London, UK. Remarkably, a UK university with student approval ratings lower than the Mariana trench has announced plans to “improve the student experience” whilst simultaneously planning to reduce staff pensions and increase staff workload.
“We’ve sent out survey after survey to the students and the answer always comes back the same – they’re unhappy” said a university representative. “It’s almost as if sending out surveys isn’t enough” they continued.
In a 100% definitely definitely unrelated thing, lecturers at the university report being overworked, underpaid and having to strike due to pension cuts.
“I have to deliver 30 hours of lectures a week, run tutorials, mark coursework, polish the head of school’s shoes, design a new MOOC and find time to bang out 4* papers for REF. All of this on a rolling 3 month contract for 36p an hour plus lab space” complained one lecturer. “And I’ve got to strike because the uni says they can’t afford both my pension and the chief exec’s pay rise”.
TheScienceWeb pointed out that a poor student experience and stressed overworked lecturers might be related. “What?” replied the university representative, who once had a failed business. “What? How can they… What on earth… But the… But the surveys… The surveys goddamit! It can’t be… Not the staff… Look we’ve done surveys!” he spluttered.
After ten minutes, we were handed a press release announcing a 50% pay rise for the university chief executive. “That should do it!” claimed the university representative, triumphantly.
The Science Web 
Thank you for the article 🙂