Coventry University has refused ACAS in to mediate. That tells you everything. When an employer blocks independent scrutiny it’s because they don’t want anyone looking too closely. If you’re confident in your approach, you invite oversight. If you’re not, you shut it out.
#UCU
Solidarity from CovUCU ✊
@ulsteruni.bsky.social - Announces intention to make 450 colleagues redundant
University decimated 🤬😡
@caoimhearchibald.bsky.social @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social
🚨 1 in 4 staff at Goldsmiths to be axed.
All while senior management get eye-watering pay rises and £16m is spent on consultants and lawyers.
This is the reality of Higher Education in the UK.
Our members have voted for industrial action, support them.
www.ucu.org.uk/article/1447...
At Coventry University, excessive borrowing to prioritise growth models and complex corporate structures pushes risks onto staff, students and begs questions about what a university is for, and who bears the cost when financial strategies go wrong. www.theguardian.com/education/20...
Reduce Your UCU Subscription Cost by Claiming Tax Relief
As we’ve entered a new tax year, it’s a great time to remind #UCU members that you may be able to reduce the cost of your union subscription by claiming tax relief from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). Click the link for more details.
Done. Sorry we didn't do this originally. Rookie error! 🤦♀️
Text references Coventry University as the “canary in the coalmine” for wider issues affecting staff, students, and unions. Illustration of a caged small yellow canary in a coal mine tunnel. Includes warning signs for TUPE transfers, Subsidiaries, Fragmentation and 12 Intakes a Year. Caption reads: Coventry University: The Canary in the Coal Mine. What Happens Here Could Happen Anywhere.
Coventry University is the canary in the coal mine for UK higher education.
TUPE transfers into subsidiaries to worsen Ts and Cs.
12 intakes a year.
Erosion of national agreements.
Loss of Trade Union rights
It’s a blueprint.
If it happens here, it spreads.
#UKHE #UCU #JoGrady
“At Coventry University, 42% of students are international; it spent almost £45m on agent commissions in 2023-24".
www.theguardian.com/education/ng...
The trade-offs that came with expansion, the impacts on quality, the way some universities are run with a ‘business first education second’ ethos that makes teaching feel like an afterthought, alienating students and professors while losing the world’s best and brightest to institutions with better faculty-student ratios and more school spirit — well, unsurprisingly, that has all been difficult for politicians and chancellors to honestly discuss.
Australia is doing the soulsearching about their university sector they should have done ten years ago. May #UKHE join in this searching questioning before it's too late.
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...
89% of our eligible members voted YES on a 65% turnout.
It’s time for action to address pay erosion, spiralling workloads and failed bargaining arrangements. The sector deserves better.
Proud of our branch!
Early career academics are often under-represented in university decision-making bodies across Europe, particularly women, who are almost entirely absent from senior governance roles, a new study has found #academicsky
https://ow.ly/efxk50YCbpj
✊✊✊The fight goes on. @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social will never accept management @northumbriauni.bsky.social ripping off pay and pensions, ripping up contracts, and ripping us out of national bargaining. Solidarity to all other branches fighting, too. www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/149...
Our concerns are grave. That doesn't mean our protest needs to be.
The inflatable animals are *such* an upgrade to the whimsy on the picket line.
Under VC John Latham, Coventry University has seen:
Staff moved into subsidiaries
Restructures and redundancies
Erosion of terms, conditions & pensions
And all led by someone advising government on business.
Please sign/share the Vote of no confidence 👇
speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/vote-of-no-c...
We have a serious question: Who is actually in charge of Coventry University? When the VC and leadership team are all employed by subsidiary companies, and not CU itself, who is accountable for decisions impacting staff, students, and academic standards? Are we even still a university???
🤩 Actual forty-seven minute documentary about the harm done to universities in Australia!! iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2603...
FORTY-SEVEN MINUTE DEEP-DIVE! 🤩
Is the tide turning? Are people finally taking this seriously? Can we also have one about #UKHE, @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social? #SaveHE
Universities spend £££ to attract & retain what they allege are the best senior managers who then spend more on paying consultants. Those consultants sell the same solutions to multiple institutions.
= cuts to staff who make universities work
Spend the money on staff
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...
We're already moving to 6 intakes a year (from September) and staff are at breaking point. They've cut jobs everywhere from a constant rolling restructure programme. So 12 intakes should be ..erm...."interesting"!
Exactly! 😩
Neither can we! At the same time, they've restructured our Registry staff to cut jobs there. So god only knows who will actually be dealing with the admin for this..🤔
Coventry University is planning 12 UG intakes a year. At the same time, staff are TUPed into subsidiaries, forced into contracts where teaching loads rise to 750 hours and scholarly activity slashed. This isn’t just change — it’s a shift in what HE is.
Letter demanding goverment look at pensions
Letter demanding goverment look at pensions.
in higher education, warning that failure to act risks “irreparable damage” to the sector.
Universities up and down the country are looking to downgrade staff pension benefits. Read
@drjogrady.bsky.social's letter to the Education Secretary and Skills Minister 👇
The dismal tide accelerates, sweeping from Coventry through Sheffield Hallam to London South Bank. 1/2
295 modules cut in the School of the Arts Race and Racism in Performance Performing Illness and Disability Performance and Visual Culture in South Asia Queer Borderlands Iraqi Literature in English / English Translation Transgender Perspectives and Interventions Refugee Writing Indian Cinema Slavery, Colonialism and Postcolonialism Language and Ethnicity Multilingualism and Bilingualism Cinema and Disability Intersectional Feminist Writing Reading South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh Plus cuts to Arabic, Bengali, Catalan, French, German, Japanese Mandarin Chinese and Russian! Management is cutting The research-led modules that make QMUL QMUL
Management paid nearly a quarter million to the external consultancy NOUS, whose generic 'framework' is now used to turn QMUL into a Cookie Cutter University.
These modules make QMUL. They bring students in contact with the cutting-edge research & widen the scope of academia. #UKHE
Absolutely! 💪
Yes it should, but the university changed them anyway!
Academic staff at Coventry University are being TUPEd into subsidiary People’s Futures Ltd, listed on Companies House as an “employment agency”. This move onto inferior terms & conditions breaches the post-92 National Agreement and raises serious questions about the future of academics in HE.
