Wave of student protest in Austria and Germany

A useful backgrounder to the wave of protest against education reforms in Austria and Germany, from the Times Higher Education magazine:

A wave of student protests across Austria and Germany is voicing opposition to tuition fees and “English-American”-style degrees introduced under the Bologna Process, while stirring up debate about the purpose of higher education.

The protests began in Austria in October, when students occupied a lecture theatre at the University of Vienna. They then spread to other Austrian campuses and to Germany as demonstrators built momentum through social-networking sites.

Lecture halls at some universities, such as Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, remain occupied, while at others, students have been evicted by police.

Full article…

Government announces £135m funding cut for universities

From UCU, the lecturers’ union:

UCU today (Tuesday) described further cuts in higher education as a ‘Christmas kick in the teeth’ for both staff and students.

The union said the cuts were not cost free and would lead to job cuts, larger class sizes and universities contributing less to both the economy and society.

In the ‘grant letter’ from business secretary, Lord Mandelson, to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) chairman, Tim Melville-Ross, the government said it was reducing HEFCE’s grant by 6.6%, including additional cuts of £135m to ones previously announced. For the first time in a decade the unit of public spending per student is being cut in real terms.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: ‘The HEFCE grant letter is a real Christmas kick in the teeth for staff and students and final proof that the government has completely lost its way when it comes to higher education. You cannot make these kinds of cuts and expect no consequences.

‘We will see teachers on the dole, students in larger classes and a higher education sector unable to contribute as much to the economy or society. How all that marries up with a government that is pioneering a university sector more reliant on student feedback is beyond me.

Commenting on the section on wider and fairer access to university, Sally Hunt said: ‘We welcome a range of flexible options to encourage people to consider higher education. However, reading between the lines here it sounds like a two-tier university system where the privileged few have the pick of the university park and everyone else has to make do with what they can afford.’

Original article

Let’s talk about catastrophes . . .

Lets talk about catastrophes. Almost three decades ago a multinational empire and a global superpower spanning across two continents ceased to exist. A lot can be said about the nature and history of former USSR, but one would be hypocritical if ignored both scientific and technological achievements of the now gone union. A non-exclusive list consists of putting the first man in space, launching the first artificial satellite, building the first electronic computer on the European continent, design and construction of the largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world (An-225), the biggest nuclear weapon to date (the “Tsar” bomb, which was also one of the “cleanest”), development of Gazprom – a massive natural gas extraction, storage and delivery system which still supplies most of Europe, and the list goes on…

With the collapse of Soviet Union many hardships befell the former republics. Cuts had to be made in all but the most essential sectors of the economy, and scientific domain was amongst the worst struck. Vast numbers of scientists fled to Western States looking up to foreign governments who had the capacity and will to fund their expensive research. Amongst them was my mother – at the time a young and ambitious Soviet immunologist, now a British citizen, conducting cancer research and overseeing clinical trials.

In the years that followed, money laundering and corruption spread hand-in-hand with inflation and organised crime, as a narrow circle of opportunists amassed monumental riches at the expense of the public, out of the fruits of public’s labour, both physical and intellectual. Most projects that were frozen due to lack of funding are still… frozen. Permafrosted by now, with little hope of ever been completed without outside funding. Forgive me if I sound nostalgic, for I have no reason to be. Life goes on, and I look to the future more often then to the past.

So what does future hold for the University of Sussex? I wish I had facts and figures to prove my point. I don’t, but having grown up in Kyiv in the 90′s, I have an acute smell for corruption. Someone is making money at the expense of the University, someone is making cuts without thinking about implications on the academic potential of the establishment. At least I pray they are not thinking, for if they realise what the long-term effects of cuts may be and are still going forward with them, then they are committing a serious crime. In former USSR, such crimes were met with capital punishment with no right of appeal.

As an attentive reader may have gathered, I’m drawing an approximated analogy. For times and locations may differ, but the consequences stay. I would like to round off my blog entry my quoting a great man of the past, King of Prussia, Frederick the Great: “He who defends everything, defends nothing”. It’s a student’s job to learn, and I’ve learnt enough to categorically state that cuts for profit are a sure symptom of catastrophe, a preventable and hugely unnecessary one.

Val Redchenko,
Third Year Undergraduate,
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Protest at London MET: All Governors Resign!

London Met’s governors today finally handed in their resignation following pressure from a London-wide demonstration against education cuts on Tuesday. London Met’s management were scandalised in the national press after making a complete mess of the university’s finances by claiming more government funding than they were supposed to. Congratulations and solidarity to the London Met campaign.

See an Independent article on the resignations here

See a video of the protest here (Sussex banner hung from window 4mins in).

Unisex Information Update

Cross-posted from the ‘Save Sussex Education’ Trade Unions website

“We have just added some new information about the threatened closure of UNISEX, the sexual health and drug advice service. It corrects some of the misleading information that has previously been circulating from other sources. Specifically it confirms that the closure will save far less money than implied, and reaffirms that the service operates for the benefit of Sussex students.

Sussex Uni Management pay – it just keeps on growing!

University of Sussex – Management pay scales year-on-year

Click on the link above to view a revealing .pdf. The graph shows how the number of staff at Sussex paid more than 100k a year has risen dramatically since 2004.  Note the sudden rise in 2008 – the first year Michael Farthing was in office.

The chart which the graph is based on also shows how the spread of top-paid staff has been more-than-inching its way up the scales over the past few years, in a way that cannot be accounted for by negotiated wage increases and/or inflation.

The results of this research are all the more revealing in the light of Gordon Brown’s recent comment:

‘Those organisations found to be squandering public funds on over-generous salaries for officials, at the expense of services for people, will be named and shamed… It cannot be right that taxpayers fund 300 local authority officials who have salaries over £150,000, or that in total over 300 staff across public sector bodies are paid more than £200,000.’

These shocking figures don’t even include University management wages. Well, even if Brown hasn’t got the time to name and shame Uni management, we’ll be glad to!

Wikipedia page edited

The Wikipedia page for Sussex University has been edited to more accurately reflect the current situation of the university. Under the ‘finance’ section the entry now reads:

In 2009 the University had an annual turnover of £160 million but announced that it had to make cuts of £3 million in the current academic year and £5 million in 2010-11 due to reductions in government funding. [36]

The proposal for the cuts includes over 115 compulsory redundancies. These include a third of the academics in the School of Life Sciences, 13 academics in Informatics, and more redundancies in the schools of Engineering, History, English and the Centre for Continuing Education.[37]

The plans also includes reductions in funding and reorganising of many of the universities non-academic services.[38]

A strong student and staff movement, “Stop the Cuts”, was set up to oppose the proposals, demanding that the university management:

* Abolish all plans for compulsory redundancies
* Resist Tuition fees and reductions in higher education funding
* Reduce executive pay
* Postpone new building projects
* Give assurances of academic freedom[39]

The “Stop the Cuts campaign” has organised several protests, most recently, bringing together more than 500 students, to coincide with a Senate meeting. The Vice Chancellor, Michael Farthing, called the police to disperse the demonstration, despite the nonviolent nature of the protest. [40]

Things to look forward to

Thanks to everyone who attended the last big meeting of term last night. It was inspiring to see so many people and to hear about all the good work that everybody has been doing in their area to fight these proposed cuts.

Another exciting piece of news was that a meeting of the Brighton and Hove District Trade Union’s Council yesterday voted in favour of a mass demo through the streets of Brighton at the end of February. This idea was put forward at last week’s public meeting, and will see students and university staff and workers  join workers from all across the public sector and other areas hit by the financial crisis to demonstrate the common root of our struggles and the solidarity between us and bring home the message that working people and students will not be forced pay for this crisis not of our making.

Following an incredible wave of student occupations and demonstrations all over Europe and beyond (over 100 universities taking action this year), things are also finally starting to gather pace on a national level.

Yesterday, students at City of Westminster College staged a walk-out over cuts. This term also saw organisational efforts from Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool and Leeds.

King College UCU and London region UCU have called for a London-wide meeting of staff and students against education cuts, supported by ‘No cuts at Kings’ to decide what action we need to take to defend higher education. The meeting will take place at 6.30pm on December 15th, Kings College London, Strand campus, Room S1.28 (basement). For more info contact ucu@kcl.ac.uk

On the 6th February, UCL Students for Free Education will also be hosting the National convention against fees and cuts; “an all-day conference of action, discussion and entertainment for anyone who thinks higher education should be free for all”. If anyone’s home up North for Christmas already, a Northern planning meeting for the event is scheduled for tomorrow.

We hope that everyone has a great Christmas break (apart from Sussex VCEG: we hope your roast goose is burnt, your vintage champagne flat, and your stockings full of coal – but not enough to heat your mansions) but please don’t just forget about everything until January! We need to come back prepared and ready for the biggest campus-wide fight that Sussex has seen since those golden days of yore. Watch this space for some suggestions for things that you can do here soon, but in the meantime, let’s keep talking to one another, take the time to get clued up and inform yourselves of what’s happening, if you’re a non-unionised staff member or worker then sort it out quick!, and generally do everything that you need to prepare yourselves for the battle ahead.

Senate meeting and protest yesterday

Thanks again to everybody that turned up to the demonstration yesterday for this week’s Senate meeting. A large and vocal group of students and some staff and workers marched from library square up to Bramber house with signs calling for senators to speak out against the cuts and questioning the outcome of last week’s Senate meeting (which recorded no official indication of the Senate’s standpoint towards the proposals following rejection from the management of four separate calls for a vote measuring opinion). As previously reported, the agenda for the Senate meeting this week had no mention whatsoever of the cuts, indicative of the management’s contempt for university opinion and determination to get their with or without the necessary legitimation of the university’s own democratic procedures.

Nonetheless, within the meeting, some concessions were won by Senate. It was conceded by management that a working group will be set up to review the proposals and this week it was further agreed that elected senators would hold positions within this group. It was also agreed that an emergency meeting of Senate may be held again next term, and subject to the working group producing something worth discussion(!). Had management have got their way, last week’s meeting would have been the sum total of Senate’s involvement with these processes, so these are extremely important gains, and it is staff/student campaigns that have forced the VCEG to take this change in approach. However we should be under no illusions that these were reluctant concessions on behalf of management to appease nuisance dissenting voices – we need to keep up the pressure to ensure that the working group is not regarded as another dummy form of democracy to be ignored and undermined and that staff and students are taken seriously!

Following the demonstration, a group of students walked over to library square to decorate the Christmas tree with signs and messages to VCEG whilst others took flyers round to the residences. Don’t forget that the last campaign meeting of term will take place tonight in Mandella Hall from 5:30 – all affected/supportive persons invited – we want it to be a big one!

Sussex students’ history of struggle

The history of all hitherto Sussex society is the history of student struggle! Okay, maybe this is a creative exaggeration and a bad pun, but looking back in the archives of Sussex reveals it’s politically active past starting from the mid 60s and its radicalisation during Thatcher’s reign in the 80s and into the present day.  More importantly, Sussex’s history of student protest has been the history of success in many student and staff led campaigns, for example the recent rescue of the Chemistry Department in 2006. The newly named Asa Briggs Lecture Theatre seems appropriate; Briggs was the Vice Chancellor during the 1968 Student protests at Sussex and was almost as disliked as our current VC Michael Farthing due to his authoritarian style of management. However, another running theme from the 60s onwards has been the apathy of the vast majority of students.  Whether this is because students feel disconnected from the university system and feel alienated from political structures outside and inside the university, or are simply unengaged because the issues do not directly affect them, this inertia must be tackled. The power of the students and staff within a university system can be channelled productively and together we can realise our agency for change, but in order to do so we must have a campus wide campaign.