Image: Leeds students supporting the #USS strike, February 2018. Rights: Alarichall, Wikicommons, Creative Commons.
If members of the University College Union (UCU) vote down the latest deal from Universities UK (UUK), the strike at over 60 British universities might go on through June. By the time it ends, students at the affected universities will have experienced disruption on a scale never seen in British higher education.
Academic staff are fighting changes to their pensions – changes that will mean a dramatic drop in the benefits that all staff, and especially newer and younger ones, can hope to receive from the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). But the strike is about more than that, or at least it should be. British universities have changed in profound ways over the last thirty years. Students pay more for their education, employees enjoy less job security and stagnating wages, and the whole sector operates on (rather inefficient) business lines.
