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qmucu.bsky.social
QM_UCU
@qmucu.bsky.social
1.8K followers 3.3K following 2.4K posts
Local University & College Union branch at Queen Mary University of London. || Account checked only part-time; allow time for responses or reach us via email. https://qmucu.org/
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qmucu.bsky.social
YOU DID ADD TWO REASONS, @ducu.bsky.social! I didn’t fully go mad — excellent psychological warfare though.

Anyway, read it, #UCU members. #UKHE: durhamucu.org.uk/26-reasons-y...
Screenshot of four chrome tabs open on a ohone: one of them is titled 26 reasons and the other 28 reasons, both are by Durham UCU
November 21, 2025 at 7:13 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
We're hearing of a lot of members not receiving their ballot. If that's you, please request your replacement ballot TODAY.

Deadline to request replacement ballots is 23 NOVEMBER yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/wearetheu...

#WeAreTheUniversity #SaveHE #UKHE #UCU
QR code to request a replacement ballot. Deadlien 23 November https://yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/wearetheuniversity-GTVO/
November 13, 2025 at 9:13 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
the angry goose meme. The goose first glares suspiciously as they ask 'who achieved that?' In the second panel, we see the angry goose chasing a guy in a (goose feather) puffer jacket while screaming 'whose labour made that achievement possible in the first place?'
November 13, 2025 at 3:18 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
LEAFLETS! Come and get your leaflets!

#WeAreTheUniversity #SaveHE

Pdf version: qmucu.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...
A picture of a hand holding leaflets with big headings “pay” “conditions” “jobs”
November 11, 2025 at 8:15 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
The Post Office was once a public service. Corporatisation began under Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2000 and was completed by David Cameron’s coalition government in 2012. This change brought a profit-driven, defensive management culture to the Post Office — one that prioritised institutional reputation and revenue. Similarly, UK universities have evolved from public educational institutions into quasi-private corporations, competing for home & international students and global rankings. With this commercialisation has come risk aversion, PR management and brand protection over transparency or accountability. In both cases, managerialism has uprooted an older public service ethos.
November 9, 2025 at 9:06 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
For the record: the comms title we lost 😭
Screenshot from a google doc with the draft of comms. the original title read 'nobody puts staff in the corner'. The edited title reads 'staff's voice matters. Your vote matters.'
November 7, 2025 at 2:15 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
Gonna need someone to check the dictionary definition of 'to pre-empt' because what else is this but pre-empting the decision of Council?

You'd hope those Council members don't appreciate having their hands tied like this. Because this is proper governance failure.
The courses will be suspended from 10 November, with the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service also set to be informed. "Ahead of these proposals being put forward to the university's council later this month, we have taken the decision to suspend a small number of courses where demand is low or where they are not meeting the benchmark against a number of other criteria," a spokesperson said. "While the university cannot pre-empt the decision by its council over the future of these courses, it is important it does not continue to recruit to courses which are proposed for closure."
November 6, 2025 at 1:58 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
We need a mandate, because managers and their consultants have pivoted the purpose of our institutions from research & education to prioritising financial gain over everything.

Enough.

Staff and students need to be central in the decision-making processes and priorities again.
#SaveHE #WeAreTheUni
We are the university. Staff need each other; staff need visibility; staff need a voice. We need a seat at the table. Managers are actively playing divide and rule – leaving individual staff fearful for their jobs and entire departments anxious about their futures. We've proven we're stronger when we work together. This ballot is to go out with all unions in the sector. Staff are treated as a ‘payroll problem’, not the people who make institutions. We’re pushed aside because the harm to our livelihoods and wellbeing does not register in the metrics used to measure the ‘success’ of the sector. Action makes us visible. External consultants & senior managers hopping between institutions have distorted universities’ priorities. They are changing what a university is and have actively shut out staff from the decision-making processes and information on which governance is based. We reprioritise by retaking the initiative.
November 6, 2025 at 10:49 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
This ballot is a ballot for the soul of the university. A university does not exist without its staff. Yet staff are the ones who are being cut or made to snap under pressure.

Enough.

In fighting for dignity for staff we are fighting for the university.
Join us and vote YES in the national ballot.
a university is nothing without its staff. yet staff is what managers are cutting away with abundance. We are fighting for: fair pay, conditions, jobs fair pay: The erosion of pay is creating an ever more elitist Higher Education sector. Many are already struggling to make ends meet. All sector unions are balloting to ensure all staff can afford working in the university. conditions: Instead of lobbying for a solution to the financial cause of the sector's woes, employers are pushing the problems onto staff. They are cutting jobs, increasing workloads, extending teaching in Summer, worsening terms for colleagues on casualised contracts, and trying to worsen pay, conditions, and pensions. We need employers to respect agreements. jobs: Thoughtless cuts across the sector are jeopardising entire disciplines. The sector's failing financial model, which puts universities in competition with each other, has brought us to a breaking point. Now the fragmented attempts at meeting accounting targets further exacerbate it. We need a national commitment to plan and protect jobs, programmes, and disciplines.
November 6, 2025 at 10:47 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
Yep. The self-censoring and anticipatory compliance by universities, citing ‘commercial interest’ and risk, is part of the curtailing of academic freedom.

It might not be as visible as gag orders or leave a paper trail like law suits, but the effect is the same.

We need a secure funding system.
Others described “soft” or “indirect” pressure being brought to bear, leading academics to self-censor and risk-averse universities to avoid research that could bring them into conflict with China, which controls the flow of students to financially vulnerable UK universities.
November 6, 2025 at 8:06 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
Social media manager accidentally (1) on brand and (2) time for a pink Get The Vote Out Day.

But really, submit your ballots. Staff’s lives and careers have been upended enough by managers and their consultants. It’s time that we regain a say in this sector.
Picture of a hand with a VERY pink sleeve dropping a ballot in a postbox
November 5, 2025 at 3:31 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
Why are YOU voting YES+YES in the current national ballot?

We'd be keen to hear members' voices. Pitch your blogpost here: forms.gle/1a8q7HYF76g2...

#WeAreTheUniversity #UKHE #UCU
Why are you voting yes? Share your reasoning in a blogpost You could share a particular experience that led you to decide you’ve had enough. Or you could share your analysis of the state of the sector. Or you might want to draw colleagues’ attention to the situation in an overlooked part of QMUL. blogposts can be between 200 and 1000 words, anonymous or named.
November 5, 2025 at 3:27 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
Have you found your very pink envelop yet? Read the explanation of why we need to make sure staff doesn’t get ignored in the sector and hit those YES boxes with an X.
Picture of a very pink envelop and a leaflet with information about the UCU ballot
November 5, 2025 at 9:58 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
Oh hi! Intimidation, power games, university’s best interest much lower on the list of priorities than petty fights: sounds familiar.

More of these deep dives that expose the mess that passes for “governance” in #UKHE, please. You could do one of these on each uni: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The review said: "Reports of 'power struggles' between senate and senior management have emerged, with decisions believed to be in the university's best interests allegedly being obstructed by one party or the other." Aberdeen university's senate, external is responsible for all academic matters relating to teaching and research. The report added: "Within senate meetings, some of the consultees reported cases of 'intimidating behaviour', 'a toxic culture' and 'overstretched remit' which has led some members to disengage from senate entirely, as this culture and behaviours have become normalised."
November 4, 2025 at 9:27 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
On our list from its initial incarnation as an email to a journalist in January 2024.

The banks were already knocking for millions then: www.timeshighereducation.com/news/hallam-.... So, yeah, that projected stash on Chinese money not materialising will have played a part.
universities with redundancies and voluntary severance schemes: coventry, aberdeen, sheffield hallam, brighton, oxford brookes, nottingham trent, staffordshire, goldsmiths bad vibes in recent years: birkbeck, kent, and uea
November 4, 2025 at 8:21 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
Can journalists please query the reality of those denials though? Because the emails released are literally about fears about income and about 'conflict of interest'.
The university realised it was coming in for criticism from China as far back as 2022. An internal university email from August of that year, seen by the BBC, said China's foreign ministry had issued a statement "denouncing us as being in the 'disreputable vanguard of anti-China rhetoric'". The email said the university had admitted 500 Chinese students in 2018, but numbers had collapsed in the pandemic and had not bounced back like it had in other markets. It expressed concern that the Chinese government's criticisms could result in a "boycott" by prospective students and recruitment agents. In total, the documents show Sheffield had earned £3.8m in 2021/22 from China and Hong Kong. Later in August 2022 the university's English language testing website used by Chinese students to take tests before coming to Sheffield had been "shut down in China temporarily". Over the next two years the pressure escalated dramatically leading university officials to write in an email in May 2024 that "the continuation of the university's scholarly activity with and in China and Hong Kong has been placed at risk because of the research activities, led by Professor Laura Murphy, in relation to alleged persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China". When Prof Murphy returned from her career break in early 2025, the university told her of its "decision not to continue with her research into supply chains and forced labour in China due to .. the corporate insurance position .. and our duty of care to colleagues working in both China and the UK". Any other work or public engagements outside the university would also have to be checked for "conflict of interest".
November 3, 2025 at 9:45 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
Yes, the law suits are part of it. But the documents released show that the university is acting on the concerns about student recruitment as well -- and the number has dropped from 500 to 73.

It's the university's fears and their acting upon that that's the problem, not only the budget reality.
The university realised it was coming in for criticism from China as far back as 2022. An internal university email from August of that year, seen by the BBC, said China's foreign ministry had issued a statement "denouncing us as being in the 'disreputable vanguard of anti-China rhetoric'". The email said the university had admitted 500 Chinese students in 2018, but numbers had collapsed in the pandemic and had not bounced back like it had in other markets. It expressed concern that the Chinese government's criticisms could result in a "boycott" by prospective students and recruitment agents. In total, the documents show Sheffield had earned £3.8m in 2021/22 from China and Hong Kong. Later in August 2022 the university's English language testing website used by Chinese students to take tests before coming to Sheffield had been "shut down in China temporarily". Over the next two years the pressure escalated dramatically leading university officials to write in an email in May 2024 that "the continuation of the university's scholarly activity with and in China and Hong Kong has been placed at risk because of the research activities, led by Professor Laura Murphy, in relation to alleged persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China".
November 3, 2025 at 9:43 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
Unacceptably useless non-response from the Office For Students.

Can there please be some questions in parliament about how this university and this regulator allow this interference to happen? #UKHE
A spokesperson for the Office for Students, the regulator for the higher education sector, declined to comment on a specific institution, but said: “Suppression of research because of the disapproval of a foreign (or domestic) government is unacceptable in practically any circumstances.”
November 3, 2025 at 8:31 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
picture of a toddler in a red Keffiyeh holding a placard reading 'smash fascism and racism'
October 26, 2025 at 1:21 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
East London is Anti-Fascist.
Picture of the Queen Mary UCU banner and the London region UCU banner.
October 25, 2025 at 1:27 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
YESSSSS! Let’s do this thing. #WeAreTheUniversity
Screenshot of a WhatsApp message. The message reads “let’s get those votes out, people!” And it has a picture of a ballot paper duly going into a red postbox.
October 23, 2025 at 3:22 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
🎯🎯🎯 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If you start one of your bolded points with "We will seek to better understand concerns..." you're being wilfully ignorant. TALK TO STAFF, not just to consultants. We're rather knowledgeable about the state of the sector and how it all connects. #UKHE
The widespread sense of anger and malaise is not hard to explain. Ms Phillipson’s white paper makes future tuition fee rises conditional on evidence that institutions are delivering the “world-class education students expect”. But as struggling universities have cut costs to the bone in recent years, the lives of many demoralised academics are beset by chronic job insecurity, rising staff-student ratios and administrative overload. Departing colleagues have not been replaced, pay has declined in real terms by close to 20% over the last decade and a half, and surveys suggest worrying levels of stress. This is not, it is fair to say, a context conducive to the delivery of academic excellence or the teaching environment that students deserve. In a sector increasingly dominated by the Russell Group elite, the sense of precarity will only deepen as struggling universities scramble to survive. A potential wave of theoretically cost-saving mergers, driven by financial desperation as much as institutional logic, will add an extra dimension of risk and uncertainty. For the time being, the government seems content to watch from the sidelines and let market forces play out. But persisting with an inadequate fees-led model of higher education, in which universities are run as competing businesses funded by student consumers, is producing a dystopian academic landscape. A more stable system of public funding is urgently required. Addressing the concerns of those on the campus frontline would be a first step towards planning for a better future.
October 23, 2025 at 2:43 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
Declaring financial crisis (against all evidence to the contrary) in order to justify ideological cuts to staffing and resources is always a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, isn't it?

On the legacy of Frances Corner at Goldsmiths -- and on her agency: goldsmithsucu.org/2021/10/10/f...
So was Goldsmiths the financially ‘failing institution’ Frances Corner declared it to be when she took up her post in April 2019? In 2019-20 there were signs of some overspending on building, and a rather over-ambitious intake target, against which money had been spent. But two independent auditors, including KPMG in 2020, concluded that Goldsmiths’ operations had been cash generative, that the College had run surpluses until 2019 and had grown so-called ‘market share’ despite competition from the Russell Group since 2010. In three months, Frances Corner had gone from being the leader of a robust and thriving institution to one she continues to think of and respond to as a failure.
October 17, 2025 at 10:16 AM
qmucu.bsky.social
HR departments are finishing their calculations of the harm done by Clearing, it seems…

This is completely unsustainable; we can’t drastically adjust our staffing every single autumn in response to the volatility of the recruitment cycle. #SaveHE #UKHE

qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...
MOST RECENT UPDATES (in the past fortnight, approximately; last updated 16 October 2025) Brunel is again facing compulsory redundancies Derby proposed 200 redundancies Edge Hill made compulsory redundancies over the Summer Glasgow Caledonian has its mutual severance scheme opened for the third time and is teaching out multiple courses. They’re under a UKVI-imposed plan. Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh is going through its second voluntary redundancy scheme Staffordshire is cutting jobs for the third consecutive year Teesside is trying to get rid of one third of lecturers in four schools by the end of the month.
October 16, 2025 at 1:25 PM
qmucu.bsky.social
Goldsmiths's VC is booted out??? GOLDSMITHS'S FRANCES CORNER IS OUT???

The 'with immediate effect' and these three sentences being the full extent of the webpage is quite revealing of just how much drama we're not being told about: www.gold.ac.uk/news/2025/vc...

👀 @goldsmithsucu.bsky.social #UKHE
screenshot from Goldsmith's webpage. title: Professor Frances Corner OBE has stepped down with immediate effect as Vice-Chancellor of Goldsmiths. text: Professor Corner will begin a period of research leave and will undertake existing commitments including her support of the University of London. Professor David Oswell has been appointed as Interim Vice-Chancellor while a permanent leader of the university is recruited. that's the full extent of the entire webpage, which is raising way more questions than it answers.
October 14, 2025 at 7:58 PM