Almost all university students may have exams cancelled

Students at almost every mainstream university could have their final year exams cancelled or disrupted this year because of striking academics.

Union leaders say they will call ‘unprecedented’ industrial action in the summer to coincide with exam season if university bosses do not meet their demands in a dispute over pensions.

Up to 45,000 academics could walk out at 64 universities, causing countless exams to be called off.

Students at almost every mainstream university could have their final year exams cancelled or disrupted this year because of striking academics (file photo)

Students who are unable to take exams may find that their final degree grade is based instead on coursework or exam performance from previous years.

Alternatively, universities may be able to draft in agency staff to replace some of the strikers, or else reschedule exams for later in the summer.

More than 200,000 students in their final years could be affected.

Yesterday some students said it was unfair of academics to bring them into the dispute. Geography student Nick Sundin said: ‘I thought it was pensions this was about? Seems selfish to prioritise those over an entire generation of students.’

Stop university bosses helping to set their own pay, says Theresa May

University bosses should not sit on the panels which set their own pay, Theresa May declared yesterday.

The Prime Minister said she was ‘concerned’ about vice-chancellors who were involved in the remuneration committees which decide how much they are paid. As she launched a major review of post-school education, Mrs May warned the odds were ‘stacked against’ working class children.

She also admitted high tuition fees meant a lot of graduates were getting a poor return on their investment.

And the Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, said that in future fees will be determined by the ‘benefit to the student and the benefit to our country’.

Mrs May said the vote for Brexit was a sign that the UK economy and society ‘doesn’t work in too many communities’ and pledged to turn Britain into a ‘Great Meritocracy’. Addressing an audience of academics, lecturers and students at Derby College she said ‘making good’ on the referendum result meant spreading fairness and opportunity.

The review will look at encouraging more children to take up technical and skills courses instead of seeing university as the only route. Her intervention follows a major backlash over spiralling pay and perks for senior university officials.

A study earlier this month found 95 per cent of vice-chancellors sat on their university remuneration committee or at least attended its meetings. A spokesman for Universities UK, representing vice-chancellors, said a new remuneration code will ‘ensure senior pay decisions are fair, accountable and justified’.

Chris Price added: ‘As always, it’s the students who bear the consequences of this selfish action. I have sympathy with their pension situation but striking is not the answer.’

Students across many campuses are demanding compensation of tuition fees and say the lost 14 days will equate to £1,295 worth of lost teaching per person.

Proposed changes to the sector pension scheme mean academics are set to lose up to half their retirement income, according to analysis by experts.

The University and College Union (UCU), which represents academics and campus staff, is already holding four weeks of strikes beginning this Thursday which they say will affect one million students in the institutions covered by the action.

Lecturers will refuse to teach on 14 strike days spread across this period, with classes cancelled and marking left undone. The strikes will take place in mostly older, research-intensive universities, including 22 out of 24 in the elite Russell Group.

Academics will walk out from institutions including Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Exeter, Glasgow, Imperial College, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Queen’s Belfast, Sheffield, Southampton, Warwick and York.

If the union does not have a concession from the universities by March 2 it will consider ‘further action’ in the summer, since the strike mandate lasts six months.

Students are already threatening to sue universities for the potential damage the strike will cause to their education.

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt urged new Education Secretary Damian Hinds to intervene to end the strikes by telling vice-chancellors to give her members a fair deal.

She said: ‘I’m devastated students will be affected by this. They’re in the middle because we haven’t had a negotiation. What we’ve had is an imposition.’

Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said in November it would stop offering staff traditional ‘defined benefit’ pensions, which offer a certainty of income in retirement. Instead, it wants to shift staff into a riskier, less generous ‘defined contribution’ plan, to help deal with rising costs as many private sector companies have done.

A Universities UK spokesman said: ‘We hope employees recognise changes are necessary to put the scheme on a secure footing, and the proposed strike action will only serve to unfairly disrupt students’ education.’

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk