[Misc] Any Sussex Uni staff on here .....

[Westdene Seagull]

.... that can give some advice / decent contacts ?

So Ms WS goes to Sussex and is in her foundation year. Costs a fortune - both to her and to me and Mrs WS. She was initially hit by the strikes last year when she had lectures cancelled and then assessments changed to be 100% of the mark from only 50% of the mark she needed.

Now yet again, she has been hit by the strikes - so far six lectures cancelled and yet again assessment criteria moved.

I get lecturers' gripes about their pensions but I don't believe that, given students now pay through 30 years of debt, that they should hit the students so hard. Mrs WS has spoken to Sussex as their website is to say the least ..... vague .... when it comes to compensation and remedies to students missing teaching time. The Uni has been far from helpful when Mrs W has spoken to them - almost a "well that's the way it is" attitude. They don't seem to understand that if their organisation wish to act in the manner of a private company then they need to compensate in the same manner.

So, can any staff on here give some contact info where we can actually get our complaint recognised and properly dealt with ? Happy for it to be anonymous.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Out of interest, what does your student daughter think of this? Maybe you can ask her when she gets up in a couple of hours time?

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

No wonder they're on strike. They only get 21.1% of their salary paid into their pensions.

The poor souls.

 

[AmexRuislip]

.... that can give some advice / decent contacts ?

So Ms WS goes to Sussex and is in her foundation year. Costs a fortune - both to her and to me and Mrs WS. She was initially hit by the strikes last year when she had lectures cancelled and then assessments changed to be 100% of the mark from only 50% of the mark she needed.

Now yet again, she has been hit by the strikes - so far six lectures cancelled and yet again assessment criteria moved.

I get lecturers' gripes about their pensions but I don't believe that, given students now pay through 30 years of debt, that they should hit the students so hard. Mrs WS has spoken to Sussex as their website is to say the least ..... vague .... when it comes to compensation and remedies to students missing teaching time. The Uni has been far from helpful when Mrs W has spoken to them - almost a "well that's the way it is" attitude. They don't seem to understand that if their organisation wish to act in the manner of a private company then they need to compensate in the same manner.

So, can any staff on here give some contact info where we can actually get our complaint recognised and properly dealt with ? Happy for it to be anonymous.

From memory [MENTION=149]timbha[/MENTION] is one person that will help you

 

[BNthree]

https://student.sussex.ac.uk/industrial-action/common-questions

Thing is the strikes are still on (4 days this week, all of next week) and lots of departments are short staffed because there are staff striking so trying to get anything sorted will be difficult. Once this current period of strikes is over it will be possible to get course credits, compensation for fees sorted out. Last batch of strikes in 2019 students got a % of fees reimbursed and had the disruption taken into account at assessment time. Sadly while there is still ongoing disruption Ms W will have a hard time trying to get any definite answers to her questions.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Out of interest, what does your student daughter think of this? Maybe you can ask her when she gets up in a couple of hours time?

Hilarious ! ..... not.

She works hard at her studies despite not being academic - she had to take GCSE maths 4 times to get her place at Uni. She then works hard at a restaurant to earn money to help pay her way at Uni. She's actually quite stressed as she needs to get certain grades to be able to move from Foundation year to degree proper. I guess that all the man bag carrying lecturers don't care though. Just as long as they get £40k pensions when they retire.

EDIT - I actually thought you were above that type of post.

 

[Garry Nelson's teacher]

Hilarious ! ..... not.

She works hard at her studies despite not being academic - she had to take GCSE maths 4 times to get her place at Uni. She then works hard at a restaurant to earn money to help pay her way at Uni. She's actually quite stressed as she needs to get certain grades to be able to move from Foundation year to degree proper. I guess that all the man bag carrying lecturers don't care though. Just as long as they get £40k pensions when they retire.

EDIT - I actually thought you were above that type of post.

I'm not sure that this post is designed to mobilise support from people working at Sussex. As an ex-member of staff there, I would advise that this will be a collective issue and that your daughter (for whom I have much sympathy) should enquire with the Student Union as to the recommended actions.

PS as a pretty active life-long trade unionist I'd have real problems supporting this particular action in terms of the effects on the students

 

[sams dad]

Out of interest, what does your student daughter think of this? Maybe you can ask her when she gets up in a couple of hours time?

That’s a snide response to a serious question.
There are times when it would be best if you kept your views to yourself.

 

[Chicken Run]

Out of interest, what does your student daughter think of this? Maybe you can ask her when she gets up in a couple of hours time?

Wow.

You really have a nasty streak, what’s the matter with you ffs?

 

[Shooting Star]

I'm currently studying part-time for my doctorate at the University of Essex and a lot of their staff are on strike at the moment too. We received this email yesterday about the reasons for their strike, which you may find helpful as I imagine their situation is very comparable to Sussex's:

"The Typical USS member will be around £240,000 worse off in retirement
Staff have seen a pay cut of 20.8% since 2009 due to pay rises not matching inflation
67% of research staff and 49% of teaching staff are on fixed term contracts
Women are paid 16.5% less than men at Essex, and white academics are 3 times more likely to be professors than Black academics
Staff at Essex work over 50 hours per week, which equates to two days working for free"

Speaking to a member of staff on strike a couple of weeks ago, he suggested that the government's stance at the moment is that there are too many universities to sustain the sector. He didn't mean large universities like Essex and Sussex, but the numerous smaller ones dotted around the country.

To add, Essex are reimbursing their students for the lost lecture/seminar time.

 

[Garry Nelson's teacher]

I'm currently studying part-time for my doctorate at the University of Essex and a lot of their staff are on strike at the moment too. We received this email yesterday about the reasons for their strike, which you may find helpful as I imagine their situation is very comparable to Sussex's:

"The Typical USS member will be around £240,000 worse off in retirement
Staff have seen a pay cut of 20.8% since 2009 due to pay rises not matching inflation
67% of research staff and 49% of teaching staff are on fixed term contracts
Women are paid 16.5% less than men at Essex, and white academics are 3 times more likely to be professors than Black academics
Staff at Essex work over 50 hours per week, which equates to two days working for free"

Speaking to a member of staff on strike a couple of weeks ago, he suggested that the government's stance at the moment is that there are too many universities to sustain the sector. He didn't mean large universities like Essex and Sussex, but the numerous smaller ones dotted around the country.

I wouldn't doubt the veracity of any of this. But as (now) an outsider my impression is that the action is a kind of bundled set of (usually justified) grievances - often the (disgustingly high) levels of Vice Chancellors' pay gets lobbed in too. It's a kind of 'and another thing....!' action.

 

[BNthree]

I guess that all the man bag carrying lecturers don't care though. Just as long as they get £40k pensions when they retire.

.

Most lecturers are on zero hours contracts and earn little. It is senior academics you've confused them with. I've got a lot of sympathy for your daughter's plight, which is why I posted useful information above, but don't fall into the easy trap of assuming it is all fine and dandy for all staff in higher education.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Hilarious ! ..... not.

She works hard at her studies despite not being academic - she had to take GCSE maths 4 times to get her place at Uni. She then works hard at a restaurant to earn money to help pay her way at Uni. She's actually quite stressed as she needs to get certain grades to be able to move from Foundation year to degree proper. I guess that all the man bag carrying lecturers don't care though. Just as long as they get £40k pensions when they retire.

EDIT - I actually thought you were above that type of post.

That’s a snide response to a serious question.
There are times when it would be best if you kept your views to yourself.

Wow.

You really have a nasty streak, what’s the matter with you ffs?

Jeez people, sense of humour bypasses or what!?

All 3 of you should know [MENTION=409]Herr Tubthumper[/MENTION]'s posts well enough to realise this is firmly tongue in cheek. He's the biggest snowflake, liberal, student & education loving, flower picking woke on these boards....

 

[beorhthelm]

I'm currently studying part-time for my doctorate at the University of Essex and a lot of their staff are on strike at the moment too. We received this email yesterday about the reasons for their strike, which you may find helpful as I imagine their situation is very comparable to Sussex's:

"The Typical USS member will be around £240,000 worse off in retirement
Staff have seen a pay cut of 20.8% since 2009 due to pay rises not matching inflation
67% of research staff and 49% of teaching staff are on fixed term contracts
Women are paid 16.5% less than men at Essex, and white academics are 3 times more likely to be professors than Black academics
Staff at Essex work over 50 hours per week, which equates to two days working for free"

Speaking to a member of staff on strike a couple of weeks ago, he suggested that the government's stance at the moment is that there are too many universities to sustain the sector. He didn't mean large universities like Essex and Sussex, but the numerous smaller ones dotted around the country.

To add, Essex are reimbursing their students for the lost lecture/seminar time.

what has government got to do with it, the universities are independent arent they? though the point is probably true, there are too many. interesting they dont understand the concept that research and teaching is dependant on funding, and if there is lower quality output from strikes that is not going to increase any time soon.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Hilarious ! ..... not.

She works hard at her studies despite not being academic - she had to take GCSE maths 4 times to get her place at Uni. She then works hard at a restaurant to earn money to help pay her way at Uni. She's actually quite stressed as she needs to get certain grades to be able to move from Foundation year to degree proper. I guess that all the man bag carrying lecturers don't care though. Just as long as they get £40k pensions when they retire.

EDIT - I actually thought you were above that type of post.

My post was not intended to offend you. Apologies that it did.

 

[Chicken Run]

Jeez people, sense of humour bypasses or what!?

All 3 of you should know [MENTION=409]Herr Tubthumper[/MENTION]'s posts well enough to realise this is firmly tongue in cheek. He's the biggest snowflake, liberal, student & education loving, flower picking cnunt on these boards....

Agreed.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Agreed.

And as for you, boy do you take offense easily when it suits you.

 

[Gwylan]

what has government got to do with it, the universities are independent arent they? .

Up to a point, Lord Copper. There are only five purely private universities in the UK: Buckingham, Arden, Regent, BPP and the College of Law. All others operate independently but are all part funded by the government

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Dear [MENTION=1365]Westdene Seagull[/MENTION],

I am a member of the union that is on strike. I won't bore you with the reasons for the strike (or indeed why I am a blackleg) now. Maybe later. To address your points specifically (how this affects students and what will happen, here goes).

The advice being given by the employers is unclear. It affects a range of different types of assessment. I have asked for advice and the answer from my head of department is typically 'we don't know, but I suggest you do X'.

My understanding is that if a piece of coursework or exam assessment is affected by the strike, then the student is awarded 100% for that piece of work. Yes, if this becomes widespread it may devalue your kid's degree if people start to say: "Oh, they all got a first that year due to the strike". But society being what it is, I doubt this will trnspire....more below on this.

My advice would be to mobilize as parents/students and reject this. I would demand that students be allowed to redo the year at no cost, and with financial compensation to cover living costs. If you buy a car and it turns out to have a chocolate engine it is not a ****ing car is it? That helps our cause because at the moment the employer doesn't give a shit if we are on strike or not. I haven't even been asked if I am or not.

At present it is unclear how much work will be 100% marked. It depends how long the strike will last.

Some staff are being ecouraged (told? uged? bullied?) into offering aternative assessments to be marked later. This means more work for staff, and more work for students. That is rather counterintuitive for striking, I would argue. I have asked my union and my line manager for advice on his. The line manager says I can do what I feel is best. My union tells me I must try to minimise impacting students. Thus, a lack of clarity.

So, OK I will explain why I am a blackleg. Among many other things I run complex practical classes that go on for weeks. If I strike on weeks 6 and 7 the whole excercise is buggered because it can't be written up. That means the students get 100% for the practical element without completing it. Sorry but I am not having students go out in the world with a good pass in 'experimental' X with no actual assessed experimental acumen. And I am not happy wasting weeks of my time (work done prior to strike) binned. And what about all the animals that were used for the training? No, sorry, I am not going to strike in these circumstance.

Aside from that I am having to make plans for the fact that I had to set the exam for my courses in January (college rules) and now some of the questions set are on topics where there was no lecture given. Of course union advice is "do not make previous years' lectures avalable on lecture capture" (online accessible video recordings of lectures) as this defeats the point of striking. It is now too late to rewrite the exam papers, so what do I do? I am going to advise students to select questions (it is a 'select one from 2 options in each of 3 sections' paper) that were not taught and I will award 100%. What else can I do? If the student selects a question that was tought then this question will be assessed as per normal. You'd need to be a mug to answer such a question when you can write 'Q3 - I wasn't tought this' and get 100%.

So even though I have decided to not strike (I never do, I am a teacher and, like in Rome I am a slave), the strike is making me extra work.

And before anyone starts going on about my generous pensions (which it is) and the fact I get 3 months holiday in the summer (I don't), my job is not just teaching. I am supposed to be a top ranking researcher. I have done this for 38 years, and the research means I spent 35 of those doing 60 plus hour weeks (sometimes 90 hour weeks) owing to the need to constantly write grants and papers. But I'm OK now, pension paid up, and will pack in the research soon. It is the younger staff however who are in trouble.....

So, a lecturerer in their 30s must set up and run a course (very complicated, insane paperwork) and must raise grant income (£150K a year minimum, again incredibly hard, very competitive) and must publish at least 4 papers in high JIF (journal impact factor) journals (JIF of 10 or more for those who get this) or they will be in trouble. That means failing probation, put on monthly report, sacked. Their pensions have been buggered about with and are estimated to be worth only 40% of mine. Meanwhile they have to pay a greater contribution than I did. And the direction of travel is down - the pension value will be reduced further. The job demands meanwhile will increase. My senior colleagues advise graduates to not even think about academia as a career. I understand why they are striking.

If I were a student or parent I would kick up a stink.

Who to blame? I think the HE sector we have now is unsustainable in the capitalist world. If we are not prepared to pay much higher taxes, I would close half the universities. Actually there is merit in this regardless of money. I have visited plenty of places, and some are absolutele shite holes. The standard of research (and I imagine, teaching) at some places (former polys, and some red brick unis built in the 60s) is so poor it is just a waste of time and money. Various governments supported uni expansion, in part to keep kids of the dole, but it has gone too far. That said, without apprenticeships and alternatives to unis, what will the kids do at 18? Maybe Boris will fix everything by spaffing a load of money on it like the rail thing, but it is more likely he will see this as a fun opportunity to beat up some trotskyite beardy lecturerers.

One of the odd things about this is that 'university excellence' is hard to measure. Just because I say the teaching and research at X uni is shit is meaningless if the places are graduating loads of students who get jobs. Ironically the research pressure is greatest at the top unis rather than lower down. Mine is one of those, so the research pressure is immense. Ironically, where I work, and at the other Russell group colleges (the 'top' ones) there is no such pressure on teaching, and the only real measurment of how well we do that that is NSS (national student survey). As long as we score well nobody is bothered about actual standards. Ironically one of our most important departments (you can guess which but I won't write it down) has (and always has had ) a poor NSS score due to the arrogance of staff, and yet it remains inundated with applicants, all with 3 A starred A levels.

Also, in research, money begets money. The people with big labs and loadsa grant money are nearly all on the psychopathy spectrum (no conscience, believe their own bullshit, work damned hard, yet not above a little scientific fraud). They are the members of staff who run everything, and set the rules, so nothing will change.

At the same time, I have had issues with my union. I have received emails too full of glee. Beware communications with exclamation marks! I complained to my new shop steward some years ago about dicks from the SWP bringing their schoolboy politics to the table at the drop of every hat. He semi-apologetically admitted 'actually I am a member of the SWP'

Best wishes to everyone adversely affected by this. Mobilize and protest. You should get what you pay for. At very least ask for a refund.

That said, in the end people will forget about the grade infaltion because, sadly nothing actually matters very much in society any more. There are few checks and balances. We just bimble on. Just support your kids and let them not be distressed by this. Sadly I can't do that and am deeply stressed by the guilt of not striking combined with the frustration of the futility of striking. I get a neck spasm when stressed and I can barely sleep at the mo, and am in a lot of pain. Only when the employers start to hurt will this resolve. All the while students come out with degrees and they can use them without any quibbles the employer will do nothing. This has been going on for more than 10 years and only now have the union members voted to strike and, where I work, I'd say only 10% of staff are actually striking. All very sad.

Enough already - I have a mountain of coursework to mark.

 

[Surf's Up]

Out of interest, what does your student daughter think of this? Maybe you can ask her when she gets up in a couple of hours time?

Tehehe