Yorkshire Socialist Party members
Well over a hundred students, alongside trade unionists representing university staff, joined a morning protest against proposed job and course cuts at University of Huddersfield on 23 May.
90% of Unison members at the university voted in favour of strike action in a recent survey. At the protest, we spoke to university workers whose visa is tied to their job and who are at risk of redundancy.
University management plans cuts to 12% of jobs across its workforce, which would see the closure of a number of predominantly arts courses. At least 12 courses face closure, including undergraduate mathematics, geography and sociology.
At the same time, university financial reports last year suggested it had £85 million in cash or cash equivalents. Vice-chancellor Bob Cryan’s total compensation reached £425,000 in 2022-23, a 67% increase over the last seven years, while the average university staff members pay decreased in real terms by 2.8%.
While there was clear anger at university management for their proposals, there was also an understanding of this being part of a wider problem of funding of higher education. Ellie Croot, a student who’d initiated a petition against the cuts and spoke at the demo, pointed out “the problem is the system”.
Universities have become more financially dependent on tuition fees, especially those of international students whose numbers have dropped 44%. This system is unsustainable, tuition fees should be scrapped and higher education funded through taking the wealth off the super-rich instead.
