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In the US lecturers work much longer hours. Some lecturers in the UK do nothing more than a few hours of lectures a week, in the US they generally do a lot more tutorials/seminars and small group teaching. In the US too wages are also higher because the good unis are private non-profit organisations – although some of the public unis are very good. Students also pay more in the US...
It isn't for the standard of work they are lecturing on.
When GPs can earn £250,000 a year, £30,000 for teaching the new GPs medicine is nothing at all. And £30,000 is not the average salary by any stretch of the imagination.
As has been said your standard GP doesn’t get 250k. And the average GP works a lot longer hours than the average lecturer. But if lecturers want better money they should support privatisation. Universities should be private non-profit institutions. (But since that would mean an end to some of the cushy jobs left in academia you won't hear the unions supporting privatisation).
Yeah, of course they do. That'd be why NDUC is staffed entirely by Germans then...
Universities are private organisations already, and they're not-for-profit too. Great point that one.
British universities have institutional autonomy, although a few Oxbridge dons would disagree on that one. British universities rely overwhelmingly on the government for their funding. The only exception being Buckingham which is entirely privately financed. All the others are dependent on government cash. This contrasted to private non-profit US universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia for instance that are entirely independent of the state with regard to admissions and funding.
Not with virtually all of them, $150,000 or $200k in student loans is far from rare for doctors and they will have to pay it all back, which is why they have to pay doctors in the US large wages. That and they have to buy their own insurance against being sued which can cost $100k a year.
They like to pretend that they do, but a lot of university cash is actually raised through private sponsorship deals and foreign and postgraduate students. And halls fees.
You can't move in Durham for corporate branding, and its the same at most universities.
Perhaps if the top unis were more reliant on public cash they wouldn't be so blatantly anti-state sector schooling.
A lot is but there's no university in the country (except Buckingham) that could survive if the government cut off funding tomorrow. Take Manchester for example, of their research funding:
Government
Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) grants - £58m
UK Research Council - £47.3m
Government departments - £20m
EU - £8.2m
Non-government
UK Charities - £27.1m
UK Industry and Commerce - £7.5m
Overseas - £4.4m
Other sources - £1.2m
I go to a state school. I've applied to university this year (although am taking a gap year and applying again next yr). But I haven't noticed any 'anti-state sector schooling' crap, tbh that just sounds like reverse snobbery crap.
A lot of the claims against the top unis and esp Oxbridge are unfair. Oxbridge is constantly criticised for its high intake of private school pupils. (And nobody points out that their intake of state school pupils used to be significantly higher when there were more grammar schools around). The thing is more private school kids apply to Oxbridge, unis like Bristol and KCL for competitive subjects can have 10-20 applicants per place – at Oxford even for stuff like Law and PPE it’s no more than 3-5 applicants per place depending on the college. There are loads of programmes and initiatives to encourage state school pupils to apply but for different reasons people don't apply.
I support the strike, and I don't blame the lecturers. UCL have promised that they will keep students informed about which lecturers are striking and how it will affect them. If your department don't do that, you should get in touch or let the Education and Welfare officer in the Union know.
Past that, I don't know what can be done. The strike seems a necessary evil. The NUS should not have come out in full support, though, because they should be putting their student members above their relationship with the NUT and NAFTHE.
Exactly. But do we want them to put up our halls fees to pay the lecturers? I was lucky last year, not many people pay £60/week in WC1, but some halls were £110 in "my day" and I know halls fees are already increasing above inflation next year to cover the cost of closing two halls for maintenance, so if it were raised even higher to pay off the lecturers it would drive students away. As if it weren't ridiculously expensive to study in London already. :yeees:
In UCL's case, specifically, you have to wonder if it's not the millions of pounds spent rebranding to look like this and fussing about making sure all the bins, mats, overpriced t-shirts and laptop cases are changed, maybe if they paid more attention to their teaching staff it wouldn't be such a problem.
I support the action, but I don't think it is fair not to mark the third year papers as a lot of people are trying to get jobs straight from university.
The work load is not greater for most lecturers, the universities hire more staff to deal with more students as is common sense.
It doesn't make any sense to support the strike but say they should mark the work. A strike means no work, however important it might be.........