding a partial fee refund, the National Union of Students has backed the strike action (pictured are members of the University and College Union at the University of Bristol on Thursday)
It is the third wave of strikes since 2018, with the UCU warning of further action next term if there is no resolution to their long-running dispute.
Despite more than 60,000 students signing petitions demanding a partial fee refund, the National Union of Students has backed the strike action.
However, a leaked email from one student union president warned some undergraduates may not graduate this year because of the walkout.
In an email leaked to The Tab website, Cardiff Student Union chief Jackie Yip told other union officials: ‘Further strike action will now mean some of my students will have missed so much content that they will not be able to graduate this year, even if there are mitigating actions put in place.
‘We have not told students this as we do not want to cause panic.’
Teaching time slashed – but cost is still the same
Grace Withers is doing a master’s in public administration at Nottingham University having completed her undergraduate degree at Cardiff last year.
She faced repeated strikes at Cardiff and her Nottingham course was disrupted last term. She is now set to lose up to a third of her teaching time left.
While sympathetic to lecturers on strike, she is concerned the lost teaching time will nullify any competitive advantage gained from her £9,500 course.
Grace Withers is set to lose up to a third of her teaching time left
Her lecturers refuse to release even pre-prepared material such as PowerPoint slides.
Grace, 23, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I’ve found the strikes really stressful as the degree I receive won’t be as informative and thorough as other people who have studied the same course. One reason I chose to study a master’s was to gain an advantage in the jobs market and I’m losing that advantage.
‘I have nine days of teaching a term and am losing three of those, having had the same thing happen last term.
‘They won’t budge on giving us the content because they say it’d ruin the point of the strike.’
One Durham University fourth-year student told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I have honestly never felt so stranded in my academic life.’
Master’s biomedical scientist Steven Asquith, 22 from Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, said he was ‘helpless’ in his vital lab project, adding: ‘The one person who was assigned to help me was advised to ignore my queries.’
Andrew Waters, 20, a second-year economics student at Warwick, said: ‘We’re trying to prepare for essays and exams based off limited material, and there’s not going to be a huge amount of help with content we’ve missed going into revision season. That can cause a lot of worry.’
Adam Flanagan, a first-year economics and politics student at Edinburgh University, added: ‘It’s unfortunate the union has felt it has no option other than to strike, but I think this could have been managed a lot better by all parties. Students’ futures should not become a political football.’
The UCU’s general secretary Jo Grady has led a 50,000-strong walk-out across 74 universities, objecting to plans to increase lecturers’ pension contributions.
Universities contribute 21 per cent of a lecturer’s salary towards their pension but academics are angry at being asked to increase their own contribution from 8 per cent to 9.6 per cent to help fill a shortfall in the fund run by the Universities Superannuation Scheme.
But pensions expert John Ralfe said the lecturers’ generous defined benefit pensions were ‘as rare as hen’s teeth. What they seem to be arguing about in financial terms is a relatively small amount’.
Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons Education Committee, said: ‘It is wrong that students are being denied lectures and everything possible is being done to exclude them from their rightful learning.
‘But the elephant in the room in all this is the obscene racheting up of the vice-chancellors’ salaries, along with senior management, at the expense of lecturers and other university staff. They spend a fortune on themselves – and that is part of the cause of all this.’
Former Pensions Minister Baroness Altmann expressed sympathy for students who have paid high fees but aren’t going to be taught. She added that attempts by students to claim partial refunds would hurt colleges even more.
Dr Grady claimed last week that there was ‘solid support’ for the industrial action. But only ten of the 74 universities saw a majority of their union members vote in favour of striking.
The union met the legal strike threshold because more than half of eligible members voted, with a simple majority opting to strike. Yet in some institutions the vote was extremely low. Huddersfield University, for example, went on strike, despite only a third of its 399 eligible UCU members voting in favour of taking industrial action.
The UCU declined to comment.
Additional reporting: Ewan Somerville
The superhero and the cava-quaffing daughter of a miner
Posing in her superhero costume, Robyn Orfitelli is a hero to striking academics but a dastardly villain to the country’s university bosses.
The 35-year-old from Alaska, who is the chief pay negotiator for the University and College Union, has led the charge in demanding more pay and better pension deals for staff, declaring: ‘Solidarity and comradeship are worth everything.’
She has taken to picket lines wearing a mask and a black leather ensemble with a yellow lightning bolt across the front.
The former Harvard student has also posted encouragement for striking tutors from her black cat, named Max, on Twitter, writing: ‘Max sends everyone good luck in fighting for better employment rights and better government.’
Robyn Orfitelli, 35, (left) who is the chief pay negotiator for the University and College Union, has led the charge in demanding more pay and better pension deals for staff. She is the side-kick of UCU’s glamorous boss Jo Grady (right)
She may look like the hero, but Orfitelli is actually the sidekick to UCU’s glamorous boss Jo Grady, a miner’s daughter who gave up her job as a senior lecturer in employment relations at Sheffield University last year to run the campaign of strikes.
Grady, 36, has been vocal in recent days, pushing for coverage of the strikes and criticising university heads for their high earnings.
She has condemned the high pay packages handed to vice-chancellors, but takes home a six-figure salary herself as general secretary of the UCU. The UCU refused to reveal her salary but her predecessor Sally Hunt was paid £170,448 and took home benefits of £23,339 last year.
Miss Grady, who is in a relationship with the Leicester UCU pensions officer Chris Gracott, was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, into a mining family.
She later helped out at her father’s pub on Saturdays, before going to college.
She finished a degree in industrial relations at Lancaster University and landed a job at Leicester University before moving to teach at Sheffield.
Last week, Grady joined thousands of lecturers manning picket lines outside university campuses, where there have been impromptu lectures about the history of trade unions and even some knitting workshops.
The academics still receiving gold-plated pensions
University staff pay 8 per cent of their salary as pension contributions, but they have been told to pay in 9.6 per cent. The union claims this could leave lecturers £240,000 worse off.
But universities say they have already agreed to bump up their contributions from 18 per cent to 21.1 per cent of staff salaries.
This is far above the average for the private sector, with employers only obliged to pay in 3 per cent of staff salaries.
Lecturers get so-called gold-plated ‘final-salary’ pensions, where the payout is based on their pay and length of service, not on how much they put away.
Unlike most private-sector workers, their retirement income is protected from the stock market and rises with the cost of living.
Final-salary pensions used to be common in the private sector but they have become extremely expensive due in part to people living longer and Gordon Brown’s pensions tax raid in the 1990s.
Most companies switched to defined-contribution plans, where payouts are typically much lower.
The £65 billion Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) is among the UK’s largest but it has £6 billion less than it has pledged.
The Pensions Regulator told the USS to boost the amount going into the pot each year.
Many staff feel the changes are the final straw, citing workloads, pay inequality between men and women and sub-inflation pay rises as other grounds to strike.
The union’s general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘Vice-chancellors have had months to come up with serious offers.
‘They refuse to talk about the pay issue and have spent a whole week failing to come up with an offer on pensions.’
A USS employers spokesman said: ‘We have worked hard to try to resolve this dispute fairly.
‘Employers agreed to pay 65 per cent of the increases – £250 million more a year – required under law to maintain the pension scheme benefits, but the union continues to demand employers pay an unaffordable high share.’