“We are taking this action because of the college’s woeful failure to fulfil its obligations during the Covid-19 pandemic – and its subsequent failure to do the right thing and offer students recompense.”
This week, students at Goldsmiths University of London announced a tuition fee strike in which they plan to withhold payments unless the university’s management adheres to their demands.
The strike coincides with three weeks of industrial action by Goldsmiths University College Union (GUCU) , who demand that the Senior Management Team (SMT) cease moving ahead with plans that involve more than 50 redundancies, among other things.
Staff and students are protesting the redundancy plan together | Source: Liuyi Wang
The strike is being coordinated by Gold Fees Strike (GFS), a group made up entirely of Goldsmiths students and they are demanding a refund for the hours of education missed as a result of the wider industrial action by GUCU.
In a letter sent today to the warden, Frances Corner, GFS wrote “Time and again, Goldsmiths senior management has chosen to put profit-making over student and staff wellbeing.”
“This ideology has resulted only in continued disruption to our studies and irreparable damage to the reputation of Goldsmiths and therefore the value of our degrees.”
In response to news of the fees strike, Goldsmiths management said: “None of us want students to pay the price for this dispute and the impacts of three weeks of strike action on our students can be avoided if GUCU are willing to come to the table.”
Source: Liuyi Wang
“We want to reassure our students that we are putting their learning, their experience, and their outcomes first as we build a new and sustainable future for the College.”
Among the list of demands made by Gold Fees Strike is that the SMT meet the demands of the GUCU in full, but the SMT say their hands are tied and have released a statement in which they claim that they “simply cannot afford to meet these demands,” and that, “the unavoidable reality is that we have to make further savings to deal with significant financial challenges including an underlying deficit, over £10m of additional costs and lost income due to Covid-19, government cuts that see the College lose over £2m in funding every year, and a decline in the overall number of students studying some subjects.”
Some international students are feeling particularly aggrieved by the industrial action, having uprooted their lives to pay huge amounts of money in tuition fees, often three times as much as UK nationals, for a reduced and hampered service, as reported by Raven News earlier this week.
Chinese students are protesting Goldsmiths’ redundancy plans | Source: Liuyi Wang
Delaney, an Arts Management student from the USA said of the SMT :”Coming from America I’m absolutely disgusted to see Goldsmiths give into a capitalistic academic structure. I left America to not become some institution’s profit, and I absolutely refuse to become one here. We will not be taken advantage of any longer.”
The GFS group claim that over 100 students have agreed to take part in the fees strike, and they expect that number to “grow significantly” once more people hear about it.
The fees strike at Goldsmiths coincides with the announcement yesterday of nationwide industrial action by UK universities lasting three days that will affect over a million students across the country.
This will be the second year in a row in which students at Goldsmiths have organised a fee strike in solidarity with their teachers.