Dear students,

First off, I want to apologise for any upset or inconvenience that my absence this last week has caused you. I hope you’ll know, from past experience, that I work really hard to support your studies and give you the best direction I can to enthuse you, develop your knowledge and achieve outcomes that you can be really proud of. So my decision to strike was not taken lightly.

But, to be clear – I do not apologise for going on strike. As you are probably aware in the wider world, the actions of governments – whether national or institutional – can make or break communities and there is often very little that communities can do challenge those actions. In the university – your study space, my workplace – the last resort for those outside of the management, dealing with the consequences of constant change and pursuit of economic goals at the expense of other interests, is the withdrawal of labour. We strike to use the only currency we have which economics can account. And in doing so we draw down our reserves of other things – goodwill, collegiality and income. Don’t forget that all the staff on strike are giving up the pay and pensions that, in part, we’re fighting for. We’re breaking bonds with managers and colleagues which will take a long time to repair. So, my decision to strike was not taken lightly.

Is this really the last-chance saloon? Why strike now? What’s really gone so wrong? These are fair questions, which you have a right to ask, and I’m not qualified to give the whole response you need. To see the state of things, go online, search Twitter for #HallamHorror, #UCUstrike and others. Read through my feed @DrJonBridge.

To summarise though (it’s what I’m paid to do), I believe we’re reaching a tipping point in universities. From high up, top-down and all around we hear a constant noise – universities must change; the old systems are not fit for purpose now; quality doesn’t exist unless it can be quantified; experience not content; the end is more important than the means. The funding structures we exist within today, not just your fees, but core funds, research grants and more, have been designed to ensure that the spectacle – of ‘excellence’, of ‘value for money’, of ‘quality’, of ‘impact’, of ‘student experience’ – rules over the content.

But it is the content, and the process of nurturing and growing it, and bringing it to our students and growing it in you, that defines a university. So that process of capitalisation, marketisation, corporatisation which I’ve described above is literally decimating (dividing, chopping up, and tearing apart) the institutions on which it is imposed. This is not a sudden thing. You may have heard the gruesome story of boiling frogs – how, if you put one in a pan of cold water and set the flame to low, it will sit there and stew slowly, while the water boils around it; yet if you put one in a pan already hot, it will struggle and immediately jump out.

Like climate change, like boiling frogs, the thing we fight in universities is a slow death happening by degrees. And the water is getting hot now. The specifics of the strike – of pay and pensions; of workload intensification; of job insecurity especially for those at the start of their careers; and of inequalities of opportunities to work and progress – are evidence of this. We know that mental health issues in students are at an all-time high – but this is matched by stress and sickness among staff. The corporate university wants us to be flexible, ‘agile’, able to adapt quickly to the changes it imposes; yet passes on responsibility to us for doing so. The structures, people and creative spaces we require to do implement the change; the support we relied on up to now just to carry on the status quo, are being stripped.

Why should you care? You’re here (according to the university’s model) for a single purpose, to get a degree and realise the investment you have made. Three things:

First, and most pertinent – investment in us, your academic staff, is investment in you. When I stand up in front of class tired, stressed, under-prepared, my lessons are less good. When I rush through your marking, trying to pick out the bare essentials for each grade and cramming feedback into bullet points, your learning is less good. For those of my colleagues on temporary or zero-hour contracts, thrown into a module with minimum preparation time, I can barely imagine or recall the stress. The things we are asking for are not luxuries; we are focused on our ability to educate you well, and these are the necessities required.

Second, and still pertinent for many of you – the constant drive for change, for rapid change, combines with excess workloads to affect the way we plan, review and maintain the quality of your courses. As academics, we don’t just teach from week-to-week; we reflect and we review, and plan improvements for next year. There are established systems and cycles for doing this, collectively, which are being squeezed into ever smaller blocks of time, with less scrutiny and discussion. This impacts the future of our courses and our ability to protect their content and pedagogy.

Finally, and this is a plea to your future selves, as well as mine. No matter what path you take on graduation, whether you stay close to universities or move away, these issues will follow you. I’m trying to stay politically neutral here, and to make a case on conceptual grounds; but the project that we’re striking against now, the diminishing of real value in pursuit of economic value, the fallacy that the market rules and society follows – this will follow you. You’ll know about the gig economy, casualisation of employment, the idea that individuals all have agency and those who fail to demonstrate it have, well, failed – these will follow you.

Academic and other university staff are striking now, because for us these issues have caught up. If we don’t make a stand now, it may be too late. If not now, when?