Who remembers examination time last summer?
Lecturers and sociology students, that's who. When teaching staff nationwide went on strike over pay disputes some courses saw cancelled examinations, and most suffered heavy delays in grading. This resulted in delays of examination results which gravely affected those due to graduate just months afterwards and move on to begin their careers.
According to URN University staff eventually won an average 4% pay rise following the strike, which was considered a fair success despite lecturers still facing "higher work loads, larger classes and little job security", according to the lecturers' union UCU's Sally Hunt.
"And now, on Las Vegas…"
Anyway, in spite of staff strife and whilst Nottingham Hospitality struggles with various unpopular cost-cutting plans for student food, the Vice Chancellors have been awarded a 7.9% pay increase ostensibly for no reason whatsoever.
This rise takes 43 of their salaries over £185,000, more than the Prime Minister. The Vice Chancellors of the 19 elite Russell Group universities now earn a staggering £218,000.
That money could almost certainly have been better spent in making student accommodation more affordable, improving the [currently abysmal] quality of University cuisine, paying lecturers, funding the School of Computer Science and IT's use of the outdoor oil heaters (which, allegedly, are far too expensive to actually be turned on during the freezing winter months) or, er, replacing horribly outdated server hardware in an effort to push University network services uptime past the 70% mark?
