Apologies for the white hot ranty thread, but the Covid situation has highlighted how fundamental the problems are in higher education.
Headline Point: University leaderships really don't care about staff or students. A short thread.
1/
Headline Point: University leaderships really don't care about staff or students. A short thread.
1/
Everyone* knew this was coming. The situation wasn't ever fully under control, the movement of people across the world/country, into close proximity, was high risk. Staff and students would get sick, some would die.
*Except the head of UK's Track and Trace, apparently.
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*Except the head of UK's Track and Trace, apparently.
2/
UK Universities are in a situation where, often excessively mortgaged, they're always looking to cut costs and maximise income. Staff were already overworked and students are seen as numbers on a spreadsheet - although not by front line staff.
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Covid creates a perfect storm - universities need bums on seats, bodies* in beds, and mouths in catering - to maximise income, but these are literally life threatening propositions. Online bums on seats solves one problem, but could have hit enrolments...
*Excuse the pun
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*Excuse the pun
4/
So, in the interests of the bottom line, and in clear disregard for the lives and mental health of staff and students, universities brought as many people to campuses as possible, forcing a minimum of F2F teaching into the system to justify that.
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In the meantime they dumped as many contract staff as they could to cut costs and left the remaining staff in the dark until September regarding their teaching for the next academic year. We know online teaching takes WAY more work than F2F, but they still left it late.
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Many estates and cleaning staff will have worked - be working - insanely hard to make all of this work on campuses, but it was never going to. We had advanced warning from the US, but it was too late, heads were in the sand, fingers crossed. And now it's all fallen apart.
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They *KNEW* this would happen, and they went through with it anyway.
Individually, it was this or state loans and inspections. They could have stood together, drawn a line in the sand, and said no. But they're too selfishly competitive, so they chose this - over us.
8/End
Individually, it was this or state loans and inspections. They could have stood together, drawn a line in the sand, and said no. But they're too selfishly competitive, so they chose this - over us.
8/End
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