British universities find themselves in a paradoxical situation of axing hundreds of teaching positions and simultaneously hiring ‘Woke” Assistants with high salaries, some as high as £100,000.
UK Universities in Financial Trouble
Many university managers anticipate that their institutions will face financial losses this year. This is due largely to the decline in the number of profitable foreign students and the impact of inflation on tuition fees, operational costs and pension contributions.
Consequently, academic faculties are being amalgamated, and courses are being shut down, with some campuses confronting strike actions in protest to these plans. However, amidst these job cuts, the equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) workforce remains untouched.
Birmingham’s Aston University, where the livelihoods of 60 academics in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences hang in the balance, recently appointed a £98,000-a-year ‘people, culture and inclusion’ position.
Oxford Brookes, meanwhile, is looking for an ‘anti-bullying and EDI advisor’ for £39,000, while planning to cut maths and music programmes to save £2 million.
The Open University, which is struggling to overcome a £25 million funding shortfall, has recently filled two EDI vacancies, each offering a salary of up to £46,223. One of the positions is a project manager with a primary focus on ‘gender equality’.
Overworked Teaching Assistants
According to a survey by public service union Unison, 39% of teaching assistants cover classes for at least five hours a week, and 15% for at least 11 hours a week.
Mike Short, head of education at Unison, argued that school budgets are so tight that they are using teaching assistants instead of hiring supply teachers.
Students are increasingly being taught by unqualified teaching assistants, who are obliged to fill and manage classes themselves. These assistants earn as little as £14,000 a year.
Portsmouth University’s restructuring could lead to the loss of 47 jobs. Yet an EDI manager was recently recruited on a salary of up to £76,462.
Similarly, University College London, which has seen redundancies in its history department, is looking for a senior ‘director of equality, inclusion and culture’.
Critics condemn ‘woke gravy train’ as teachers are made redundant. Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, has warned against the rising tide of ‘wokeness’ in education.
In one recent study, it was found that the average university EDI team employed 11 people. A Freedom of Information request by campaign group Alumni For Free Speech revealed that 47 universities spend £17.9 million a year on 515 staff dedicated to the task.
Separately, London’s Queen Mary University has defended its search for a £44,722-a-year EDI manager, while making redundancies by merging its schools of English, drama, languages, linguistics and film.
However, a spokesman said the university was in a strong financial position and that the voluntary redundancy scheme was for a single faculty over a short period of time.
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