Pauline von Hellermann#AcademicVenting Queen Mary @ucu are keeping a tally on UK universities currently reducing staff. As they put it: it’s all shrinking.
#AcademicVenting. Today a different perspective - a much needed critical, honest assessment of the key strategy that UK universities have been adopting to stay afloat: the mass recruitment of international students from China.
No wonder the author had to stay anonymous: it is virtually a taboo to say any of this, but good that someone has done so.
Good to see a Guardian article about what’s going on Goldsmitths, featuring Michael Rosen and all.
There really needs to be far more public awareness of the crisis in HE. Really hoping that, with a big public outcry, these savage redundancies can be prevented.
Though putting people through all this (more than 300 of us have been sent “you are at risk”letters - i am personally in a pool of 4, for 2 jobs to go) is itself pretty savage.
#AcademicVenting this piece by Gaby Hinsliff provides an excellent, worrying overview of what is happening in UK HE at the moment - the reasons why the tally above of struggling universities is expanding almost daily. Freefall is the right word 1/2
#AcademicVenting 2/2
The story starts with the freezing of tuition fees in 2017, creating a growing hole in university finances that many plugged by recruiting more foreign students (who pay more than British teenagers for the same degree). That kept the show on the road until the resulting immigration numbers became politically toxic, prompting a government clampdown on visas and a sudden 33% fall in foreign student numbers compared with the same time last year.“
#AcademicVenting ah! For years I have been thinking someone should write “Unlucky Jim” - a 21st century campus novel - now just came across this! Hope it contains all those little details I was thinking about when starting this thread.
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Secret-Lecturer/Secret-Lecturer/9781914487217
#AcademicVenting No doubt the lovely - avatared- person above calling me an enabler & a coward for saying in the first toot of this 🧵 people might be afraid to really say what is going on will not be impressed that this book is anonymous!
#AcademicVenting Swansea is the latest university to announce major cuts. I think this brings it to 50 or more UK institutions.
This really is a major crisis. Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at non-elite universities are crumbling. The last few months of Tories and their disastrous anti-woke, anti-thought agenda is destroying the whole sector, all critical thinking. And many 100s of us out of jobs, all scrambling for the laar few positions. It is really bad!!
#AcademicVenting I don’t know how many of you have children who are about to go to university, but if you do: it might be time to mobilise!
#AcademicVenting Please read this wonderful piece by Goldsmiths Emeritus Professor Angela McRobbie, capturing why we all weep and weep at what is happening at Goldsmiths now. It was and is something so important: brilliant arts, research, critical thinking in a very non-elite setting, for and by non-elite students. It is so important we don't lose all this. But read the piece.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/a-goldsmiths-diary
A Goldsmiths Diary
These are desperate times in the UK higher education system. Every week there are closures of degrees or departments, and sizeable redundancies. Disproportionately it is the arts, humanities and social sciences that are affected, a consequence of their downgrading in recent years. The frequency with which common-sense
"With low or no fees, undergraduates felt freer to pursue their own dreams of being taught by the kinds of leading scholars and world-renowned artists found in an institution like my own. They could afford to take the time to find their own feet, to chop and change courses and module options. Many would tell me they had discovered for the first time the wonders of anthropology, not having had any idea of the field previously."
So lovely that a colleague from a different
.. discipline talks about the "wonders of anthropology". It really is a wonderful field! Adding here a🧵 on 8 reasons why the world needs #Anthropology. But really what I should have said: the world needs non-elite anthropologists and non-elite institutions teaching anthropology. It can't just be for the privileged at Oxbridge; it needs to be what we do at Goldsmiths - by and for everyone, especially those normally marginalised.
Pauline von Hellermann (@[email protected])
My discipline, anthropology, is not seen as a “growth" discipline, and departments are being closed down. But the world needs Anthropology and Anthropologists now more than ever! Here are my 8 reasons for this: 1. POSSIBILITIES At a time of polycrisis, when the destructive fallouts of capitalist modernity are ever more apparent, anthropology highlights that there are myriad alternative ways of thinking and living; that there is so much to learn from other peoples in the world. 1/n
#AcademicVenting Ok so this piece by Glen O’Hara really is venting.
I am conscious that I & others might come across as incredible whiners. And of course I am aware that we are, for now (50% chance of unemployment for me in 3 months) incredibly privileged. But what O’Hara describes here is completely accurate. In addition to so much other awfulness in the world, the reality of academic life creates its own unhappiness - linked to ideals of what we feel it should be.
“The modern university has become a site of moral harm or injury, perhaps mildly so, but a hard place to work and keep one’s sense of purpose and morality intact. Universities have moved progressively out of line with their staff’s view of the world, and that gap is another element in the increasing difficulty of keeping a grip on reality.“
#AcademicVenting Yes this too happened. All just borrowing from each other, or the same SMT people moving from uni to uni, wreaking havoc everywhere they go, with every step enhancing their own careers
#AcademicVenting we have now all received invitations to atend our “Stage 1 Individual Consultations”. Lovely to be encouraged by the corporate booking system they used to “grab a meeting”. Grab a reduncancy meeting, yeah!
#AcademicVenting Was a bit hard at first to read - at Goldsmiths we tend to think of UCL as the “Hoover”, sucking up all students, and indeed cohorts of 300+ history students make you weep! - but of course awful for staff being made redundant there, too, and for students having fewer and fewer module choices, vast classes, etc etc.
Universities ARE staff & students, yet management cares about neither. This is what marketisation does.
“The redundancies show that UCL cares not for their students’ role as a ‘consumer’. With the marketisation of higher education, something that has been critical in making universities neoliberal hellscapes, the student has been poised as a customer, rather than a learner. University is now meant to be a means to a greater end, with that end solely being employment.”
#AcademicVenting I think i said “neoliberal shitshow” at one point somewhere above, but “neoliberal hellscape” excellent too.
Pondering now how UK neoliberalism really is always simultaneously shitshow and hellscape. Shitty hellscape or hellish shitshow maybe. HE, water companies, NHS, the lovely Tory government itself- everywhere the same combination of cruelty, ineptitude and, of course, MONEY thinking.
#AcademicVenting That is what this is: we are governed by money itself, and it brings cruel unimaginative rightwing mediocrity to the top everywhere. (Second crossover with #FollowTheMoney 🧵 here!)
Sadly forgotten name just now, (will edit), but remembering podcast with Cambridge prof saying people worry about being ruled by AI , nonhuman entities, but that is exactly what corporations are. Nonhuman entities are already running everything.
Pauline von Hellermann (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image #Budget #UKPolitics This article by Gary Stevenson is so good, please read every word of it. “Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it.” This is what the world is - it is run by a minute elite for a minute elite and the rest of us, the masses, the natural world, we just don’t count. It is a #TragedyOftheNonCommons (will reshare my own piece on this below 1/n) #FollowTheMoney https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/05/banker-budget-mega-rich-traders-jeremy-hunt?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
#AcademicVenting 🧵. Different theme but all related anyway: Dr Abu-Sittah’s truly brilliant inauguration speech at Glasgow. Highlighting the moral role that universities play, but also their complicity. He and Glasgow now provide important moral backbone, but all this has withered through neoliberal marketisation in English universities (see Glen O’Hara above). Mostly just shamefully neutral, bland statements on “middleeast crisis”.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/dr-ghassan-abu-sittah-tomorrow-is-a-palestinian-day/
#AcademicVenting 🧵. Just realised I hadn’t added here yet Zoe William’s excellently researched piece about our crisis at Goldsmiths. Really great we have had so many people speaking out for us. Loved this piece in particular as it’s also about the student occupation about #Gaza, and it cites a brilliant student who I have had the pleasure of teaching, Danna.
Best perhaps the final sentence: “But I don’t think ita done deal”.
The Goldsmiths crisis: how cuts and culture wars sent universities into a death spiral
Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine?
#AcademicVenting The vice chancellor of York (a Russell group university!), Charlie Jeffery:
“There is no other way of saying this. The UK higher education system is in crisis. The way it is funded just doesn’t work anymore. A rough guess is that about half of the sector is responding by cutting jobs and courses”.
#AcademicVenting 🧵 another really excellent piece on the UK higher education crisis, by Hannah Rose Woods in The New Statesman”:
Experts believe it is already “too late” to avert the oncoming funding disaster: “all everyone can do now is brace”.
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/04/university-funding-is-in-crisis
“With wearying inevitability, cuts will be borne disproportionately by arts, humanities & social sciences. Some will doubtlessly cheer the trimming of supposedly “low-value” subject areas. They may be less enthusiastic about the knock-on effect their demise would have on more expensive to teach science and technology subjects, or the wider impact of rapid restructuring in a sector that supports more than three quarters of a million jobs and contributes £130bn to the economy.”
One reason why it’s all falling apart this year are changes in visa regulations for international students - Tory gov trying to curb immigration - who are no longer allowed to bring dependents.
Hey James Cleverley and Michelle Donelan - stop denying and ignoring this MASSIVE crisis that you are causing! You are destroying a vital sector with your stupid short-sighted policies. You will lose anyway- stop wreaking havock now! (I know this is 💯 pointless)
#AcademicVenting Finally read Jonathan Miller's #DeathSpiral piece, and I wish all SMTs across the country getting rid of all their PRODUCTIVE lecturers (ie, the people actually making money for universities, through student fees and research income) would read it, too. They genuinely don't understand what they are doing!
Please, understand the British Leyland's 1970s coat [*EDIT: this should be cost! I copied a typo! See @rubinjoni
below!* 😅] allocation death spiral
#AcademicVenting I think I have actually not really expressed so far how awful the redundancy process is. To everyone who has been through this or is going through this right now: HUGE solidarity. To those who haven't: what has taken me by surprise is an exponential, unbelievable increase in work. All the normal stuff plus endless meetings, strategies, statements, reports, questionnaires, campaigns, counterproposals, for weeks and weeks on end. Frazzled!
#AcademicVenting Couldn’t have put it any better. Not just the redundancy process; just so sick of all it, what it has become. #Neoliberalism #university
“I am sick of higher education leaders, I am sick of neoliberal thinking, I am sick of scarcity mindsets, I am sick of austerity, I am sick of senior management lacking morals, I am sick of education being decimated, I don’t know how we hang on + do important work for students”
#AcademicVenting Good 2021 piece by Asheesh Kapur Siddique linking rightwing university politics - ie, the oppression of #Gaza student protests we are currently seeing - to this 🧵’s overall theme: the marketisation of HE. Tight establishment control (with all its crappy values) is a direct result of marketisation.
About the US but much of it applicable to UK and Australia too.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/campus-cancel-culture-university-boards
#AcademicVenting 🧵 and now this piece by Jessica Wildfire @aral shared earlier today.
“Universities aren't institutions of knowledge anymore. They're assets. They're revenue streams. If they're not generating money for the top, then they only pose a threat, and they have to be weakened and destroyed.”
Aral Balkan (@[email protected])
“A lot of rich people don’t actually want an education system or the educated population that would come along with it. Sure, it would be better for everyone. But it would also mean having to share, and these people have let their greed literally drive them insane.” https://www.okdoomer.io/im-a-professor-heres-why-im-walking-away-from-my-tenure/ 1/2
#AcademicVenting Reading "Tips for Redundancy" compiled by a UCU colleague elsewhere:
"Keep a Diary
Going through a redundancy process is traumatic but you will find that you become hardened and come to expect the mistreatment to which you are being subjected. Keeping a diary of how you felt at points throughout the whole process is a way of tracking how it is impacting upon your life (both work and personal)."
It's true, writing things down helps! But also: you definitely harden up.
#AcademicVenting I had not mentioned so far: Goldsmiths lectures and union are resisting redundancies in many ways, including a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB). Senior Management have responded with highly punitive 50% salary deductions, for 2 months. So we are losing one month pay!!
This too is unbelievably stressful - in fact, is stressing me out more than anything at the moment (unappreciative teenage children for a start). Especially when you might still end up jobless. #UCU.
#AcademicVenting We now have a GoFundMe for our Goldsmiths #UCU hardship fund, due to 50% salary reductions for marking boycott. If you are in HE and in your union, perhaps you could ask your branch whether they could contribute? Feel awkward about saying this but: every donation welcome.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-goldsmiths-ucu-fight-mass-redundancies
#AcademicVenting we are trying to fight draconian redundancies at Goldsmiths at a time when there is a concerted effort by government, the anti-woke brigade and others to reduce the HE sector as a whole. There are more and more articles like this one, talking about how little bits of optimism amount to a collective “cloud cuckooland”.
There is a real onslaught.
#AcademicVenting this coincides with the UK government’s calamitous attempt to combat “net migration” by reducing the number of international students; they are no longer allowed to bring dependents (neither are care workers. The cruelty!) This is a tweet by our lovely prime minister. We have a government that is actively hostile to HE (one of the economically most important sectors in the country)
#AcademicVenting They tried to go one step further by abolishing the current work visa for international students (allowing int students to stay for 2 years after graduating). Luckily the Migratory Advice Committee firmly pushed back on this last week, and hopefully none of this will come to anything once Tories are out, but it’s impacting
International students decision making - we already have offer holders pulling out of our MAs.
#AcademicVenting Just to say again: all this is so stressful- losing 50% of your salary for a marking boycott that maybe won’t make any difference, given the wider hostile environment. It’s not even about the reality of challenges; it’s the fact that all these reports are out there, right now. It gives ammunition to those wanting to fire us, and weakens our case.
#AcademicVenting The crisis in HE (higher education) is so tangible it’s making headline news; our dangerous exposure to changes in migration/visa regimes and therefore whims of government ever more apparent.
Who is completely silent on all this (as fas as I know), as on everything else? Starmer, Labour. It would make a massive difference, and would work for them. But no. Everyone beholden to the same - imagined! - anti-woke, anti-immigration, anti-university voter.
#AcademicVenting Anyway, here a nice comment piece by Polly Toynbee
“Tories and their pollsters see as clear as day that the growth in highly educated citizens, above the OECD average, is a social and political revolution not in their favour: the more educated people are, the less likely they are to vote for what John Stuart Mill called “the stupidest party”.”
🇳𝗮ꜟ𝖼𝘩@pvonhellermannn
I think this applies to pretty much everything they have done for the past 14 years.
I think this applies to pretty much everything they have done for the past 14 years.