Over a million students will miss out on lectures in second wave of university strikes

Most young schoolchildren will very likely be only too happy to learn their school has closed for the day. They might be compelled to feign disappointment, but secretly many of them will probably be delighted that they have an unexpected day off from school, thanks to excessive snow, flooding, or some other unforeseen incident.

One would hope that university students are be more concerned about missing lessons, but I can recall, back when I was studying for my degree, feeling delighted when I was informed a lecture was to be cancelled. To be quite honest, my peers and I simply saw this as an excuse to visit the student union bar.

Of course this was back when there were no university fees, when I was lucky enough to study for a degree without having to pay tens of thousands of pounds. So how do students feel now, given the high fees they are required to pay, when they learn the lecture they have paid to attend has been cancelled?

The University and college union (UCU), a British trade union for higher education, has announced that 74 universities are planning 14 days of strikes, over disputes staff are having with pensions, working conditions and pay.

It is thought that more than a million students could be adversely affected by this, the second wave of mass walkouts across the UK. Last November and December saw eight days of strikes, involving tens of thousands of workers across 60 universities.

Angela Rayner, current Shadow Secretary of State for Education, commented on these strikes last year, imploring universities to put students first, and to bring `a reasonable offer back to the negotiating table` to prevent hundreds of teaching hours being lost.

With students leaving university with, on average, around £30,000 worth of debt, I can well understand how frustrating it must be to have parts of your course just cancelled. In any other sector, be it the leisure or service industry, compensation would definitely be forthcoming, but it seems these thousands of students are just going to have to accept that large parts of their courses, education they have paid for, will simply not be delivered.

The UCU has warned that there will possibly be even more strikes going into the summer term if these disputes are not resolved, with Jo Grady, the General Secretary of the trade union warning `If universities want to avoid further disruption they need to deal with rising pension costs, and address the problems over pay and conditions.`

Tom Barton, a student in his third year at Sheffield Hallam University, has said that his dissertation could suffer because of the walkouts, as he will have no one to offer academic advice for two whole weeks. Mr Barton has been motivated to create a petition for all those students who have been adversely affected by the industrial action, and has said the strikes of last winter were very detrimental to his studies, as `I had a piece of work that I needed feedback on, but I couldn`t get in touch with my tutor to get the feedback.`

`This led me to completely rush my work when they came back off strike to meet a deadline, which I fully believe got me a much worse mark than I should have.`

The petition requests that each student affected by the strikes should receive at least £860 in compensation. Such is the chagrin amongst the student body that Mr Barton`s petition received an astonishing 6000 signatures in less than 24 hours. The figure hasn`t just been chosen arbitrarily, but rather accords with the calculated cost of the tuition the students will be missing. `We are paying £863.33 for 14 days of study which we won`t receive,` the petition explains.

I fully support the rights of workers to strike, but at the expense of students` education well, that certainly gives pause for thought. Across the country pension costs are rising, and it may simply be the case that universities are simply not funded enough to meet these increased costs. Commenting on this a spokesperson for Universities UK, a national representative for the employers, in this case the universities, has said:

`We regret that UCU are planning further strike action at a time when positive talks on the future of the scheme are making significant progress and are ongoing.`

`Despite this, UCU continue to request that employers pay still higher contributions at unaffordable levels. The best way forward is to work collectively to secure a pension scheme that is highly valued and affordable for all.`

`By law, pension costs had to rise to maintain current benefits. Employers have agreed to cover 65 per cent of these increased costs, taking their contribution to 21.1 per cent of salaries from October 2019 together committing £250m more a year. Members have been asked to make a fair contribution too.`

One can only hope that these matters are resolved before students begin to be put off applying for university, in the belief that they could be paying for a substantial number of classes they simply won`t receive. Thankfully such lengthy strikes have not yet affected primary and secondary schools, but who knows what the future will hold?