By Kate Bradley (photo credit Steve Eason)
“One of the most difficult things about being a Masters student has been managing the stresses of my course workload alongside paid work. Studying almost entirely alone for my dissertation exacerbated the mental health problems I was struggling with already, and staff were so busy and overworked that nobody noticed I was failing to do my research. By the time I flagged it up as a problem, it was too late. I had to defer my final module for a whole year, incurring additional costs and delaying my work plans.
Mental health charity Mind have pointed out that since the trebling of university tuition fees for undergraduates in 2010, there has been a huge rise in demand for student counselling – a rise as significant as 75% in some institutions. This is happening at the same time as schools cut mental health services to plug funding gaps, generating problems for further and higher education institutions later. At university, student-to-counsellor ratios can be three to four times lower than the required number. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, the salary of a university vice-chancellor or a single star academic – which can be upwards of £200,000 – can cost more than a university’s entire counselling service in the lowest-funded institutions.
The ongoing UCU strike may not directly relate to defending mental health services this time, but I see the origins of students’ and staff’s difficulties in changes the Tories have made to education in the last few years”.
This attack on pensions is part of the same set of long-term plans for education that the Tories put in motion in 2010. It can only be challenged effectively alongside fee increases and stupidly high management salaries, as well as cuts to vital student services, including those for mental health. It’s no coincidence that all of these changes have come at once, with the recession as a piss-poor excuse for a total restructuring of how the education sector gets and spends its money.
Many of the difficulties I faced last year related to feeling isolated and unsupported. Less overworked and better-paid staff, smaller classes and better relationships between staff and students would definitely have helped – and that’s something this strike is beginning to deliver. I have already felt reinvigorated seeing my tutors and lecturers on strike at Goldsmiths. It also gave us a space to chat about our experiences of education outside of the limited context of our contact hours. Thanks to the ‘teach outs’ and their lively social media presence, I’m (arguably) learning more from them now than I ever have in the classroom.”
