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]
Nice one. There should also be a link to here in the ‘External References’ section?
Congratulations for your work. I am happy to read there is some resistance to dangerous ongoing evolutions in higher education in England.
I am member of faculty in a French university, where we are still “very late”, as far as transforming university into businesses is concerned. I just wish we don’t gain momentum. Probably, we are very going at demonstrating, and so are our students, but our government is trying to increase (currently very low) fees in very indirect ways, as it knows it is a sure wqy of loosing the next election.
Sorry it doesn’t help you, but I do use very much the situation in England, which is a bit like 10 years-ahead sci-fi for us, to campaign for maintaining a public service of higher education, that has a low cost for students. Showing payroll figures such as the one of your VC (but most of them have such salaries), I hope to convince our frog fellows how management thinks.
…sorry, I meant “we are very good at demonstrating”.
What our government is doing is making universities independent, so when fees rise, there will only be a private institution to demonstrate against ; whereas now, we can make multi-million demonstration against national policies…
Very interesting comment, Marc! Just as the French look at our education system, we look at the USA as a dystopian image of where we could all ‘end up’ if nothing is done.
We also look at the Continent as an example of where student protest ‘used to be’, as an image of our golden age of student protest. We draw inspiration from the actions of students in Europe who are still unafraid to take direct action and challenge government and management.
Farthing’s wiki has been updated too.