Proposed by: Nathan Street (Co-Branch Secretary)
This branch notes that:
- There is a developing crisis in higher education funding caused by a failed market model and a drop in the number of international students.
- There are cuts and threats to jobs at a number of universities and ballots for industrial action with strikes planned in the next couple of months.
- There is a lack of a joined up approach with nationally treating each dispute in isolation and not linking action on the ground to national campaigning on higher education funding.
- Our branch passed a related motion in our September 2024 Executive (see Appendix 1 on the next page), with this motion as a necessary next step.
This branch believes that:
- The funding model in higher education is broken and needs a radical overhaul.
- Increasing student fees is not the answer; fees should be scrapped and there should be a return to government funding of higher education as a social good.
- We need a national campaign against redundancies in higher education and for a sustainable funding model that doesn’t burden students with huge debts.
- The funding model for HE is determined by the Secretary of State for Education (Higher Education and Research Act 2017); Recent legal advice shows the viability of a trade dispute with the Secretary of State over the funding of HE.
This branch resolves to call on the Unison Higher Education leadership to:
- Contact the National Union of Students and other Higher Education Trade Unions with the aim of organising a national demonstration for the full funding of higher education and the scrapping of tuition fees in England;
- Classify all disputes in universities in the current period involving cuts and redundancies as disputes of national significance;
- Organise a cross-union conference against cuts and redundancies in higher education with the branches currently fighting, inviting delegates from all Higher Education branches to raise solidarity and form a national campaign.
- To explore urgently opening a trade dispute with the Secretary of State for Education over HE funding;