BRITISH universities have not only benefited from slavery and colonialism but also continue to perpetuate it on an everyday basis on their teaching and non-teaching staff members. 

Unfair workload, the gender pay gap, racism and sexism are rampant in most of the UK universities, which are operating like family firms.

Most of the British universities are home to multiple forms of discrimination. Critical mass is a big lie.

Education for empowerment, global citizenship and so on are empty marketing slogans of British universities. In reality, students and staff members are merely numbers in the managerial spreadsheets.

Students and staff members are considered as cash cows. There is no attention to student and staff wellbeing. British universities are making profit at the cost of their students and staff members. The dubious workload models followed by most of the UK universities are normalising a slave society where there is no other activity but work, work and work till one collapses in the grave.

This is a profitable business model in British universities. The world is ravaged by the pandemic. People lost their lives, near and dear ones and their livelihoods too.

Yet according to a UCU study, British universities generated record income of £41.1 billion during the pandemic. The global pandemic did not stop British universities acquiring £3.4bn more cash in the bank during 2020/21 academic year compared to the previous academic year.

Vice-chancellors of the British universities are not only taking filthy salaries but also planning to spend £4.6bn on vanity projects like grand new buildings at the cost of staff and student’s mental health and wellbeing.

The UCU study has revealed that UK “universities generated record levels of income from tuition fees and other sources, hitting £41.1bn, up from £39.6bn in 2019/20”. This surplus is a product of daytime robbery by British universities in the form of higher tuition fees and lower wages.

British universities are mortgaging the future of our students and young people by increasing student fees and looking at them as cash cows.

The profit-driven higher education business model has transformed British universities as degree-awarding shops, where teaching and learning has taken a leap backward. 

The UCU study reminds the government and university leaders that the “pay offer of just 3 per cent this year represents another real-terms pay cut as RPI inflation hits 12.3 per cent. This follows over a decade of low pay awards which puts staff pay 25 per cent behind inflation.

“The employers’ offer would cost just £0.66bn to implement across all universities and UCU says this can and should be increased significantly.” The planned 36 per cent increase in capital expenditure on different vanity projects will further burden staff and students.

British universities talk about sustainability but practice a business model in higher education which is unfair, exploitative and unsustainable. The growth of managerialism is ruining the quality of teaching, learning and research environment in the universities.

Most managers in higher education have little or no exposure to the idea of research, teaching and learning. Knowledge production is replaced by a profit-driven business model.

Critical thinking is replaced by compliance culture. Democratisation of knowledge and university campuses is transformed by dominance of arrogant and ignorant business managers.

The aggressive marketing and advertisements by the British universities take away the dignity of in-depth research and teaching for the greater good of society.

They undermine the creative abilities of universities as places of higher educational centres of learning.

The rising cost of living, higher tuition fees, falling salaries and insecure contractual jobs in British universities are detrimental to the present and future of our society.

It is time to question the viability of universities as critical spaces to challenge power for a sustainable future. It is time to reject the profit-driven education model that considers students and staffs as cash cows. British universities need to create egalitarian, non-racist, non-sexist, inclusive and democratic spaces if they are to survive.