Trans scholars have to stick together 🏳️‍⚧️

If you are managing people (e.g. PI, HoD, etc) the best thing you can do at this time of year is actively help your people let go of false end of the calendar year urgency. Can that wait until January? Say so. Out loud. They can decide what to do but relieve the pressure to do it because of you

Pleased to be interviewed for this much needed piece on the rising transphobia in higher education. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/trans-s... (Archive link: archive.is/oYqXS)

Latest UK universities to post deficits: Cambridge, Queen’s Belfast, Leicester, London Met, Derby, Nottingham Trent, Liverpool John Moores www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-univ... via @patrickjack.bsky.social

As we're in the final week of term at Kent our blog has been updated with some reminders about taking a break - blogs.kent.ac.uk/ucuuok/2025/...

In the UK we have a shortage of teachers and healthcare workers. They are careers that (rightly) require Higher Education. Universities are shrinking and closing courses that often lead to teaching and healthcare. Make it make sense!

it's gutting to see access and widening participation initiatives being binned across the university sector. ELCE here at Bristol, Essex Pathways here. nothing pushes my personal, visceral buttons like the idea of denying academic study to someone whose life it could change

Dictating what people can study based on their postcode is bad, actually.

This is a key point for ALL students in the South East region - local transport networks are so poor that it's often quicker, easier, but NOT CHEAPER to get to central London. We need Universities in the SE that are not in London.

the one good thing is that they clearly underestimated that people would notice and care. our students at southend can’t just pick up their lives and jobs and move to colchester and it’s too far and expensive to commute on public transport. people will simply have to abandon their studies.

they’re coming for everyone but hitting the parts with the most positive social impact hardest: campus in Southend that was part of regeneration plans which trains nurses & social workers our foundation programme which does incredible work none of the rest of us *can* do

This is heartbreaking. We know how important foundation year programmes are for students - in the wake of COVID19 they're even more important. Not everyone gets to uni in the traditional way. Not everyone has the privilege of an education which offers or supports traditional pathways.

Yet more cutting of HE provision in the South East that's not London. The coastal towns in England are among some of the most deprived in the UK - it's not just that present and future students are losing out, it's also the amount of JOBS being lost.

honestly the most hurtful part of this announcement was the repeated supposed commitment to respecting everyone’s ‘dignity’ while announcing the closure of a campus on said campus in the middle of a teaching day

It's official: 400 redundancies and a campus closure. At-risk staff will get a letter next week. Absolutely no serious consideration of any of the union's counterproposals. Please share widely.

This is incredibly grim

A very comprehensive and informed analysis (as usual) from the Wonkhe team, helpfully putting the pieces of the English jigsaw in one place.

“Labour said education would drive economic growth. Yesterday we saw nothing for FE, and a dog’s dinner for HE. With 15,000 HE jobs at risk and staff leaving FE, we don’t have the mechanisms needed to deliver growth.” @drjogrady.bsky.social yesterday.

Happy to be a contributor to this chapter.

GLOBAL: Thousands of Amazon workers and allies to strike and protest in dozens of countries on Black Friday uniglobalunion.org/news/make-am...

Trans people are being challenged, misgendered and harassed whether they use a facility that aligns with their sex assigned at birth, or not. Many gender non conforming women also report more challenges in gendered spaces. Read the full report here: transactual.org.uk/gendered-spa...

Academics - you should consider joining the ALCS (and perhaps the Society of Authors too)

📣 Fundraising Jobs Vacancy!👇 ⭐ Job: Development Officer ⭐ Who: Rambert School ⭐ Salary: £30k - £32k ⭐ Location: Hybrid/Twickenham 🎬 Closing: 5 January 26 https://loom.ly/WUocjKY #fundraisingjobs #rambertschool Follow us at fundraisingjobs.bsky.social

Please considering signing this petition! My institution is unilaterally trying to change my working conditions (choice between keeping my pension scheme or indefinite pay freeze).

I think Rachel Clarke’s Breathtaking should be required viewing for anyone who was in politics during the COVID years. Hard to get a more accurate summary of the horrors of that period from a medical perspective. As a disabled person it felt so close to home I could only watch it in small increments

How on earth is the Office for Students still allowed to lord it over the sector, by the way? It's not as if they've in any way provided any evidence of improvements since parliament deemded them not fit for purpose and failing to anticipate the looming crisis in September 2023? #UKHE

VOTY MCVOTEFACE! If that hearing yesterday showed anything, it is that the regulator, minister, and managers are not taking the crisis seriously and that staff needs to make it their problem. Let's get that mandate and let's drag this sector out of its impasse.

Solidarity @uonucu.bsky.social wonderful turnout! 🌟🌟🌟

Budget getting you down? Retake the initiative and submit that ballot by 5pm today: qmucu.org/2025/11/21/v... #UKHE

With only a few hours left to vote, our regional officials – Mary Senior, Julie Kelley, Lawson Armstrong and Gareth Lloyd are all saying the same thing: get the vote out. ✅ Have you voted? ✅ Have you checked your colleagues have? Let’s do this together.

SUBMIT YOUR BALLOT BEFOER 5PM TODAY! And if you need five good reasons why it's worth digging that pink envelop out of the pile of post and get it in a postbox: qmucu.org/2025/11/21/v... -- with huge thanks to @ducu.bsky.social

Our UCU branch meeting is going on NOW on Teams - email link has been sent out to all members. We've just voted on getting back our industrial action mandate. The indicative vote was carried almost unanimously. An electronic vote will now be sent out to all members.

Don't forget we've got a branch meeting today on Teams at 1pm. Check your email for the invite.

I just don't think we are taking the interaction of this tech with our cognitive processes and known psychological weaknesses as a species anything like seriously enough. The tech companies want us to think this kind of thing is an aberration and a distraction. I'm no psychologist, but you...

It's been a short but very intense term here at Kent. Everyone I've spoken to is exhausted. We're nearly there. Don't forget to send off your #vote #StrongerTogether

It's Friday. Send off your UCU #Vote if you haven't done so yet. #StrongerTogether

Almost as if managers are too removed from students to actually understand what they need/want? Almost as if managers relying solely on consultants and not staff is creating a top layer of the university devoid of any input by reality?

If you've not voted, VOTE. We can (and I'm sure will) argue at length about what that vote should be, just like we always do. Just like a union is SUPPOSED to do. But if we don't reach that aburd Tory-spawned anti-union threshold, that argument gets taken out of our hands.

As we near the last safe day for ballot posting in the current national UCU ballot (get 'em in by Wed, preferably sooner), let's remember what we're fighting for. We'll start with the graphs we made last week. Decades of pay erosion has left many of us a full pay spine point below where we should be

We hope that everyone at Kent is surviving this term - so many new systems, new modules, a shorter term; lots and lots of changes. Make sure you're resting when you can. We keep hearing of colleagues who are exhausted - we've still another 3 weeks to go. We can do it! #StrongerTogether #VoteYes

Seriously - if you work in the UK education sector, you need to read this...

Read this. And then vote YES/YES in the ballot. We need staff back in the picture of all #UKHE strategising, and our managers aren't going to put us there.

We hope that everyone at Kent is surviving this term - so many new systems, new modules, a shorter term; lots and lots of changes. Make sure you're resting when you can. We keep hearing of colleagues who are exhausted - we've still another 3 weeks to go. We can do it! #StrongerTogether #VoteYes

If you haven't already seen the excellent piece written by Dr Dave Hitchcock (a fellow Canterbury academic), read it now. Dave has long been a voice of reason in UK HE. hitchcockian.medium.com/somewhere-in... @davehitchcock.bsky.social

This is being replicated all over the UK. In the past year over 15,000 jobs have been lost or cut. No wonder the car parks are empty. #SaveAcademia #UCU #VoteYes #StrongerTogether

NEW on Wonkhe: It's taken eleven months, but the draft OfS strategy is now finalised. David Kernohan takes a look at what has changed buff.ly/K1ccOB7

heads up #histSTM people - nominations are open for the @bshsnews.bsky.social Pickstone Prize - best scholarly book (in English) published in the last 2 years. Don't assume your publisher will nominate you, be proactive about your book or books you love! 🗃️

Apparently today is a day for reminding people that they have worth and value. So if you need reminding of that - you have worth. You have value. You are allowed to take up space.

The vote is national, EVERYONE in the UCU needs to vote! A union is only as strong as its members, and we're stronger together.

'Members of the University and College Union...are unhappy about the threat of compulsory redundancies, as the university seeks to cut 400 full-time posts as part of efforts to save £30m, amid rising costs and a fall in international student numbers.' "are unhappy about" an existential crisis?