Lecturers Are Lazy

These lecturer strikes are “absolutely ridiculous”, says Emily Cartwright


Whilst students have been forced to sign over £9,000 a year for a “high standard” degree which, with endless amounts of hard work, is the closest way of guaranteeing a decent career in the big wild world, lecturers still think it’s a good idea to strike due to their insufficient pay rise of 1%. Like all other industries at the moment, times are hard, but it doesn’t take an academic to work that out…

Lecturers waste time making posters look perfect

Union members have decided that enough is enough. With the increased university fees, students around the UK are disgruntled and expect more for their money. Lecturers complain about being under more pressure to give better service, whilst arguing that their workloads seem to have increased but they haven’t received any extra benefits. Wake up lecturers! No pay levels in any sector have been able to keep up with the rises in inflation.

You can’t just expect pay rises to fall into your lap. Does anyone see self-employed workers having a day off to stomp around the streets in a huff due to not having a bonus lump sum prize appearing on their desks when they get to work? No, that’s because they have to work hard for their money day in and day out; a day off is not an option in the real world.

Are the lecturers even working harder anyway? For the past three years as an undergraduate I don’t see how things have changed at all. This leads me to believe that they do not have to work harder, at least not for the undergrads anyway.

From what I can see, they care a lot more about the selected few PHD students’ research that give the faculty a nice, cushty name whilst the lecturers come to their toasty offices for around 3 to 4 days a week and research the subjects that they have proclaimed their love to. Life looks pretty rosy to me.

Week after week we sit in lectures listening to regurgitated power point slides that haven’t been altered for years. All of which will later be put on moodle with endless amounts of text that probably could have been read from the comfort of your own home. 2 hours of lectures often constitutes as contact time when all of it has been copied and pasted from a textbook… thanks for that.

After a 2 hour drawl of blabbering in the most unengaging way, I was appalled to hear my lecturer alert the class to his absence in a few weeks to jet-set off to China! Fantastic, the week before our essay deadline that counts for 50% and he has conveniently decided to disappear out of the country. Not only can lecturers decide to go off gallivanting when they choose, but they do this without the slightest stab at remorse or effort to catch us up with what we miss.

May as well work from home…

Going on strike because their pay rise was not high enough is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe if there was a harsh reduction in their pay then we would be able to understand but it seems that whilst the quality of education remains the same and the price of education increases, students are the ones losing out.