Edinburgh University students are right to occupy against the imposition of £9000 fees for non-Scottish UK students studying in Scotland ("Student tuition fees sit-in", The Herald, September 17).
Tuition fees themselves are merely one aspect of a neo-liberal ideology in which every aspect of human existence, in this case education, is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold. The Scottish Government has rejected this for Scottish students, but if the tuition fees are unacceptable for natives we can see no moral or rational reason why non-Scots at our universities should be subjected to it. An injury to one is surely an injury to all.
As the banking crisis re-emerges, economic stagnation becomes embedded and unemployment blights communities, higher education should surely be massively expanded, not face funding cuts and uncertainty.
As active members of the University and College Union (UCU) working in universities in Scotland, we believe defending free education is an essential part of a public sector which protects the vulnerable and encourages equality. In an environment where governments are seeking to shift the cost of the economic crisis from the financial speculators who caused it to ordinary working people, we are proud of those students who are demonstrating that Government austerity plans are contested.
Next month will see further industrial action in universities against the imposition of worsening pension provision for the next generation of lecturers, researchers and academic-related workers. It will also see the wider trade union movement marching against austerity cuts.
We all face a choice: either to allow free market ideology to continue to wreck the lives of successive generations, or stand together to stop the Government’s austerity plans.
Neil Davidson, vice president, University of Strathclyde UCU;
Iain Ferguson, president, University of Stirling UCU;
Carlo Morelli, assistant secretary, University of Dundee UCU;
Mike Orr, University of St Andrews;
Eileen Boyle, University of Glasgow;
Gill Hubbard, University of Stirling.
The letter by David Newall, secretary of the Glasgow University Court, is highly misleading (September 17). While Mr Newall is literally accurate in stating that, on June 22, 2011, the University Court decided that there would be no reduction in the existing provision of foreign language courses, it neglects to explain the Slavonic Studies programme was abolished in its entirety, in defiance of the University Senate’s own recommendation; and that even the provision of languages had been dramatically reduced, without proper consultation or University Senate approval.
The result is that, as of September 2011, it is no longer possible to study Czech and Polish to degree level at the University of Glasgow and hence anywhere in Scotland.
There is an urgent need for targeted funding to preserve strategically important, yet vulnerable subjects such as these.
Dr John Bates, Dr Elwira Grossman, Dr Andrei Rogatchevski, Dr Mirna Solic and all the other members of academic staff, Slavonic Studies, University of Glasgow.
John Spencer, convener of Scotland’s Colleges, says that compulsory redundancies at colleges in Scotland “have been largely avoided so far” (“1000 college jobs slashed in a year”, The Herald, September 19).
This has not been my experience. Would he please itemise exactly how many compulsory redundancies there were last year?
Russell Campbell,
75 Laburnum Grove,
Stirling.
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