Cuts To Education Exposed – Guildford Against Fees And Cuts

25th March 2010

CUTS TO EDUCATION EXPOSED

 On Thursday the government announced how cuts to higher education will be distributed between the universities. The long-awaited report confirmed the fears of many that education would be made to pay the price of the £1 trillion given to the rich bankers. The report from the Higher Education Funding Council of England shows that four out of every five universities in England will face real-terms cuts. A total of £573 million in cash cuts (7.23%), have been announced for next year alone. This is nothing short of a catastrophe for education in England.

In order to make the cuts seem less bitter, slight increases have been made to teaching and research funding but this is still a real terms fall. The cuts by and large fall in the ‘capital funding’ bracket – mostly the money that universities are allowed to claim for new buildings. This may not seem like it will immediately effect students, but many university buildings are unfit for purpose and will be replaced by universities using funding from other areas – effectively sacking teachers and replacing them with bricks. This is currently happening at King’s College, where staff are being sacked at the same time as management are forking out £20 million for the grandiose Somerset House on the bank of the river Thames.

Just for profit, not for students
Research funding will be narrowed into a smaller number of ‘elite’ institutions, creating a two-tier system.
The general trend is to give more money to the universities that already have the most, by taking it away from the others. Oxford University’s research funding has increased by £7.1million up to £126million, and a third of the total research fund is distributed to just five key universities – Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial and Manchester. Less fortunate universities are set to become little more than teaching factories providing degrees aimed at workplace skills with much less funding to develop research practices. But although these richer universities are more protected from the cuts, some are still making academic staff redundant as part of a drive towards “restructuring” – providing only courses that are profitable in the world of business, and deprioritising education that is for the pursuit of knowledge.

Education for the rich
Many university managers want to shift the central funding crisis onto students – by campaigning for higher tuition fees. Shortly after the general election, the review into ‘Higher Education Funding and Student Finance’, headed by ex-BP chief executive Lord Browne, is expected to increase the tuition fee cap from £3,225 per year to £5,000 or even higher.

Some universities such as Oxford are pushing for the cap to be abolished altogether, allowing them to charge whatever they like. Fees have already been shown to put working class students off entering university, and the higher fees proposed are likely to mean that more prestigious universities such as those in the Russell group will become almost exclusively playgrounds of the rich. The combined effect will be that working class students will pay to be trained in careers, while rich students will receive a traditional ‘liberal’ arts and sciences education leading to cultural elitism. This would be a serious regression back in the direction of a Victorian style education.

Stealing our future
But with money, or without it, the HEFCE is threatening to keep higher education well out of reach of thousands of students in Further Education colleges who want to carry on their studies.
Entry quotas have been given to universities, and they will be required to keep within the limits or face financial penalties. At a time when unemployment is so high, many young people are desperate to start earning money, or continue education and are now being denied the opportunity for either, with an estimated seven applicants for every university place this year, leaving youth on the scrap-heap.

Courses cut – exec pay rockets
Many universities have already begun cutting staff and even whole departments. Sussex has lost linguistics, Leeds is losing classics, UCL is cutting language courses and Westminster is slashing IT. The cuts are not just a response to anticipated central government funding cuts, but university managers are cynically using them as an excuse to remove unprofitable courses and academics who perform useful research, but without immediate financial value to businesses.

This is part of the trend towards neo-liberalism in universities where academics have to justify their jobs based on economic value, ignoring the far more important value non-profitable research can have for society. The move towards business-orientated universities has expressed itself in other ways – vice-chancellors have seen their pay increase to a level similar of Britain’s largest national corporations, many earning in excess of £300,000 per annum. At the same time their numbers have increased by a third, meaning a disproportionate amount of money is spent on management while academic jobs are being cut. This is

Britain’s role in the shady European ‘Bologna Process’ plan, which is attacking education across Europe, and has provoked mass uprisings of students from Italy, to Greece, to France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and many more. The process coordinates efforts by the leaders of 42 countries to standardise universities, allowing them to compete with one another – creating a market in education, where institutions that best serve the needs of business will thrive, whereas the others will be cut back. The global financial crisis seems to mean that the bosses are accelerating the process.

But the current attacks on education are no foregone conclusion, and the movement for education is starting to win victories. Occupations, demonstrations and strikes at Sussex, Leeds and London Met have already won some impressive victories along the way to defeating the cuts, and the similar struggles of our brothers and sisters in Europe show a potential to organise internationally – if we could do that imagine how powerful the student movement would be. The lesson – we need to organise and fight for learning, not profit

Copied from: http://www.workerspower.com

Sussex University Frontline And Other Stories – A Summary

Sussex University Frontline & Other Stories

Rounding up a few of this weeks “Campaign Against Fees & Cuts” action.Short Summary or go to the full version: https://suacs.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/322/
Download this summary as a Word file Sussex University Frontline Summary 

The Sussex Occupation
The Sussex occupation was in support of the Sussex Six,- but also demanded the university reverse its plans to make 115 teaching staff redundant and make 8million pounds of cuts over the next two years. On Friday, an open letter signed by students and SU officers urged University employees earning over 70,000 per annum to take a “voluntary 10% pay cut, in order to help protect the welfare of all staff and students. http://www.youtube.com/user/sussexnot4sale

At the EGM 18^th March, over 1000 students voted overwhelmingly “No Confidence” in the Vice Chancellor and the Senior Management. Many students joined the picket lines at the front of the University as lecturers and workers closed down the campus with strike action. As a result, management agreed to extend the consultation period regarding the cuts until June 7th. Letter sent by Sussex University Student Union to every student, urging support for the UCU strike.  https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/sussex-student-union-letter.doc

Newcastle
Newcastle University’s Free Education Network held a rally against cuts 18^th March, as a shot across management’s bows. The University is rumoured to be planning in secret cuts across all its departments.

Aberdeen
On Wednesday March 17th students at the University of Aberdeen held a demonstration in defence of education on campus. It followed the collection of over 1500 signatures on a petition demanding the university management gives assurances that budgets at the University will not be cut. The students complained that theses cuts come as the Principle, Duncan Rice is reciceving a 17% salary increase.  On the 18^th, The students returned to the University’s management offices for a twenty four hour occupation.

Westminster
Last month, a mass meeting of students, lecturers and staff at Westminster University voted ‘no confidence’ in their Vice-Chancellor. This was their response to 10% budget cuts across the University with 280 job losses. On March 1st, 250 students and staff, against the cuts, stormed the governors’ meeting and took over the Vice Chancellor’s office. They occupied the University’s main management and administration rooms for three days. The Student Union, tried to play the impartial mediator between the University and the “No Cuts At Westminster” campaigners. We at SUACS find the Student Union’s attitude cowardly and distasteful in the face of such devestating cuts.

The students sent a letter to the Vice Chancellor, Geoffrey Petts demanding no compulsory redundancies; -all documents pertaining to the university’s finances be made freely available to the unions (UCU, Unison, Student Union) -and a guarantee that no staff or students involved in the demonstrations would face repercussions.

Leeds University
On 1st March, the anti-cuts campaign joined UCU members for a demonstration against cuts. The demonstration highlighted that the University was set to cut 35 million pounds off the budget- roughly 10% per school. The cuts will mean up to 700 job losses. A formal challenge accuses the senior management of bypassing The Senate, breaking the University’s charter and key statutes. There was a strike planned for the 18^th March but it was called off after the UCU (lecturers union) had their demands met by university management.

 University Of East Anglia
At the University of East Anglia a well-attended protest on March 3rd was accompanied by a heavy police presence disgracefully called in by the university management. The UCU are currently voting in a strike ballot.

The government’s HEFCE announced its proposed funding cuts today. The cuts are small in comparison to the cuts made by many universities. University management teams are using this opportunity to make huge cuts of their own, in-order to restructure their universities and orientate them towards a financial competitiveness within a ‘free-market’ of education.

Links:
National Campaign Against Fees And Cuts
http://conventionagainstfeesandcuts.wordpress.com/

National Campaign Against Fees And Cuts – Statement of intent (6th February 2010)

This is the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts statement of intent, passed at the National Convention on 6th February.

Statement of Intent
Fees, debt and marketisation are increasingly turning education from a right for all into a privilege for the wealthy. The NCAFC opposes all proposed and existing fees, course cuts, staff redundancies or reductions in education spending. Cuts are compounding 30 years of neo-liberal reforms which are turning our universities and colleges into businesses organised to produce profit and a pliant workforce, not critically thinking people and a better society.
Education can and should be funded not by student fees and taxes on the poor, but by progressive taxation. It should be an emancipator right, free and available to all.

We will fight for:
– A halt to all education cuts, the abolition of all fees and a living grant for every student, in FE and HE. Tax the rich to fund education

– Education not profit: business out of our schools, colleges and universities.

– A mass movement of students, including occupations, direct action and walk-outs from FE and 6th form colleges and schools, against fees and cuts. Solidarity with our lecturers, teachers and workers.

– Fees, cuts and marketisation are affecting all areas of education; schools, FE colleges, adult and part-time education institutions are being hit and must work together in the response. Regional meetings much be concerned with issues affecting all students in different types of education.

– This campaign also recognises that oppressed groups are being scapegoated due to the crisis, and that cuts will affect them the most. This campaign therefore commits itself to opposing all forms of racism including Islamophobia

– We are committed to solidarity and co-operation with Liberation organisations that share these values (including, but not limited to, the autonomous NUS liberation campaigns, all of which have free education policy), and condemn all forms of discrimination. Black, Disabled, LGBT and women students are systematically disadvantaged and discriminated by society and are disproportionately affected by fees and cuts.

– We are an internationalist campaign. We are for solidarity with students and workers across the world in our common struggle against exploitation and oppression. We are opposed to the victimisation of students and education workers over immigration status, as well as all deportations and immigration controls. We are opposed to all imperialist wars, sanctions and occupations: UK troops out of Afghanistan now.

– We will compile a national education activists’ contact database for co-ordinating activites

– We agree to initiate a national boycott of the National Student Survery (NSS) to oppose marketisation of education

– To send representatives to the Bologna process counter-conference on March 11th

– To support the call for a national demonstration outside the Autumn conference of whichever party wins the General Election.

– To support the teach-in at King’s College London on 27th February called by KCL UCU, No Cuts @ King’s and the London Education Activist Network

– Where possible ‘cultural evenings’ will be put on in student unions nationwide with poetry, theatre, music exhibitions and other artictic forms, with guest speakers and performers invited, in opposition to fees and cuts.

– To convene a meeting dedicated to the discussion of a united left slate in the NUS elections. All groups, networks, student unions and individual activists should be able to attend and participate.

– To change our name to the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts

– That a national convener be elected from each region (North, South, London, East Anglia) to convene a regular open national steering committee with the regional conveners. This national organising meeting be open to all education activists.

N.B. The grammar of the statement is not perfect, as it is based on the original script from the conference; this will be addressed at the next national meeting. Please send corrections to ucl.free.education@gmail.com or againstfeesandcuts@gmail.com

Join the National Campaign Against Fees & Cuts F/b group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=108319208229

 NCAFC London Area: 
 http://ncafclondon.wordpress.com/

 27^th February: “Teach In” An alternative day of lectures  with speakers and guests. See F/b event. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=285147785052