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UCL UCU - Sign our Letter to the Guardian and share the #SettleTheDispute letter with your students
1 June 2023
Dear colleague,
Our employers have spent months refusing to negotiate with us, but the cracks are beginning to show. Cambridge and Queens University Belfast are the latest institutions to publicly call for a return to negotiations. Meanwhile SOAS and Dundee UCU branches are on strike over 100% deductions.
Here at UCL, we have a vital meeting of the Academic Board next week. Management have pushed through a series of ‘mitigation’ measures that permit students to be progressed or graduated with estimated marks, even in non-condonable assessments, without specialist exam boards sitting or external examiners attending. This is damaging to students, who want to know their degree will not be queried by employers. The ‘no detriment’ rule whereby students whose work is not marked can only go up is inevitably unfair to students whose work was marked normally!
Cambridge University’s academic board, Regents House, rejected these kinds of mitigations in favour of only one: permitting exam boards to be delayed.
Five action points:
1. Sign our Open Letter to The Guardian urging universities to shelf their damaging plans to mitigate the MAB by handing out degrees without proper academic oversight and return to negotiations.
2. UCL students have started a #SettleTheDispute letter calling on the Provost to get back to the negotiating table - please share and circulate among your students.
3. If you are a member of Academic Board, please make sure you attend the Special Meeting on Friday June 9, 10.30am – 12.00pm. Academic Board will be voting on a motion to stop UCL’s mitigation policies (see also above).
4. Sign our pledge to donate some of your salary to support those who are joining the MAB. Members face losing up to 35 days of pay: we are asking colleagues to consider a contribution of up to 7 days of pay to help share the burden. If you’re unsure of whether or not to participate in the MAB yourself, remember that we are targeting final year undergraduate papers - this is what has got UCL management worried!
5. Stand up for Academic Standards. We know that students are really worried about their degrees being devalued by UCL’s mitigation plans. If you agree, please write to the Provost (michael.spence@ucl.ac.uk) and UCL Council to say so! (Members should CC the interim secretary of Council [e.hossack@ucl.ac.uk] and ask for your letter to be circulated to all members of Council.)
Act now to support the MAB, and improve our pay and conditions!
MAB FAQs:
UCL UCU Executive Committee
@ucl_ucu