Student group claim: Should students be seeking compensation for strikes?

Is there any point trying to claim compensation for missed teaching hours?

As the rift between university staff and their employers grows, it’s hard being a student caught in the crossfire. The strikes distort our university experience, stripping us of key aspects of our education and routine, and do so with no real indication of compensation. The UCU regard the strikes as ‘always a last resort’, and a means to ‘defend [our] education’, but another might question how losing out on an expensive education is something you should simply let happen. This isn’t to say the staff aren’t also victims. They don’t want us to suffer and the fact that they have to use the students’ plight as leverage to prompt action from the university is telling. The reasons for striking are complicated, but to be put simply there are two main reasons for these walkouts: pay and pensions. Our teaching staff are contesting their salaries and the existence of zero-hour contracts in regards to pay; and in regards to pension. They are contesting their pension fund being last valued during the economic crisis post-COVID - hence, devaluing it. Just as we feel unjustly treated for missing out on our contact hours, our staff justifiably feel as if their employers have let them down.

This all seems to suggest that we should look to the employers, our university’s administrators, for insight on compensation. With the staff taking on the university about finances, a student might take it on about academic compensation. Missing out on contact hours, yet still being tested on the full course’s content, seems unjust. With this comes the looming concern that this injustice might damage your final grade, and this final grade will affect your future job prospects, and this will then set your whole life on a downwards spiral - but this isn’t really the case.

The strikes don’t send the university into a complete lockdown by any means: libraries remain open, as do the subject buildings and the Student's Union. The opportunity to continue your studies is available to all students, as well as the chance to stay on top of your work. This might seem cynical, but it's not as if we have a choice. Academic compensation is a tricky subject due to the subjectivity of a student’s experience in these strikes. Especially in subjects with a large cohort, where one seminar group might miss a two-hour discussion on a learning cycle, that same week another group will have that exact discussion. Students cannot simply demand compensation because of the university making departments cut content, as within a subject, two different students might have covered completely different content.

‘Well if I can’t get that, then I want my money back’ - this is the next logical step in this conversation, but again, it's not that simple. Firstly, with the university being seemingly reluctant to give away more money than they need to, it immediately looks like wishful thinking that they’ll consider compensating us financially. Again, cynical, but due to the subjectivity of each student’s strike experience, a definitive monetary resolve would be fragmented and practically incalculable.

Universities are, strictly-speaking, businesses. Given they stay open and running, even despite these strikes, this alone might provide grounds for them to not directly compensate their students. This is not to say you are fighting a lost cause in taking on the university for compensation, but it seems like financial compensation will never make everybody happy. But your university experience isn’t specifically limited to how much money you put in, and how much education you get. Perhaps compensation doesn't have to be limited to financial or academic means? Take, for example, the money a university gains from not paying their striking workers: regardless of whether the staff eventually gain a satisfactory resolution, it seems logical that this money be used on the student. If this money goes nowhere, then the universities are profiting from the strike. It seems appropriate that the students demand action. Again, it is impossible that this money should be fairly distributed, depending on strike impact. However, if it is pumped into the university to make it an overall better place, this seems a suitable compromise. This would not have to be limited to this specific money, either, as the university should probably go further and provide further means to improve itselfand this is where students can act.

As staff ask us to stand in solidarity with them in the strikes, students can go further and try and work towards this dispute ending in the university being a better place. From actual enhancements to the university facilities, to benefits the university could provide its students, what should be ultimately pursued is compensation that improves our student experience and stops the university profiting from these strikes.

Sowerby Eve Bentley-Hussey