Student complains in open letter after University of Northampton strikes leave them feeling 'abandoned'

A University of Northampton (UoN) student has written an open letter protesting strikes by her lecturers, which are being made against "unfair" working conditions at the university.

The student, a second-year named Bethany Gordon, took umbrage to the "Open University level of teaching" that she felt she received during the pandemic, in which classes were conducted remotely.

Now she argues that strikes by her lecturers are threatening to do the same to her education this year.

She wrote: "I am writing this letter to plead to lecturers to stop striking and commit to giving us the education we deserve and need for our futures.

"Moving into my second year however, I cannot fathom how the very people who have pledged to care about students and know how difficult it was for us in 2020/21 are now causing us to receive yet another sub-par education.

"Missing repeated lectures is making my second year of university just as challenging as the first, but this time the pandemic is almost over, and it is our own teachers who it seems have abandoned us.

"When a lecturer is employed by a university, are they not expected to show a passion for student education? Are they not required to illustrate their care for students and their lives? If lecturers were to really care, they wouldn’t be doing this."

The second-year student argued that her parents, who are themselves teachers, "grumble at times" but "signed up for the job", making protesting said job unreasonable, in her opinion.

She said it also hurts her educational prospects and could even amount to a breach of contract with the student body.

She wrote: "Every time I think of the future, I feel a little less hopeful about what it might bring because I no longer have the support from my lecturers to get there.

"As of today, I have missed a total of 10 lectures due to the strikes. A lecturer told me a few weeks ago that each session equates to £50 of our total sum, meaning that I have been overcharged for my education by £500 already. Bear in mind there are more strikes taking place.

"We are trapped and have no moves. Again we are being told we must grin and bear it. It isn’t an option to move to a different university... so my only other option is to plead to you, as our teachers, to stop."

But Nick Cartwright, senior lecturer in Law at UoN, has pushed back on the student's claims, saying that she was "failing to grasp" the main aims of the protests.

According to the academic, the strikes, which have so far involved seven days of action between December 2021 and March this year, have been staged in opposition to what the protestors see as unfair and unequal pay, especially for women.

Mr Cartwright argued that the students and their teachers' goals are united in that, if staff do not have their needs met, students' needs will also go underserved.

The lecturer said: "We don't accept that online teaching was sub-par. All of us worked hard, harder than ever to get them that service. It was different, it was disrupted, but I don't think the service was sub-par.

"There has been and there will be a fair bit of disruption to student learning. Obviously in any kind of industrial dispute, each side blames the other. From the union perspective, it's the employer being unreasonable.

"I think this student is missing the bigger picture. What she should understand is that her education is already being impacted by staff being undervalued and overworked.

"Being taught by a lecturer on a zero-hours contract is a sub-par experience. Being taught in an institution where there is a gender pay gap is not appropriate. Being taught by academics who aren't credited properly for their work is not appropriate."

The lecturer said that responsibility for the action lies with the employers and that much faster progress could be made if students like Bethany leant their support.

He said: "The employers seem to want to save money through the amount they spend on staff salaries. Obviously you benefit financially as an employer from having more people teaching on zero-hours contracts and the like.

"We're holding back on many things we do for the university that we aren't paid for. There's so much good will that the sector relies upon and it's become normal working evenings and weekends and as soon as you stop doing that, there's a lot of work that doesn't get done.

"If there was more support for industrial action it would be considerably more impactful and something that would be responded to quickly by the university."

Protests are expected to continue into the future.