A “request for assistance” has recently been circulated in one of our Schools. The politely phrased message asks for volunteer teaching staff to assist with some novel clearing-related activities that have been introduced “as this year’s result week will be more competitive than ever [for student recruitment]”. These new activities comprise 1. a call centre type operation to phone all firm offer-holders on Results Day to congratulate them on their offer in the hopes that this makes them more favourable towards Reading and less likely to self-release to “trade up” through clearing. 2. A second clearing-offer-holder’s day on Sat 16th August to be added to the already planned Fri 15th August offer-holder’s day on the grounds that due to the short notice, not all recipients of a clearing offer will be able to travel to Reading for Friday and in the current hyper-competitive environment “we cannot afford” to operate support for clearing solely within the normal working week.
These new activities are justified (according to the message) by the need to “pull out all the stops” to ensure recruitment to target “given the University financial position”.
We are all so on board with the wholesome aims of “meeting targets” and “breaking even” that certain realities are in danger of being lost from sight.
I think it needs to be said that:
-It is not normal that the scope and scale of programmed activities requiring unpaid overtime weekend working are continually increasing.
-You (via JNCHES) have been offered a full and final 1.4% pay award to take effect from 1 August 2025 (against a backdrop of 3.5% year on year inflation), delivering yet another real terms pay cut. Regarding this, a consultative ballot is open until 15th August (search for “UCU higher education pay and working conditions consultative ballot” in case you missed the message!) which I would encourage you to participate in as this will inform the eventual UCU response to this offer.
-The more successful this latest recruitment drive is, the more admin, teaching, marking and tutoring you will have the privilege of carrying into the following 3 years (for less real-terms pay – see point 2), probably exacerbated by the need to cover for workloads of departing or departed colleagues who are not replaced.
-Since the UK undergraduate student pool is what it is, success of one institution in increasing its market share, necessarily hastens the demise of another institution a little closer to the financial precipice. Is this what we came into academia to achieve?
I hasten to say that I do not (nor should I) have an easy solution for the systemic challenges faced by the UK HEI sector, although I think it is fair to say that the funding crisis is in great part the result of political decisions to allow the real-terms value of fee income to decline continuously over more than a decade so the solution must in part involve a revision of this policy and it is at a political level that this crisis will ultimately be resolved.
So, personally, I think it is rational to think carefully beyond simply consulting your diary before responding positively to such a request. And before further compromising your mental health and well-being, your caring responsibilities and your work-life balance, I think it may be justifiable to ask pertinent questions, such as:
-What is the evidence of efficacy for congratulatory phone-calls (are students so easily persuaded?) or weekend clearing-offer-holders days on recruitment (balanced against the costs/harms/inequities incurred in running them) and what measures are in place to monitor the positive and negative impacts of these new measures?
-Which targets or expectations for your role are to be lowered or what existing activities have you been told not to do to make room for this new activity, which like other such innovations, is likely to become a recurring fixture?
-Does the business planning strategy (which might be loosely paraphrased as increase income i.e. student headcount while controlling costs i.e. your salaries) that has spawned this request contain any rewards for such good citizenship and if so, how could those rewards not be discriminatory against those whose family life/caring responsibilities/disabilities do not permit them to play on this particular part of the pitch?
Questions I have asked myself include:
-Is it “letting the side down” to challenge this latest call to arms?
-Should we have to carry a collective or individual sense of failure if arbitrary recruitment targets are missed, with or without our full co-operation along the lines of this latest “request for assistance”?
-Should we feel responsible for any future rounds of cuts and redundancies if we have not “pulled out all the stops” to scrape the bottom of the clearing barrel as invited?
My answers are no, no and no.
Collectively, we are passionate and dedicated academics, researchers, teachers and professional support staff that work hard to advance the Universities mission and our respective disciplines through research, training and educational activities. We can be justifiably proud of the fantastic work we do week after week, semester after semester, year after year – and the world would be a poorer, more brutish and dangerous place if institutions like UoR cannot find their place in it. If society does not attach a value to our role and cannot agree on a suitable mechanism to pay for it, it will not be because we were lazy or greedy or unproductive.
A few disclaimers before finishing: 1. This is a personal perspective and not an official UCU position. 2. I did not write this to antagonize my HoS, nor to jeopardize student recruitment, but simply to offer a critical perspective at an occasion where I think a new rubicon of what can be called dignified work conditions may just have been crossed without much consultation or debate.
My response to this polite request will be an equally polite but firm: “I have planned some much needed annual leave for August 14-16th and will therefore not be in a position to contribute to this activity, but if I were to consider joining in, I think I would like to see a much more thorough justification given.”
By a concerned RUCU activist.