Universities

Warwick Anti-Racism Society, supported by Warwick University UCU, organised a demonstration on 12 June, in protest against the rising presence of far-right extremists on their campus. Over 200 students and trade union activists attended to oppose National Action, a group who want to “ethnically cleanse the UK of Jews and non-whites”. They are targeting universities because, according to their strategy pack, if they cannot tap into this market then they cannot succeed at all. It is estimated that there are only 60 members nationally, but have caused enough trouble to gain national press...

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will begin a boycott of marking on 28 April unless Higher Education bosses make concessions on pay. Higher Education workers have already struck six times against a 1% pay offer for 2013-2014. The boycott will be of all formal assessments. Talks between the unions representing workers in higher education and the Employers Association were held on 26 March; those talks were over 2014-15 pay claim (which is being presented by the union as a continuation of the current dispute). However no offer was made. Further talks will be held on 15 April...

A workplace bulletin by University of London workers, for University of London workers. Click here to download the PDF.

The coalition government, building on New Labour, is pushing to shape education more and more along capitalist market standards and criteria. They dare not making schooling just something bought and sold on the market. Even if they don’t care that barring children of worse-off parents from schooling would be unjust, they concede that it would produce an unqualified workforce and a brutalised society. Insanely, though, they continue with the superstition that, short of that full-scale marketisation, the closer they can bring education to capitalist norms of competition and capitalist norms of...

Recent collusion between management and the police at the University of London during student solidarity with striking university workers has raised the question of university autonomy from state intrusion. Michéal MacEoin looks at a rich history from Latin America. Spanish and, later, Spanish-American institutions in Latin America based themselves on the medieval University of Bologna in Italy. They conceived of themselves as corporate communities of scholars. This contrasted with a different medieval model, from Paris: controlled by masters, with students as academic and political...

A workplace bulletin by University of London workers, for University of London workers. This issue anticipates the next strike of outsourced cleaning, catering, and security staff on 27-29 January, and discusses issues including VC pay and the national HE pay dispute. Click here to download the PDF.

In November 2013 Universities UK, the organisation which represents university managements, published guidelines which said it could be discriminatory (undermining of free speech) for universities not to allow segregation by gender in meetings if external speakers wanted that arrangement. The ruling has been backed by the National Union of Students. Under pressure, Universities UK withdrew the guidelines on 13 December. The ruling said steps to accommodate the wishes or beliefs of those opposed to segregation should “not result in a religious group being prevented from having a debate in...

Trade union activists working in Higher Education have set up the "University Worker" blog as a forum for discussing the current pay dispute. The blog says it will "help keep up the cross-union co-operation fostered by our first strike on 31st October. It is open to members of any and all of the Higher Education unions (UCU, Unison, Unite, EIS, etc)." Read the blog here .

A statement from the occupiers: An independent network of over 100 students is occupying the headquarters of the University of London at Senate House. We can be contacted at londonoccupation@gmail.com and 07754768945. We have taken over the main management corridor and the Vice Chancellor’s office in opposition to the way our university is being run and the way the higher education sector as a whole is controlled. This action is restorative; displacing the undemocratic and unaccountable management with a democratic space for the free pursuit of knowledge, critical enquiry and dissent...

Many university teachers get less than the minimum wage, as little as £4 an hour, for the work they put in. Some are beginning to organise. Josie Foreman discusses the issues. Academics love nothing more than having a moan about the terrible state of the neo-liberal university. We tend to be slightly less enthusiastic when it comes to getting up from our desks and doing something about it. This has begun to change, as pockets of resistance have begun to emerge at several different British universities in the last few years. There is a squeamishness among some older and more established leftist...