by anonymousThese past few weeks have been defined by strikes and strikers. We have witnessed the strange spectacle of a World Cup happening on the borders of Christmas. Some have been cheering on Harry Kane or Gareth Bale and others Kylian Mbappé or Lionel Messi. But regardless of who we support in that tournament, most of us in higher education (HE) have offered either physical, financial or moral support to the UCU strikes that’ve also been happening. These are a result of a situation within contemporary HE that has many echoes of what’s been happening in the background to the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
There has been a lot of talk in the western media about the fate of migrant workers in Qatar where the World Cup is being held. There has been talk too about a rotten underbelly beneath the glitzy surface of high-tech stadiums and slick marketing. Somewhere within that, we can find analogies with what’s been happening in HE over these past few decades. Many of today’s universities have become like those scintillating stadiums in the desert. They are peopled by high-powered executives on soccer-star salaries. Sometimes, these are people who have lost touch with how the stadiums were built and what they were created for. They’ve become so blinded by balance sheets and customer satisfaction that they’ve forgotten who the main players are in the world of academia. They’ve commodified and colonised the language of social justice so that it just becomes another net to phish in more customers. The end goal is ultimately short-term profit. That though is not a sustainable model of business, if we even accept the growing mantra that education must be framed in such a lens. If Britain’s universities want to be the champions of international education there has to be some kind of change. There’s something as rotten in the state of HE as in Hamlet’s fictional Denmark. Although that decomposition is not necessarily universal, it exists in too many quarters for the good of our futures. Too many of our universities are operating to survive on a short-term basis, trying to cut costs and cut corners, pleading poverty in the face of some management salaries that hit six figures. Simultaneously, the economy of too many universities is built on the sweat of migrants as forgotten in the grand scheme of things as the world’s migrant workers. These past few weeks, aside from following the football when my work allows, I have been thinking of a situation that encapsulates a sense of where HE has gone wrong. Just over seventeen months ago, I was a manager of migrants on the edge of university systems. Although not officially in a management position at a post-92 university, I was tasked every summer with going beyond the remit of my contract. This was in an environment where an absurd sense of hierarchy existed, with Pre-Sessionals occupying an almost pariah status. These courses which should have been a showcase for the university simply existed on the sidelines, a cash-cow staffed by teachers on zero hour contracts. And I was tasked with the equivalent of bringing a football team together on a Friday night and expecting them to perform in a major tournament on Monday morning. It was beyond my pay grade to do so – to be interviewing teachers on the day of the 2018 World Cup final for example – but … there’s a cleverly worded phrase in the contracts of most people in academia. It states that we have to fulfil whatever duties are expected. Such a line gives rise to a situation where academics are now expected to go beyond the call of duty in many places to the extent that the business model cannot survive without that. In my case, I had to manage a course without being contractually in a management position. Therefore, on a Saturday evening in June 2021, at the start of the men’s football European Championships, I found myself stressing over the thought of another such summer. And that stress was not just for me but the academic migrants I’d have to manage. I couldn’t face the thought of going out or watching football on the TV or doing anything because I knew what lay ahead when the Pre-Sessional courses kicked off that same month. That same evening, the Danish footballer Christian Eriksen suffered a heart attack on the pitch in a match against Finland. I didn’t see it live because I was trying to get my head around the thought of what was coming up. That of course does not compare to a young man almost dying on a football pitch but is also very damaging to the health of those involved. Every summer in that role, I witnessed how little academia cares for those at the bottom and how greatly the practice of some managers contradicts their sense of themselves. In the seminal words of one colleague ‘they’re tweeting about Corbyn and talking of revolutions in the pub and then tomorrow they’ll be lecturing us about KPIs.’ I have rarely heard a line that so greatly captures the delusions of some senior managers in our field. In one memorable case I witnessed a colleague from a mixed ethnicity family not getting paid in due time for their work and having to struggle financially. That struggle was so real it was at a point of having to face the prospect of bare cupboards. But when I tried to rectify this out of compassion rather than contractual responsibility, I experienced absolute disinterest on the part of management to address the problem. They couldn’t even countenance the reality of such a situation because it challenged their entire projection of their identities. The fate of a staff member on a zero hours contract at the bottom of academia’s hierarchy just did not matter. Exploitative practices had become so normalised, it seemed there’d been a desertification of compassion, decency and empathy. And yet in the same month as this family faced unnecessary financial hardship, something contradictory was happening. The workplace had been selling itself to the wider world as a champion of social justice, particularly in the area of racial justice. But where was the justice for the staff member on a zero hours contract who hadn’t got paid that month? Though that was to do with status rather than race, there still seemed an unhealthy contradiction in what was happening there. Nobody cared to the extent that if we use the Eriksen comparison again, they turned their backs and walked off the pitch when someone was down. The university cared only for this person’s labour, not their welfare. That labour was helping to bring in plenty of money and deserved to be accorded more respect. So too the students who deserve much more than to be taught by people struggling to make ends meet. But to me the message was simple and is something that many of today’s institutions still have to face up to – Lives Matter most when such lives are those of potential customers. Student satisfaction has been weaponised and every worthwhile cause commercialised from LGBTQ+ to BLM. But – that is not the case in classrooms. Academic staff are committed to these causes and enact them not in grand statements or slogans but in their everyday practices. Even those on zero hour contracts go above and beyond the call of duty for students too. So too do many of our colleagues in the administrative wings. To paraphrase something I saw on Twitter a few weeks ago, it’s not the Vice Chancellors running universities – it’s someone in an admin office on a back corridor somewhere whose name the senior managers don’t even know. And it’s that anonymity which adds to the hurt felt by so many on HE’s present day team-sheet. Possibly, the worst thing about that summer evening’s stress that I experienced was the fact that I knew how thankless the efforts of me and those zero hour migrants would be. It’d be expected and then forgotten as if all that sweat n’ stress had never happened. Surely it doesn’t have to be this way? Life and cultures can change very quickly. In the world of sport, Christian Eriksen recovered and played for Denmark in the World Cup in Qatar less than eighteen months later. I too moved away from the Deliveroo world of Pre Sessionals. I found a place where talk of compassion is genuine and free of zero hour contracts. The whole of HE should be like that if UK universities truly want to be world leading and champions of progressive causes. The present mindset is a short term one and a culture prevails where exploitation is rewarded, even celebrated. The weak are exploited thanklessly. Those in positions in power exhibit signs of believing in a kind of preordinance. They are worthy of better treatment by virtue of their status in what they see as a natural meritocracy. The great irony too is that many of those who facilitate this culture would not see anything of themselves in this critique. But they must surely see that if staff are so dissatisfied, there is something wrong with the system. It needs changing to a model that is more sustainable. To preserve Britain’s reputation as an educational heavyweight, our universities need to become places of justice and equity as immediately as possible. Summer Pre-Sessional courses might be a good place to start in those institutions where they are not accorded the respect and justice they deserve. Such actions as making them not-for-profit would be a fitting first step. Ethical values should also be embedded into them combining economic justice with a sense of fairness for all concerned. Delivery, not Deliveroo.
3 Comments
Tom Le Seelleur
12/5/2022 15:18:43
I don't understand why you continue in your position if you feel so exploited by the role you have. If people feel that they will be exploited in a pre-sessional contract then don't take the contract.
Reply
aadasdads
2/13/2023 16:53:39
nice blog
Reply
john
2/13/2023 16:55:00
i agree
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
Categories
All
|