Dear LSE Senior Management Committee,

LSE Students and LSESU are writing in solidarity with academic staff, and call on LSE to act in response to the upcoming UCU strikes, including financial compensation for students for the teaching missed during strike action.

As part of a working environment where so much time and energy is put into teaching over research, it is the SU's duty to stand with PhD students, GTAs (Graduate Teaching Assistants), Professors and other University staff. We know that well paid, well rested and secure academic staff will create better teaching conditions, and lead to more valuable and enjoyable learning environments for us all. Academic staff are substantially overworked and underpaid from early career to retirement, to the point that a reported 86% have been directed towards mental health support. After a difficult few years for everyone, to expect a workload that already pushes far too many to suffer with mental health problems is highly exploitative of our teachers and lecturers: the backbone of higher education provision.  

To be a university that claims to focus on ‘understanding the causes of things’, the pay gaps based on gender, race and disability are unacceptable. The contradicting messaging of such an influential institution makes many students feel dejected from our studies. To be part of disciplines that actively focus on exposing class, race and gender-based inequalities, to find out that exactly what we learn about is happening at the same institution we pay thousands to each year makes it difficult to feel ‘part of LSE’ - we urge you to listen to the demands of academic staff. The structural racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia at play within universities takes its toll on everyone, with academic staff (namely GTAs) often left to fill in for the various failings of LSE’s support services for marginalised students - the quality of an LSE education is greatly impacted by the casualisation of staff, and so adhering to the demands of UCU benefits students, staff, and the future of LSE. 

We demand that students are compensated for the learning that has not been delivered, at the fault of the institution’s intransigence. Students are paying such high fees to be taught at a university known for a high quality social science education, but are being let down by structures that allow for academic staff to be overworked, underpaid, and casualised. Students need refunds for the quality of education that has not been able to be provided because of current working conditions, and the fact that some students have basically no more classes this term, effectively missing almost half of their classes for the degree, means that refunds are necessary for missing the education students expected to receive. 

As current students, we appreciate that we will likely also be in precarious working conditions in the future, especially as many are on a path into academia. This is an appalling fact that LSE could improve by stepping up to show what secure employment could look like. The deplorable conditions leading to the UCU strikes are in no way restricted to academic staff - we also call for LSE to support and respect its cleaning, catering, security and other precarious staff.

Marketized higher education and the casualisation of labour is detrimental for everyone on campus: the strikes show that something needs to change, and we support the further action of academic staff in the unfortunate event that their demands for livable working conditions are not met - in the meantime, students need compensation for the learning that has been missed.

Sincerely,

Tilly Mason, Maarya Rabbani, Anaëlle Thoreau, Romane Branthomme

(LSE Students' Union Sabbatical Officers)