||||
RSS Feed
image depicting member smiling
*
Website URL : http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3787
||
image depicting Campaigns

Defend jobs, defend education

Say no to academic vandalism

Local cuts news

National parliamentary lobby against cuts in UK further and higher education

£400m cuts announced in FE
£600m cuts announced in HE
Public sector pay freeze to pay for recession

Houses of Parliament, 2.30–4.30pm
Tuesday 26 January 2010

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD

Email your MP today to get an appointment by visiting www.writetothem.com | Write to your MP at the House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA | Call your MP's House of Commons office on 020 7219 3000

Read more here: National lobby of parliament to defend jobs, defend education

Education under threat

We're have compiled and are continually updating the numerous reports we've had about management plans for cuts and closures across the UK.
This currently totals over 6,000 jobs at risk

Massive staff cuts in higher education

In the university sector thousands of jobs are now threatened. London Metropolitan University propose to axe at least 500 jobs – one quarter of the workforce. At the University of Surrey, 65 staff are facing redundancy. At Reading, while the local community cries out for more trained social and health workers, the university wants to close the department which trains them.

Visit the joint union campaign site:
Defend Higher Education

College restructuring hits further education jobs too

In further education too, jobs are at risk. As well as restructuring plans which will lead to jobs losses, there are plans to replace lecturers with lower skilled assessors, and the fallout from the college buildings fiasco is also beginning to threaten on jobs. There is also increasing concern about government plans after a 'secret' plan to cut training for funding for young people was uncovered by the Observer newspaper.

Specialisation means less staff and fewer courses

Universities and colleges are responding to the government's agenda of specialisation, which means they will fund only those who tick all the funding boxes and pass the discredited assessment criteria present across post-16 education. This Alice-in-Wonderland logic allows universities to shut departments which actually generate surpluses, like social care at Reading, boost participation, like London Met, or have excellent teaching and research, like the departments threatened at Liverpool.


Latest national news:


Assessing the finances

A presentation by UCU senior research officer, Stephen Court, on how to do some basic analysis of institutional finances. The presentation gives some advice on tackling this subject, and presents two examples: City of Sunderland College, and UCL.

This could be of use in branches/local associations facing difficulties so as to be able to challenge what employers are saying.


On Facebook?


UCU believes:

  • making teachers, lecturers, researchers and those who support them redundant is an act of academic vandalism at any time but is an obscenity during a recession
  • the government's specialisation agenda is destroying the diversity of post-16 education, cutting off access to education for thousands of potential learners
  • universities and colleges should be expanding provision to meet the needs of our communities and our country during a recession, not reducing it.

UCU wants to defend education.
We will do everything we can to protect jobs and courses.

image depicting Defend higher education - joint union campaign site
Links

Local campaigns blogroll

Bookmark and Share
For more information about anything on this page, please email the web editor
Link to go to top of page