Lecturer strike that could see thousands of exams cancelled
STUDENTS at almost every mainstream university could have their final year exams cancelled or disrupted this year because of striking academics.
Union leaders say they will call ‘unprecedented’ industrial action in the summer to coincide with exam season if university bosses do not meet their demands in a dispute over pensions.
Up to 45,000 academics could walk out at 64 universities, causing countless exams to be called off.
Students who are unable to take exams may find that their final degree grade is based instead on coursework or exam performance from previous years.
Alternatively, universities may be able to draft in agency staff to replace some of the strikers, or else reschedule exams for later in the summer.
More than 200,000 students in their final years could be affected.
Yesterday some students said it was unfair of academics to bring them into the dispute. Geography student Nick Sundin said: ‘I thought it was pensions this was about? Seems selfish to prioritise those over an entire generation of students.’
Chris Price added: ‘As always, it’s the students who bear the consequences of this selfish action. I have sympathy with their pension situation but striking is not the answer.’
Students across many campuses are demanding compensation of tuition fees and say the lost 14 days will equate to £1,295 worth of lost teaching per person.
Proposed changes to the sector pension scheme mean academics are set to lose up to half their retirement income, according to analysis by experts.
The University and College Union (UCU), which represents academics and campus staff, is already holding four weeks of strikes beginning this Thursday which they say will affect one million students in the institutions covered by the action.
Lecturers will refuse to teach on 14 strike days spread across this period, with classes cangow, celled and marking left undone. The strikes will take place in mostly older, research-intensive universities, including 22 out of 24 in the elite Russell Group.
Academics will walk out from institutions including Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Exeter, Glas-
‘Students are in the middle’
Imperial College, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Queen’s Belfast, Sheffield, Southampton, Warwick and York.
If the union does not have a concession from the universities by March 2 it will consider ‘further action’ in the summer, since the strike mandate lasts six months.
Students are already threatening to sue universities for the potential damage the strike will cause to their education.
UCU general secretary Sally Hunt urged new Education Secretary Damian Hinds to intervene to end the strikes by telling vice-chancellors to give her members a fair deal.
She said: ‘ I’m devastated students will be affected by this. They’re in the middle because we haven’t had a negotiation. What we’ve had is an imposition.’
Universities UK, which represents vice- chancellors, said in November it would stop offering staff traditional ‘defined benefit’ pensions, which offer a certainty of income in retirement. Instead, it wants to shift staff into a riskier, less generous ‘defined contribution’ plan, to help deal with rising costs as many private sector companies have done.
A Universities UK spokesman said: ‘We hope employees recognise changes are necessary to put the scheme on a secure footing, and the proposed strike action will only serve to unfairly disrupt students’ education.’