Fight for funding not fees!

Aris Prevost, Cardiff Socialist Students

Cardiff University has announced a massive slate of cuts, with up to 400 jobs at risk, along with entire courses facing closure. The School of Music, Nursing, Modern Languages, and the School of Religion and Theology are set to be completely cut. And other courses are being combined into new schools, a cover for more cuts.

I’m a final-year philosophy undergraduate. The ‘school of English, communications, and philosophy’ I am part of is getting merged with five other schools to form the ‘school of global humanities’ – set to cut the number of lecturers in half from 240 120. Effectively every department, including my own, will see a halving in their staff members.

For me, this is especially devastating. I want to continue at Cardiff University and do a Master’s philosophy degree. I’ve asked our Master’s Lead if she knows if the degree is still on, and she cannot explicitly confirm if it is. This puts my life on hold. I have not signed a house contract for the next academic year, and because of these cuts I have to wait until I can get a guarantee of my degree still running before signing anything.

I am just one student, but this is the reality thousands will be facing. Students whose courses are being cut completely still have no clear answers on what will happen to their degree. Staff members only found out about these cuts a week after the Welsh government knew the plans. Students, including myself, were emailed the day after cuts were announced in the media.

There is a financial crisis in higher education, and the cuts at Cardiff University are the result of accepting a broken funding model for years. The university has relied on exploiting the higher fees they can charge international students, whose numbers have fallen. Money has been poured into buildings that haven’t improved the lives of students and staff.

Cardiff uni has reserves of £188 million. It says it can’t use these to stop the cuts “easily”. Their ‘easy’ decisions are forcing thousands of impossible situations onto staff and students. We say use the money and fight the Labour governments in Cardiff and London for the funding.

Students ready to fight back

In response to these attacks, students are angry and Cardiff Socialist Students has seen this energy first-hand while we have been out campaigning. We have organised campaign stalls around the campus and a meeting with other societies against the cuts.

One stall was the best we have ever had in terms of response. We ran out of Socialist newspapers and raised over £45 to help us campaign. Many students stopped to talk about how their or their friend’s course had been cut, with many expressing outrage at the university and how devasting this will be on campus and in Cardiff as a whole.

This anger and energy for change that we found in the stall was shown at the campaign meeting on Monday 3 February. Over 80 students attended our meeting and there was a mood to do something to fight back. We had over 13 societies attend our meeting, from political groups to nursing, and even the Talyor Swift society!

We heard from many different voices about the impact of the cuts. An IT worker reported that their job may be at risk down the line, from either cuts or automation from AI. The meeting also heard from two University and College Union (UCU) members.

By the end of the meeting, a wide range of tactics had been discussed, including more rallies, protest walkouts and more. A central part of the discussion was supporting trade unions and their actions. It’s clear that the student body is angry and wants to change course.

Socialist Students members made the point that Cardiff is a battleground other university bosses will be watching. Many universities are preparing and have announced rounds of cuts. If Cardiff can go through cuts with no pushback, then other universities will use that as a green flag to proceed with their own cuts.

Now more then ever, it is time for a unified student movement to fight back against the cuts and for an education system that works, for funding not fees!

Socialist Students fights for

• Fully fund our education system. For Cardiff uni to use its reserves to stop cuts and demand the money needed from the Labour Welsh government and Labour in power in Westminster
• No job cuts or course closures! Open the books to democratic workers and student oversight. Let’s see where the money has gone
• For free education, take the wealth off the super-rich to fund our education system including a living grant for all students. Cancel the debt

University cuts: ‘We need to get serious’

Duncan Moore, UCU National Executive Committee (NEC) member, and Marco Tesei, standing for UCU NEC UK-elected FE seat – both Socialist Party members – respond to the announcement of 400 job losses and course closures at Cardiff University.

This attack on our members must be met with the full resources of our union. We fully support the strike ballot planned by Cardiff University staff, and we’re certain they will be joined on their picket lines by enraged students and other trade unionists if Cardiff UCU put the call out.

Socialist Party members in UCU demand that Cardiff University uses its £180 million reserves to plug the funding gap, rather than laying off loyal workers and devastating young people’s education. Our union must mobilise members now for a fight against course closures and redundancies; Cardiff is an extreme example of what’s happening to our universities across England and Wales.

The current funding model is broken and needs to be scrapped. Just a 4.3% increase in corporation tax could replace tuition fees. Universities should be run by committees of staff, students and the local community in the interests of society as a whole, not to make profit for wealthy investors and pay vice chancellors’ bloated salaries.

What is the result of our union leadership’s attempt at ‘social partnership’ with the Labour government? Is Welsh Labour now going to step in to save these jobs? We need to get serious.

We must start putting the Labour governments in both Wales and the UK under pressure to deliver the goods: full funding to save jobs and abolish fees.

The planned strike action and national demonstration is a good start. But we also need our union to have a political strategy beyond going begging to Labour. This means putting our resources behind an alternative, trade union-based political party that will fight for what we need.