More students are coming into higher education, but they are getting an increasingly raw deal: bigger classes, and workers whose pay is falling behind those in schools... The lowering of higher education - and how to fight it
WORKERS, MAR 2005 ISSUE
The number of students in higher education is a measure of the success of the working class. A better educated and more highly skilled population strengthens the entire class. For a hundred years the number of students in higher education has risen. But for the past 20 years these rises have been at the expense of university and college workers, with students getting an increasingly raw deal from the experience.
Nine years ago, in May 1996, the problems were presented graphically by a group of Yorkshire Labour MPs, who called upon the then Tory government to halt the cuts in their region. They cited the contribution universities make to the nation's manufacturing knowledge base, the essential education of key workers and the thousands employed.
This group of MPs pointed to the rapid rise in student numbers throughout the early 1990s and showed that this was not matched by higher wages or more resources. In other words, the brunt of the expansion of the 1990s was based on the increased exploitation of higher education workers.
Then everything changed. A year later Tony Blair was swept into office and the scene went quiet. The protests stopped. Higher education continued to suffer, but since then there has been very little of a revolt against the continued cuts in student funding and the wholesale onslaught on much of the sector.
Now government talk is of another expansion of numbers that, on the surface, appears to be a welcome move but, as with previous expansions, is severely underfunded. The sector's workers are once again expected to shoulder the burden. Talk of expansion and increased numbers is a smoke screen to hide the real problems in HE. The entire system is under attack on three fronts, and some institutions face the loss of departments, or even closure.
Research threatened
First there is an attack on research, especially basic research. Universities are faced with convoluted bidding processes for funds, which cause mountains of bureaucracy. They are forced to play games with the farcical mechanism of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This charade pits academics against each other, for a fixed and inadequate pot of money to fund their research.
The RAE puts academic staff under intense pressure to publish quickly and often even if their research is not ready for publication. Research funding depends on accumulating points in a crude system that is open to manipulation and abuse. In fact, a transfer market has opened up, where top researchers are lured away with promises and resources.
Universities are forced to ride roughshod over the needs of staff and the stability and clarity which good research demands is nowhere to be seen. Many researchers are poorly paid and on short-term contracts. Many of these contracts are locally negotiated and fall outside the national bargaining structure negotiated by trade unions for full time teaching staff.
The overall picture is of a fragile research base staffed by over-worked and poorly paid researchers.
The Association of University Teachers (AUT) has now spoken out, arguing that the government has done too little, too late in dealing with the growing crisis of department closures and job losses engulfing higher education. The consistent message from the AUT to government has been to deal with the distortion in higher education caused by the funding mechanism for research — the Research Assessment Exercise. The union's general secretary, Sally Hunt, has said that while the government delays grappling with the real issue of the distortions caused by the RAE, yet more universities will be closing departments.
With long-established universities such as Exeter closing its Chemistry and Italian departments, and last month Hull announcing the closure of its Mathematics department, the situation is going from bad to worse.
"We are prepared to work constructively with government and higher education institutions to come up with a sensible and workable alternative to the RAE," says Sally Hunt. "But it requires action now, not at some point in the future," she concludes.
Student fees
The second line of attack is student fees. Over the course of a generation student grants have vanished, larger and larger loans have been made available and fees have been introduced. The level of student debt is rising year on year and students are forced to take more and more low-paid jobs just to survive. Many are now leaving university with a crippling debt, which a generation ago would have bought a house.
Yet things are set to get worse. In September 2006 students will be forced to pay fees of up to £3000 a year. Fees pay only for a student's course — all living and studying costs are on top of that. Despite their imminent introduction, most universities have still to set their level of fees. There is likely to be a free-for-all as universities offer rebates on fees, or bursaries, for some groups of students and compete head-on with other institutions. Those who set their fees too high may lose students to rival universities. Those who set them too low may find students avoiding what they think will be a cheap course. Over the coming months there will be many losers in the fees game and institutions will be watching each other to see who blinks first. All the unions involved argue that competition between universities offering greatly differing bursaries will worsen, not improve, the prospects for poorer students. Is this the way we want to run a 21st century education system?
Recruiting abroad
Alongside increased fees from British students, English universities have been given the green light from government to increase the number of students from outside the EU. The Higher Education Funding Council for England found that universities intended to recruit 9.8% more students from Britain over four years, but 26.7% more from outside the EU. Students from any of the 25 EU member countries already pay no more than British students to attend our universities. Universities expect income from overseas students to rise by 44.1% to £1.62 billion.
Overseas students already pay on average around £7,000 to £8,000 in fees, and pay yet more to fast-track their visa application. But Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, says overseas students are necessary to help with overall costs. The quality of education is again coming second to balancing the books.
With measured indifference, a Department for Education and Skills spokesman said: "Exactly how universities plan for their future is a matter for them — our universities have already demonstrated that they can handle substantial expansion without having to restrict opportunities for UK students and we have every reason to believe that this will continue." The third line of attack is on wages and working conditions. Throughout the 1990s staff-student ratios became significantly worse. Teaching groups became much larger, and course managers looked anxiously for ways to reduce costs. During this period, the trade unions in higher education allowed their industry to become one of the most casualised in Britain.
In 1998 the government established the Bett Committee to review pay and conditions in the sector. A key issue for Bett was the poor pay and conditions of those working in the post-92 universities (mostly former polytechnics). Lecturers in these institutions are mainly represented by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE). Their submission to the Committee included data showing that 44 per cent of academic staff in these universities were part-time and 37 per cent were employed on an hourly-paid casual basis.
The Bett Committee was never going to be a substitute for union action, and when published, its report lamely stated that unduly large numbers of staff were on short-term contracts (especially researchers) or casually employed (particularly lecturers in post-1992 universities). The committee then noted that that there was scope for many higher education institutions to reduce their use of fixed-term and casual employment.
And it gets worse...
Unsurprisingly, conditions in higher education have continued to get worse. But over the last few years there has been both a growing anger and an organised fight back among workers.
Over the past year, in particular, NATFHE has been waging a struggle to prevent some institutions — such as London Metropolitan and Bournemouth universities — from imposing inferior conditions of service on their workforce. Last year the union declared an official dispute with London Metropolitan University, following the university's decision to dismiss almost 400 lecturers from their existing contracts.
The university faced a national boycott from academics across Britain, which threatened its existence. Eventually the university agreed in January to time-limited negotiation, conciliated by ACAS. In view of this successful struggle, NATFHE has agreed to suspend its academic boycott and industrial action for the duration of the talks. The pressure from this success has encouraged other institutions to speed up implementation of the Framework Agreement, a nationally agreed pay and conditions package. Until recently, many institutions were dragging their feet and trying to include local variations — all worse of course.
Priority
It is a sad reflection on the low priority the working class has given to its higher education system that the government has been able to sustain so much attack with so little public outcry.
We still have a lot of struggle ahead. Recently, a favourite method of saving money used by course managers has been to find alternatives to teaching, with increased self study and a love affair with e-learning. Any curriculum developments predicated on saving money rather than improving the quality of teaching and research must be resisted.
And now prospects of concerted joint action have improved. Talks on a single new union have moved up a gear. The AUT and NATFHE general secretaries say the talks are entering a new phase. Agreement has been reached on the key principles, which will drive the new union forward. Will this produce the action required to save an industry?