It is impressive how they manage to encapsulate almost everything that's wrong with the modern UK university in just a few short paragraphs.

Appreciating the call for reforming the funding system for #UKHE. Because, appreciative as we are of the stress physicists are under, you won't save your discipline/department/job on your own; it won't survive without the rest of the sector, including humanities. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

"Quarter of UK university physics departments at risk of closing, survey finds"

Sort out the funding & governance system, government. To have your knowledge economy rely on what's cheapest to run classes in & which grabs most fees is an absurd dereliction of duty.

This funding system doesn’t work for anyone, it is dependent on putting students in years of debt and on staff’s job insecurity. Information about moving towards a dispute with the Secretary of State: www.universityrankandfile.org.uk/campaigns

With another 9 @ucu.org.uk branches now calling on UCU to do the right thing we wonder if @drjogrady.bsky.social is listening to her members.

This is a choice of the VC. With ”under 10 posts” at risk, he could have ruled out compulsory redundancies & let departments get on with their planning Instead, we have: “A university is in chaos with no clarity on who is teaching what amid a swathe of job cuts” www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-w...

If you want to donate laptops/tech or offer other kinds of practical support, please fill out this form: forms.gle/pj37DvxhtmMT...

If you want to contribute directly to the fundraiser go to chuffed.org/project/1496...

Thanks to everyone who’s already donated to our fundraisers for incoming Palestinian students from Gaza! We’re halfway to our goal in just a few days. Reposting the links in this thread for anyone who had trouble accessing them. 🍉🍉🍉

Making the entire #UKHE system rely on student debt exacerbates all the inequalities: only those who can afford it can undertake career-building activities, others are scrambling to survive. It’s shameful. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"My student loan doesn't cover my bills - so I wear my work uniform to lectures"

Remember that this is the university where management encouraged students to snitch on striking staff. Also the university that installed surveillance cameras in the library, labs etc to monitor occupancy. This latest surveillance is cultural.

In my view, this new policy actually doesn't go far enough. I would like to see all university staff equipped with electronic collars, and when they are engaged in unproductive activities, they receive a small shock. Not so much to hurt them, but just enough to provide a little encouragement!

Foucault would be so proud!

QM has been quite the bellwether of things to come in HE - namely how management treat their staff - so this certainly unnerves me & is a colossal waste of money

Here is the IoP report www.iop.org/about/news/q...

Hey exact scientists! This is what your colleagues in the humanities have been warning about for years. Please work *with* us and each other rather than burrow down in your own individual job-saving-attempts. Because it simply doesn't work and divide-and-rule is a well-practised tactic.

Oh F off, my business & computing students are on their knees. Their work ethic is driven into the ground as a patchwork of PT work, s*** gig labour, and reliance on family savings to ‘afford’ to live at university. Their drive and vigour is not in question. The sustainability of uni living is.

This funding system doesn’t work for anyone, it is dependent on putting students in years of debt and on staff’s job insecurity. Information about moving towards a dispute with the Secretary of State: www.universityrankandfile.org.uk/campaigns

In case anyone was still in any doubt about government’s complete lack of understanding about the realities of those working and studying in #UKHE. And why we need to make sure they talk to someone who’s not in a thinktank of consultancy, for once.

A state of emergency in Welsh and UK higher education

Very much enjoying the culture of trust and respect implicit in the installation of room usage monitoring devices on academics' office doors today. Imagine my shock on discovering that managers' doors remain unsullied…

There's the intrusive/insulting issue here, but it also emerges from completely muddled/siloed thinking. Those REF 4* publications you want necessitate leaving the office. That teaching that funds this place generally and your nonsense management post particularly necessitates leaving the office.

For all of the students joining or returning to UoN in the upcoming weeks, we want to let you know that we are on your side and our industrial action is to ensure that we can provide the great education you would expect from a world class institution like ours.

If you want to know more about our strike action, you can find it here: www.canva.com/design/DAGzC...

🤩 ah! So wonderful to see clear communication with students, and delighted to have played our tiny part in it! We don’t all, in each branch, have to re-invent the wheel; it’s always a joy to get some materials from elsewhere and to pass on our own. Solidarity @uonucu.bsky.social!

🤩 #CatsAgainstCasualisation We knew there was a bigger cosmic reason for our atteaction to that colour scheme and now we find out what it was: to resonate with our new and very elegant bed buddy! Absolutely delighted that those leaflets are having a second life, and a very pretty one at that!

Nope. This is not on. Why is there always money for extremely expensive oversurveilance? Which, to boot has a long trackrecord of being *successfully* challenged by staff, so a wasted investment nobody should have signed off on. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/queen-m...

Painful now this can be bumped each year as well… When half of a school’s office is vacancies, that’s unconscionable on behalf of the employer, right? Not healthy for staff or students?

Given the mass-exit of colleagues via voluntary severance this Summer, the workload of Professional Service colleagues is about to get even worse, despite already being unmanageable. So just a reminder that ucu isn't just a 'lecturers' union'. pdf version: qmucu.org/wp-content/u...

And with our sister union Unison we’ve got this snappy overview of what unions can do and how you can join the one you belong to. Full pdf: qmucu.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

For any post-graduate students walking around Welcome Fair, we’d suggest joining up with @ucu.org.uk. HR is once again toying with teaching contracts and pay, so let’s work together to challenge that rather than allow yourself to be isolated!

We’re handing these out again at the Welcome Fair @qmul.bsky.social! Come and have a chat about trade unionism and workers’ power, whether at university or in the workplace you’re currently in or will join after graduation Pdf of the pretty booklet qmucu.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

Teaching Assistant Training Season has opened! So we got some leaflets: qmucu.org/wp-content/u... Our Teaching Assistant budgets have been the first to have been cut, depriving early career colleagues from income & teaching experience, and burdening full-time colleagues with even more workload.

Want to know which consultancy has been pushing the 'too many things' (because Nous does that for programmes & modules, at least). Humans are complex. Societies are complex. You're taking the future hostage in denying reality and claiming we only need a couple of bits of profit-generating knowledge

I wonder as well if this will have any ramifications at all for those league tables that celebrate 'reputation'. What's the reputation of ChatGPT?

this is also way more work than just writing the feedback, wtf, like do they think the time suck is composing supportive feedback and not the slog through ten pages of undergraduate prose? if you've summarised an essay unblessed by the concept of topic sentences then you're already done

I wish more people would call this what it is: a lie/scam to increase unpaid labour. Management know many of us won’t give crap feedback, so instead we work evenings/weekends or let other work slip. Their spreadsheet is happy, students still get decent feedback. All the burden is on the Lecturer.

Again, 'efficiencies' is always just increased invisible and unrecognised labour for staff. Always.

So, can #UKHE please follow the Sorbonne’s example? Loads of money and manpower wasted on giving that data to rankers who distort the purposes of universities. Can’t get more prestigious than being in the same category as the Sorbonne, surely?

So, Office for Students stays with Department for Education, as does the Universities brief, but the minister is with Department for Work and Pensions, and research sits with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Almost as if it’s a hot potato nobody wants responsibility for?

The financialisation of the UK university sector is ongoing and gathering pace. Its continued acceleration seems inevitable

How financialisation is corroding education in the UK: The government is standing by as foreign private equity firms buy up UK universities. This should be a major concern […] [Original post on newsie.social]

UK UNIVERSITIES: UPHOLD THE RIGHT TO PROTEST Last month, new guidance from the Office for Students (OfS) set out how universities should meet their duties to protect freedom of speech on campus This includes upholding the right to protest. (1/7)

The Sorbonne has pulled out of the Times Higher Education rankings, no longer submitting data. Just in case anyone was curious about what these rankings really say about universities.

One does wonder why so many rich people seem so keen on buying universities if they're in as huge a financial pit as declared... Almost as if, for some, none of this is about innovative research and critical education anymore?

In case you missed it last week:

In case you missed it last week:

OUR BESTIE!* Staff has been treated as an afterthought by managers, and in the current attempts at shrinking #UKHE our voices are doubly important. Let's get heard. *honorary fellow @qmul.bsky.social, which is just which is just 'besties with gowns'.