Students pay the price of disruption – let's make it worthwhile

Higher education is at a crossroads. Scottish universities are not unique in the challenges they face, but they are in the middle of a uniquely defining moment compared to institutions elsewhere. As this column goes to print, strike action is planned or already underway at multiple institutions. Union members are battling proposed job cuts that could result in anywhere from a dozen to thousands of staff losing their positions or having their hours significantly reduced.

This is all happening against the backdrop of universities chasing hundreds of millions of pounds in savings to close a series of deficits, while an ambitious project is simultaneously underway that could transform the sector into one better able to ride the waves that have rocked it in recent years.  

It is not the job of a reporter to say which side is right or who has the moral high ground, and I am very glad that is the case. Not only is it nearly impossible to make that kind of judgment objectively, but every day it feels like the emotional and logistical tide turns.

The staff

On the staff side, I have had many conversations with university employees at various levels of seniority — veterans, early-career academics, and PhD students who are just about to begin their career journey. Each has raised problems that impact them, their families, the institutions they work for, and the students they serve. Many I hear from are connected to trade unions; others are not. Regardless, most look at the situation in universities and feel a deep sense of unfairness — that attempts to weather a financial crisis that these staff members did nothing to create, increasingly come at the cost of their jobs or those of their colleagues.

As one professor at the University of Aberdeen explained to me, in an age when information is readily at hand and knowledge is easy to disseminate but difficult to monetise, what students who attend university are actually buying is the connection to that institution and the reputation that comes with it. If a degree programme were all textbooks or internet databases and no staff, what would there be to differentiate one institution from another?

I also hear concerns about the casualisation of the profession, which has turned being an academic from a career into a roller coaster of temporary jobs that could end at any moment.

The universities

Then there is the university side. Or, more specifically, the management side. (Many staff have made clear to me, although it is hard to convey succinctly in any news report, that staff are inseparable parts of “the university” and attributing quotes to “a university spokesperson” when they are really speaking on behalf of management muddies the waters.)

I have had the chance to speak to multiple university principals and other decades-long veterans of the sector who see what staff are presenting and the concerns they are raising, but also feel an obligation to look beyond them — sometimes dispassionately, sometimes deeply connected to the human impact of their decisions. Some principals tell me the hard truths: whether the financial situation is the fault of any staff members or not, the brutal fact, as they see it, is that the model is unsustainable. If cuts are not made now, there may be very little left in the future worth saving.

University management has a pastoral responsibility to its employees, who can number in the thousands. But they tell me that responsibility also applies to the tens or hundreds of thousands of students, alumni, community partners, research organisations and members of the general public who benefit every day from the groundbreaking research and innovations that flow out of Scotland's universities every year.

Balancing the chequebook is one thing, but balancing that sense of purpose is a job I do not envy.

The students – and the cost

Then there is the third side: students. Over the course of any industrial dispute, students are often reduced to a rhetorical tool by each side, regardless of the fact that both, I sincerely believe, genuinely care about the impact their decisions and their tactics are having on them.

What separates students in this context from the other players is something I think about constantly: a student's time is their most precious commodity. You are only an S4 once. You only get one shot at your first year of university. For many postgraduate students, especially those on taught master's programmes, your time in class with a given professor or on a given subject may be limited to a single day over the course of a year. If that day falls on a strike day, or if that course or staff member is subject to cuts in the department, students do not get that opportunity back.

While the decision-makers deliberate disputes and reforms and fix what is broken, students move on. They graduate. They change programmes. In some cases, they change their plans and career tracks completely — all because an opportunity available to students five years ago, and again in another year, was not available to them.

I appreciate this is a challenge to keep front of mind, because it forces a sense of urgency in finding a resolution to complicated problems. And yet, major structural issues and flaws cannot be solved with urgency. They need time. They need dedicated attention. They need deliberation. They need review. And — perhaps most importantly — they need commitment to see them through.

So, you will not hear me saying who I think is right on an issue or who should be winning any given fight. What I will say instead is this: in education, every decision and every week of delay comes with a cost, and that cost is paid by students.

Let’s do our best to make sure it is worth it.