Sean O’Connell

The upcoming UCU industrial action has produced a series of passionately composed comment pieces in The Scoop. They reflect the long and rich tradition of robust political cut and thrust that is central to student politics and I read each of them with great interest. One of the articles developed a striking metaphor that compared the experience of being a QUB student with a visit to a very expensive barbershop. The metaphor employed provided a crystal clear expression of the student-as-consumer ideology that has had so much impact on higher education in recent years. Modern universities present themselves as highly competitive rivals, squabbling over student ‘customers’ via their ‘business models’, ‘brands’, and ‘key performance indicators’. They market the ‘student experience’ like something that one would expect to encounter in a glossy consumer lifestyle magazine. Most importantly, students pay significant sums of money for that ‘experience’, amassing massive debts. It is in this context that many students have come to view themselves as customers and university staff as service providers.

The commercialisation of the modern university is a concern for us all.

I want to offer some comments in reply to this perspective on higher education and on the implication that the UCU industrial action does not take heed of student interests. In particular, I reject the claim that the interests of students and the university’s workforce are somehow diametrically opposed. The commercialisation of the modern university is a concern for us all. The strike is about issues that are damaging for students as well as staff. We all co-exist in the same learning environment. The student experience is damaged when lecturers are overworked and stressed. The student experience is damaged when casualisation is a central factor in QUB employment policy. Casualisation involves the employment of large numbers of poorly paid part-time staff on various types of short-term contracts. These include every category of worker at QUB, from cleaners and crèche workers through to staff in professional services and your tutors and lecturers.

Let me introduce you to one example from the last of those categories. Meet Dr. A, a female lecturer struggling to raise a young child while caught in the casualisation trap. Her experiences include being employed on temporary teaching contracts at a rate of £33 per tutorial. Add in the five hours spent preparing in advance of each tutorial and she earned less than the minimum wage. In addition, Dr. A was paid £6 per hour to mark essays (again less than the minimum wage). As a part-time staff member, Dr. A’s library access was limited and at times she had to ask students to print out copies of the tutorial readings for her. Is this a world-class educational experience? Do you think that Dr. A’s working conditions had no impact on her students? The very best teaching requires the employment of staff who have the time and security to plan the most effective and innovative modules from which students will learn and develop. It is also very handy when they have access to the university library!

We are all in this together, albeit our experience of the corporate university is felt differently.

The use of workers like Dr A on casual contracts is linked to the issue of workload, which is also a topic that connects the treatment of staff with negative outcomes for students. For many years, QUB has operated a target that may surprise you. It has a policy of leaving 5% of staff posts vacant. This is one reason why the University’s latest annual financial statement projects that staff costs will be 3% lower this year than in the previous financial year. QUB has been highly ‘successful’ – although that’s clearly the wrong word in this context – in hitting its 5% staff vacancy figure. The latest figures suggest that 8.8% of academic staff roles are unfilled. That means students miss out due to a shortage of specialists in particular teaching areas. They also suffer because the remaining staff are working harder and longer to cover for their non-existent colleagues. Students are hit by a double whammy: a shortage of staff and the reduced time and attention that the remaining staff can offer them. We are all in this together, albeit our experience of the corporate university is felt differently.

Think about it. In theory, there should be ten per cent more lecturers. More lecturers means each lecturer has more time to spend on dealing with our most important task of working with our students. But perhaps you might ask whether or not QUB is too financially constrained to tackle this deeply problematic issue? Fair question; but the answer is that is far from the case. QUB currently has vast financial reserves of £647 million. This is more than enough to end casualisation and address gender and BAME pay inequalities amongst the QUB workforce. These are issues that are not dependent on any national negotiations. The Vice-Chancellor should not hide behind that argument on these matters.

I know that you will soon have the opportunity to vote in a referendum that will decide if QUBSU formally supports the upcoming industrial action by UCU members. Please vote. Vote whatever way you feel is right. But please consider the points I’ve made here.

Sean O'Connell is a Professor of Modern British and Irish Social History at Queen's University Belfast and is the Membership Secretary of the QUB UCU

Factors behind the UCU strike and their impact on QUB students