One of our many picket lines this morning #ucuRISING #WalkoutWednesday

Day 1 of 2023 strike and the Richard Hoggart Building picket line is in full swing! ✊

Members of Aberdeen UCU UCU out in the cold on our pickets rejecting the latest offer & demanding fair pay for university staff #ucuRISING

Turn around, go home, don't cross the picket line. #ucuRISING

Pickets revving up at a very windy LJMU today and members say REJECT UCEA’s awful offer #ucuRISING

Cambridge campus picket looking lively this morning ✊️

A university that spends over £1m on private consultants seeking advice on how to sack staff it says it can't afford really needs to look at itself. Meanwhile amazing to see students & academics standing with Goldsmiths UCU to fight for jobs. It's #notadonedeal Goldsmiths, University of London

A key justification for sacking 130+ staff Goldsmiths, University of London is that staff costs are way above the sector average that the College insists is 43% acc to HESA. Except that HESA says the average is 51%. Management wouldn't want to exaggerate would they? Goldsmiths UCU #NotADoneDeal

The unions are rightly pressing for jobs guarantees to prevent mass layoffs at Tata. So surely UCU Bridget Phillipson we should be doing the same at universities like Goldsmiths where 100 jobs are being cut - tip of the iceberg of what's coming in higher ed ft.com/content/7125d4…

1st question: what does it tell us that this is the "UK's only Black British History course"? 2nd question: Why wouldn't Goldsmiths desperately want to hold on to her? The reputational damage done, following dozens of articles like this, is beyond belief mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/u…

I don’t want to see a bailout like with the banks after 2008 so that we can carry on with the same broken funding model. We need public funding & democratic control over the university reserves built up during the “golden years” theguardian.com/education/arti…

This is a really misleading article . These weren’t “voluntary departures” - staff were forced to take a deal as they would otherwise have been sacked. Strong resistance from Goldsmiths UCU saved some jobs but this is a warning for the rest of the sector timeshighereducation.com/news/goldsmith…

More job cuts are likely in universities once enrolment data is in so we need to prepare a national UCU response to scrap the broken market model & invest in & regulate HE as a public good with public funding. Baton passes to UCUHallam to fight for jobs thestar.co.uk/education/shef…

Since 7/10/23, there have been 14,000 references in the news to "Israel's right to defend itself" compared to just 9 for Iran, 7 for Lebanon & 14 mentions of "Palestinians right to defend themselves" (from Nexis database). This is Western foreign policy masquerading as journalism

Labour's decision to increase #tuitionfees is cowardly & inept. Only 4 years ago, Keir Starmer announced that "Labour must stand by its commitment to end the national scandal of spiralling student debt and abolish tuition fees." It's still a scandal & now debt will increase. 1

On the day in which it reports a huge financial crisis in universities with potential for big job losses, The Guardian is still running paid content on higher education that is neoliberal to its core - inc advice to scrap research-led teaching. Shameful. theguardian.com/emerging-trend…

The real watershed moment would be some media coverage of the opposition to this militaristic drivel. God forbid we should let anyone point out that it would be a good idea to spend €800m on fighting poverty instead of handing it over to arms companies theguardian.com/world/2025/mar…

Latest from The Office for Students (OfS) suggests they don't buy universities' predictions of future revenue: "We are concerned that this expected recovery is based on overly ambitious figures for recruitment growth" (26% for home & 19.5% for overseas students) 1/2 officeforstudents.org.uk/media/upycgog5…

Acc to The Office for Students (OfS): "Our modelling suggests that the recovery could be slower, or even reversed, if these recruitment assumptions are not met." In plain English, this means that we desperately need a new way to finance UK HE as the market is broken 2/2 counterfire.org/article/univer…

Not even the Tories had the gall to demand The Office for Students (OfS) cut funding to media studies & journalism degrees. Won’t do anything to help STEM subjects but may keep press moguls happy. Shame on you Bridget Phillipson officeforstudents.org.uk/media/fwojfzhc…