Alistair Jarvis of @UniversitiesUK embarrassing himself AGAIN. @MikeOtsuka has a detailed take-down of one key point: employers dont' need to pay more; they just need to accept slightly higher risk, which most probably do. But there's more...
"Employers are trying to deal with a tough set of financial circumstances". Uhuh, uhuh. Tell me more. 
I guess these "tough... financial circumstances" must also be leading to a restraint in executive pay? Oh.
Well, uh, you must at least be really struggling to maintain basic things like the physical estate, right? Oh. Um, well, OK, let's move on, shall we, Al?
"The majority view of the scheme's 350 employers [was] that they were not prepared to pay more". I defer to @MikeOtsuka on this but I feel this is also a teensy bit of a porky pie, Al.
Of the 350, only 116 replied. Only 42% said no to higher risk. A third of those were Oxbridge colleges, not universities. Subsequently we discover many of those responses were unauthorised, and Oxford and Cambridge have reversed their position anyway.
"Employers currently contribute... double the private sector average" to the pension scheme. True, dat. That's because our salaries are often about 30-50% less than we'd earn in the private sector. That's the basic covenant we accept, Al. Worse wages, better pensions.
Your choice. Either pay us 30-50% more & wreck our pensions, or keep under-paying us but leave our pensions alone. The latter's actually cheaper for unis because rather than paying upfront they rely on investments (i.e. they benefit from economic effort of others).
Oh, but you say maintaining the USS status quo would cost "£1bn... unaffordable without serious cuts to teaching, research, and jobs". Cripes. That sounds bad. Ah, but as @MikeOtsuka shows, the affordability thing is a chimera.
But hey, Al, you're having a bad day, so I'll humour you. £1bn. How else could we find that without "serious cuts to teaching, research, and jobs"? Well maybe you could start with the bloated salaries of the men (mostly) you represent? That's £2.7bn alone. timeshighereducation.com/news/admin-and…
Managers and admin people outnumber academics at 71% of unis. To safeguard "teaching, research", maybe we could de-bureaucratise universities? timeshighereducation.com/news/academics…
Or possibly just trim every so slightly the *£19.4bn* expected to be spent on buildings from 2016/17 to 2019/20? I know cutting vanity projects will be a wrench for the men (mostly) you work for, but hey. timeshighereducation.com/blog/universit…
ANYWAY, moving on. "Students are caught in the middle". Oh, yes, the poor students. Victimised by their nasty lecturers. Oh, what's what? 3/5 of student support the strikes and 50% blame you, while only 2% blame lecturers? Oh, dear! ucu.org.uk/article/9345/P…
Al, you're not doing very well at this, are you? I thought you used to work in PR. Have you ever considered a career in politics? A former PR man named David Cameron did very well at that.
What's that? Students on 22 campuses (over a third of those involved in the dispute) have occupied buildings in support of striking staff? Oh dear. It's not looking good for you, Al. twitter.com/occupation_hub
"We appreciate the strength of feeling expressed by union branch secretaries." Al, it's so great to see you joining the #DepthOfFeeling movement. But are you *sure* that it's confined to those radical, nutty "branch secretaries"? wired.co.uk/article/no-cap…
You're still not very good at this, are you? Despite hiring Saatchi and Saatchi, at a cost of $250-500,000 -- all funded by universities, of course.
