70 per cent of university students support the UCU lecturer strikes

70 per cent of university students support the lecturer strikes, a survey of almost 11,000 students by The Tab has found.

The University and College Union (UCU) is currently in the midst of striking for 18 days this term, as staff are in an ongoing campaign for better pay and pensions, among other things.

The Tab asked 10,942 students at 30 universities across the UK, including all of the Russell Group, if they support the UCU strikes in a poll on our Instagram stories, and 69.8 per cent said they do.

The university where students support the strikes the most is Glasgow, where almost 84 per cent voted yes. Over 80 per cent of Manchester and Cambridge students also support the strikes.

Oxford Brookes was the only university where the majority of students don’t support the strikes, with only 31 per cent voting yes. The next universities with the lowest student support were Exeter and Cardiff – but at these unis the majority of students do support the strikes, almost 59 per cent at each uni.

This term will see 18 days of UCU strikes before Easter, spread across seven weeks with 11 days of strike in February and seven in March. This follows three days of strikes we have already seen at almost every uni in the country last term – meaning that by Easter students will have lost out on over four weeks of teaching in total.

Regarding The Tab’s findings, UCU’s general secretary Jo Grady told us: “Students back their staff taking action because they see day in day out the way that it treats those who do the work inside our universities.

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“Vice-chancellors hold over £40bn in reserves, but they would rather hoard that money than use just a fraction of it to settle our dispute and bring an end to the unprecedented strike action that is hitting universities. It is clear they would rather see students face disruption on a scale we have never seen before than pay staff what they are worth. Every day of teaching students lose is completely the fault of vice-chancellors who refuse to invest in staff and refuse to invest in students.”

With The Tab finding that almost 70 per cent of students support the university staff strikes, this is significantly higher than a poll last month which found that only 36 per cent of the general public support the uni strikes, from a YouGov survey of 2,000 people.

The UCU is campaigning for a meaningful pay rise to ease the cost of living crisis, the ending of use of insecure contracts, and are also demanding unis revoke cuts to pensions and restore benefits.

As well as the 21 days so far this uni year, there were also up to 18 days of strike action at over 140 universities last academic year. A Tab investigation this summer found Russell Group unis saved £11million in withheld pay whilst lecturers were on strike last university year.

This is the full breakdown, by university, of how many students in The Tab’s survey support the UCU strikes. We have only included individual unis where they had at least 100 total responses.

Featured image before edits via Vuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Strikes are back but they’re not affecting uni VCs – students are the ones struggling

• It’s official: These are all the days uni lecturers are striking in February and March

• Ranked: The eye-watering salaries of all the Russell Group uni vice-chancellors