Bored of the boycott yet? Of course you are. It’s been almost ten weeks now, and with the unions rejecting a 12.6% pay rise offer, there’s still no end in sight to the most ridiculous industrial action since the matchmakers strike.
You may notice from the increasingly strained headline that this is a topic we’ve stuck with for a while, but it was only last weekend that the national media sat up and noticed the gentle academic massacre unfolding in campuses around the country.
Now we’re stuck into the exam period we can start to see where everything is going. People here at Cardiff will have their exams (although the same good luck wasn’t extended to Aberystwyth students, who have had 45 exams cancelled). Even if we don’t have any clue when we’re going to get our marks back, at least once the boycott is over and everything is marked, we’ll have full degrees.
Despite what the AUT may claim, the action is still having an effect on students here and now. I had the good fortune to have lecturers who have willingly returned coursework, now that we have exams around the corner. Without it, I’d be blithely drifting towards a 2:2 in one module, and wouldn’t be able to rectify that in time for my exam.
Don’t believe any boycotter who suggests that their actions will not have an effect on students; a student who doesn’t get their coursework back in any particular module is at an immediate disadvantage.
Working in the other direction, one module that normally has a test on supervised computers has had to be left to the wilds of Blackboard, for students to complete whenever they wanted to in a 24-hour period. There were therefore no controls on what resources were used or whether people worked together, in what is known in testing circles as a ‘piece of piss’ – and this contributed to students’ degrees. The AUT action is creating an absolute balls-up of the exam period.
Still, the good nature of my own lecturers does help to underline the difference between them and the AUT leaders, such as the union’s General Secretary Sally Hunt (pictured). An offer of 12.6% was made by the university representatives – and the AUT management didn’t even bother putting the offer to their members.
Whilst 12.6 per cent may not be enough to make up for low pay in the past few years, it means that the issue can be set aside until then. Heck, 12.6 per cent in any other profession would be jumped on. To not even put the offer to the AUT members shows that there isn’t really that much interest in resolving the issue. Sally Hunt may believe that lecturers ‘expect their employers to treat them with some dignity and respect’, but it isn’t a courtesy that has even once been extended to students, given how long this dispute has been dragged on.
Still, it’s an interesting note on which to be thrown out of the educational system. A significant number of the graduating year (me included) are the lucky folk who’ve been the educational guinea pigs for most of our lives. There were the experimental Key Stages, followed by the newly split A-level system; graduating late is just the last chance the education establishment have to dump on us from a great height before we enter the big wide world.
But what really riles is that the unions continue to argue that the boycott is not their responsibility, but the responsibility of government and the employers. No, they are responsible for low pay. The morally reprehensible action the AUT insist on pursuing is squarely their fault and no-one else.
It’s clear that the lecturers’ action is going to have an effect on students. For any lecturers who are reading this that are supporting the boycott, then please reconsider the effect you are having, before you ruin the past three years work of your students.
