{"id":50282,"date":"2019-11-29T10:45:02","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T18:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=50282"},"modified":"2019-12-03T23:42:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T07:42:09","slug":"capitalist-creep-on-campus-the-largest-quietest-privatisation-in-uk-history-its-why-were-striking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/capitalist-creep-on-campus-the-largest-quietest-privatisation-in-uk-history-its-why-were-striking\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitalist creep on campus: the largest, quietest privatisation in UK history \u2013 it\u2019s why we\u2019re striking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nFor the next week and a half, many UK university lecturers will be on strike again, but who outside of academia really cares? After all,\u00a0university academics<\/a>\u00a0have great jobs. Indeed, every June to September, I get asked whether I am now on holiday. So who\u2019s bothered whether I go on strike? Most people think I already have a cushy number.<\/p>\n

Unlike nurses or firefighters, academics might not get much sympathy, but this is based on some very out of date ideas about\u00a0what universities are like<\/a>. Since the 1990s, these institutions have been growing fast while their funding from the state has been going down.\u00a0One in three<\/a>\u00a018 year olds now applies for university, and in 2017\u22122018, there were more than\u00a02.3 million<\/a>\u00a0students studying at 165 UK higher education institutions. In some cities, like Bristol where I work, one in ten residents is now a student, and the\u00a0universities are reshaping the city itself<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is now a\u00a0gigantic sector of the economy<\/a>\u00a0and the big organisations that dominate it are increasingly run like businesses to pay their bills. In 2017\u22122018, the sector\u2019s total income was\u00a0\u00a338.2 billion<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 employing nearly 430,000 people. Discounting the money from student fees, which are, after all, paid by students, then\u00a0only about 20%<\/a>\u00a0of this income comes directly from the UK state.<\/p>\n

This means that 80% of the funding of universities now comes through various markets \u2013 whether attracting undergraduates with their loans, postgraduates paying full fees, or income from grants, research, accommodation and selling sandwiches. No wonder then that strategies for maximising income and efficiency require large courses taught in large lecture theatres, as well as commercialising research and spending piles of cash on marketing to attract students \u2013\u00a020% of who<\/a>\u00a0come from outside the UK.<\/p>\n

Job insecurity<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The gradual withdrawal of state support has been the largest, and quietest, privatisation in UK history, and most people don\u2019t even know about it. When I started working in universities 30 years ago, I was part of the public sector. Now, I suppose 80% of me works in the private sector, and the language and strategies of managerialism shape every meeting and classroom I am in.<\/p>\n

These changes have had\u00a0obvious implications<\/a>\u00a0for the work of academics. Getting more productivity out of your employees is a strategic way to behave in a market, so the number of part-time and casually employed staff has skyrocketed. According to the University and College Union, 54% of teaching and research staff are now employed on a\u00a0short-term basis<\/a>, including some on\u00a0zero-hours contracts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

PhD students are very often used as teaching staff as a condition of their employment. The full-time research and teaching academic is now the minority in many institutions. Just as companies like Amazon, Sports Direct and Uber have been criticised for relying on\u00a0precarious labour<\/a>, universities too are increasingly reliant on a reserve army of part-time academics to teach a corresponding army of students.<\/p>\n

Universities and their workers<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The other aspect of efficiency is sweating the assets and this means that lecture theatres are now occupied from dawn to dusk, with one crowd trouping out just as the next one tries to get in. The timetabling software works overtime to ensure maximum room occupancy. And over the summer the conference office sells the venues and the overseas students do language courses. Universities are year round operations,\u00a0monetising what they can<\/a>, developing new markets, maximising income and minimising expenditure. If they didn\u2019t do this, they would go bankrupt, because the state no longer provides enough money to keep them going.<\/p>\n

And this is precisely why the strike is such an effective weapon now, in a way that it wasn\u2019t 30 years ago \u2013 when professors had time to look out of the window. The paradox is that the more efficient an organisation is, the easier it is to disrupt. There is no slack, no spare rooms or people, no money behind the sofa which can be used to patch the holes in the roof. If the lecturers don\u2019t turn up, and the customers can\u2019t be taught, assessed and graduated, then the organisation can no longer function.<\/p>\n

In becoming creatures of the market, and adopting managerial strategies, universities can also expect their\u00a0staff to behave like employees<\/a>. Because that\u2019s what they have become, and that\u2019s why they are going on strike \u2013 and that makes universities vulnerable in a way that they never were before.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Martin Parker is Professor of Organisation Studies at the University of Bristol<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the next week and a half, many UK university lecturers will be on strike again, but who outside of academia really cares? After all,\u00a0university academics\u00a0have great jobs. Indeed, every June to September, I get asked whether I am now on holiday. So who\u2019s bothered whether I go on strike? Most people think I already […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,1],"tags":[350631],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-50282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","category-uncategorized","tag-privitization"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCapitalist creep on campus: the largest, quietest privatisation in UK history \u2013 it\u2019s why we\u2019re striking - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/capitalist-creep-on-campus-the-largest-quietest-privatisation-in-uk-history-its-why-were-striking\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Capitalist creep on campus: the largest, quietest privatisation in UK history \u2013 it\u2019s why we\u2019re striking - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For the next week and a half, many UK university lecturers will be on strike again, but who outside of academia really cares? 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