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Home | Friday 27th November 2009 | Issue 701

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UNI'D A MIRACLE

Over two hundred students and staff turned out for a rally against the University of Birmingham’s plans to make big staff cuts - or ‘disinvestment’ as the management tactfully put it. It is rumoured that there will be around 200 staff lay-offs.

The guvnors are also trying to force through a plan to dump the Sociology Department, where 16 jobs may be lost.

Calling it the ‘corporatisation’ of the university, the organisers of the protests say the plan is for the uni to become a consultancy service for government and business.

The ruckus has rocked the relevant committees with their decisions still pending. The judgement on sociology will take place on Thursday 26th November, so get yerself down to the rally in the forecourt next to the clock tower at 1pm on the 26th to oppose further commercialisation.

This is another total (Ed) balls-up in the making. Universities in West Yorkshire, Sterling and Sussex - to name but a few - are sacking people left, right and centre. It remains to be seen whether all this will stir the students out of their squalid pits early enough to do anything about it.

* STOP PRESS - around 150 students at Sussex did make it out of bed yesterday to take part in a noisy protest demo, chanting ‘They say cutback, we say fightback!’ – and who said student radicalism was dead?

Keywords: birmingham, education, students, sussex university, universities


 

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