On 14 Mar 2018 at 10:18pm Students wrote:
The University of Sussex will grind to a halt on Thursday as students from all over the country descend on campus to express solidarity with striking lecturers.
In an email leaked to The Argus, deputy vice-chancellor Saul Becker told staff a group of Sussex students had organised a national demonstration in support of the University and College Union (UCU) strikes that have swept the country in recent weeks.
Police have already been drafted in with hundreds of students expected to take part in protests in Falmer tomorrow.
Check it out here »
On 15 Mar 2018 at 12:16am endoftheouse wrote:
Even Stephen Hawking couldn't come up with an answer to filling in the £6.1 million black hole the pension scheme has. Let's put the student course fees up. Problem solved.
On 15 Mar 2018 at 1:29am Admin Staff wrote:
Fab - we get a day off from work - fed up doing extra work cos of striking academics who don't live in the real world!
On 15 Mar 2018 at 7:26am Citizen Smith wrote:
Just a reminder that secondary picketing was made illegal in the eighties.
On 15 Mar 2018 at 9:21am Huh? wrote:
Am I understanding this correctly? Students who are forced to borrow thousands and spend most of their life in debt are supporting those whose very comfortable lifestyles they fund?
On 15 Mar 2018 at 9:39am Titled wrote:
If you are smart you will pay it off no trouble. If you are not then you are wasting your time and money going to university. It's not in the interests of the universities for potential students to know this.
On 15 Mar 2018 at 10:31am @Huh? wrote:
Students will protest anything
On 15 Mar 2018 at 12:12pm Ross wrote:
Lecturers remind me of miners in the 80s.They either don't see what's coming down the line or they do and want to grab all they can before it's all gone. Understandable but not as "ethical " as they would like us to believe.
On 15 Mar 2018 at 12:36pm inthegutter wrote:
@Ross, do tell us "what's down the line".
Most lecturers, like many others in the public sector (quasi or otherwise), have seen their income fall in real terms over the last few years. This most recent industrial action is due to a significant change to the terms of their pensions.
I personally don't support the marketisation of higher education (for various reasons), however, with regards to the "value of university", study after study has demonstrated that even after fees (which is not real debt, but effectively a capped graduate tax) that graduates are, on average, better off than non-graduates.
More generally though, if I think of the major advances in the 20th/21st Century most of these had their foundations in publicly funded research, which in the UK is carried out almost exclusively in universities (this is different in other countries).
On 15 Mar 2018 at 1:51pm Ross wrote:
What's down the line? A few exceptional lecturers getting rich, the rest getting different jobs or retirement / unemployment.
On 15 Mar 2018 at 2:28pm Local Resident wrote:
Can anyone explain why public sector workers of any shape or form seem to think they are 'owed' a generous pension, just because they serve the community?
Many workers in the private sector have had to accept less generous pension schemes for many years, and just had to knuckle down and get on with it, and pay more of their 'hard earned' into the scheme if they wanted a half-decent pension.
When I see health workers, teachers and lecturers, emergency service workers etc protesting over things like this it does make me wonder why they chose their careers - was it perhaps because they saw it as a route to early retirement on a generous pension rather than out of a genuine desire/vocation to 'serve' the wider community?
Don't bother with the 'thumbs down's as I know I've just upset a lot of hard-working people ;-) .
On 15 Mar 2018 at 2:47pm Billy Bull wrote:
I've never met a public sector worker who couldn't earn more in the private sector. Those who can do so are rare. One of the trade offs they make for lower salaries is a pension comparable to what they'd have if they'd chased money in the corporate world instead of contributing to society.
On 15 Mar 2018 at 3:54pm @Billy Bully wrote:
How would anyone believe that is sustainable? It's another short sighted idea from the public sector
On 15 Mar 2018 at 4:49pm @@Billy Bully wrote:
Of course it's "sustainable" if the governments of the day didn't use pension contributions to cover up lack of adequate taxation to fund services, and if the contributions were properly invested. Governments spend our public service contributions, and then say there's no money for pensions.