Points I neglected yesterday.

One explanation for growing casualisation is that research grants proliferate fixed-term posts.

Not at LSE. Fees are a growing share of income (up to 64% now from 52% in 2014-15) and can’t explain falls in permanent staff or gap with other HEIs. Some research posts are also lumped in with ‘permanent’ in that they are open-ended with continuation depending on future grant flows. One implication is that universities may mask the scale of precarity by moving fixed-term academics to open posts without gains in job security.

The LSE Precarity Strategy

TL;DR: The London School of Economics and Political Science has spent nearly a decade establishing a two-tier system: an ever-shrinking bastion of permanent faculty above an expanding cast of fixed-term and casualised teachers.

What? How? 🧵 More than any peer institution* LSE has systematically increased relative & absolute casualisation. At the same time as increasing staff:student ratios it has massively grown tuition income and profit.

*top UK HEIs by 2022 QS: Oxf, Camb, Imp, UCL, Edin, KCL, Warw, Bristol, Glas

Things I have learned about UniTemps, "the university owned temporary staffing service" that in several places employs teaching staff (including PhD students acting as teaching assistants) who are barred from participating in strike action. #UCUstrike #UCUStrikesBack UniTemps is a spin-off company born at the University of Warwick that claims to have paid almost £42 million in wages last year, with most of its activity concentrated through franchise branches in the UK (e.g. in Manchester, Nottingham, and London).

unitemps.com/about-us