Questionable Action
Pay strike set to shut down universities. I know I am going to get panned for this, and I am also aware that I am not that well qualified to make any informed judgement about all of the issues surrounding this action by academics, but I will say my piece anyway. I am aware of some of the issues under discussion as I have been informed about them; however I still think that it is wrong that students should have to suffer, especially at the most stressful time of year, and in some cases of the end of university life, for them. It seems to me that academics see this as the only way to make their point, and I have to ask whether or not they have explored any other form of action to make their point, i.e. withdrawing from administrative duties etc. I am afraid that, even at the risk of alienating myself from my friends, this time my sympathies lie with the students.
posted by Anon E Mouse at 9:27 am
5 Comments:
Thanks RR you have done what has needed to be done from the start made the case for this action using the facts which most people are probably totally unaware of, I was actually trying to provoke BW to respond as I know fully how she feels about all of this but it seems she is keeping her head down. On the other point, I was unaware that we still had a social justice cake, I thought that this bunch of morally bankrupt loonies had eaten it already!
RR responded without my prompting, but it's funny that he used both one of the points I made last night when we were discussing it (hefty pay rises for VCs) and also one of the analogies (breaking eggs). Clearly RR and I are intellectually joined at the head...
Either that or there is something BB should know about...
If I might comment?
I've been reading your blog for a while.
I was a part-time temporary University academic until last year. The lowest of the low. Paid less than I had been paid outside academia more than fifteen years earlier. And yet ... I had to tell my students (all 200 of them) of the previous strike action and I heard and saw their panic, their distress at the uncertainty in created, especially in final year students. I would not have gone on strike, whatever, when the whole point of teaching for me was the students. Nor would the AUT have ever supported people (largely women) in my invidious position - doing most of the teaching for peanuts, so I was b*****ed if I was going to strike for others better paid than me.
But I did leave and will never regret it. And my income was my household's second and I could afford to vote with my feet. My sympathies are with those academics who are underpaid and overworked (not all fall into that category), but striking is the moral equivalent of neglecting my children because society doesn't respect my role as a mother.
"But the harsh reality is that the vast majority of students - when they become graduates - lose all interest in the University system as consumers, and re-configure their interest as individuals who pay for the educational system"
As evidenced also by the low levels of alumni giving in the UK in comparison to the US, for example...
Post a Comment
<< Home