“Industrial Action Update: we are very sorry that the situation has not been resolved in the way we had hoped. The University cares deeply about your education and wellbeing. If you have any questions related to the replacement of lost learning or assessments, please feel free to bleat pointlessly into the digital abyss. That will be £9535, please.”
If your department (sorry, School. Touchy subject) has been affected by the recent strikes, this is what the typical correspondence from university management has sounded like for months now, if you read between the lines.
I can’t speak for my entire cohort, but when the University and College Union first announced industrial action on 22nd October 2025 I didn’t exactly fall off my chair. UK higher education is in turmoil. We all know that. The University of Sheffield is facing financial difficulties. We all know that, too. Staff in educational institutions across the country are generally underpaid. We definitely all know that.
This strike felt like the latest in a long line of tussles largely unnoticed by the student body; a cancelled lecture here, a reassuring email there, some barbed realpolitik between UCU and uni, and an eventual resolution. After all, it’s not entirely the university’s fault it’s broke, and it’s not the faculty’s fault that they toe the union line in solidarity with their colleagues. This article isn’t choosing a side of the picket line to grandstand about. All’s fair in love and war.
Affected students, however, have been granted ringside tickets to watch a proper old-fashioned barney unfold, where the subtext is bolder than the headlines and the contradictions tell you more than the edicts.
Compulsory redundancies: glassed in the face. Industrial action: pool cue to back of head. Restructuring departments into schools: bar stool lobbed across room. Renegotiated terms rejected: smash whiskey bottle. Threaten pay forfeits beyond originally agreed 16-day strike period: broken glass as stabbing weapon. Refuse to reschedule teachings hours before start of next semester: set spilt whiskey on fire. Lock teaching staff out of university accounts: get gas canisters from kitchen. And whilst the brawl goes on around us, we students are just trying to find a quiet corner to have a lime soda and finish the essay that will significantly contribute to our degree.
The following evidence is anecdotal, but it illustrates the important points. It was the 15th of December (also known as the end of term) when university management announced that an agreement had been met and that the strikes were over. History module HPH333 Revolutions, worth 20 credits and with a final essay deadline on 20th January, had lost many of its contact hours to strikes.
This is where the subtext speaks loudest. Students are entitled by the Consumer Rights Act to financial compensation for lost learning if the university fails to adequately replace those hours. The university’s attempts to make History tutors “replace” those hours with substandard placeholder lectures before the HPH333 deadline was a barely-disguised effort to tick the absolute minimum of government boxes. It would spare them from financially compensating students. For those staff striking beyond the 16-day window, it was also a breach of contract, entitling the university to suspend their pay.
It was exactly a month later – 15th of January – when an email to the exact opposite effect was sent to affected students. The university’s strongarm attempts were met with further strikes, in the interests (according to the union) of students as well as staff. This episode was then followed by a sort of farcical online tennis match involving some History faculty members announcing, on the 22nd of January, they had been locked out of their university accounts, and the university announcing a day later that they hadn’t.
The exact content of conversation between union and university is unknown to us. At time of publication, the same applies to how this scrap is going to be resolved. The only real sense that all the contradiction and passive-aggression has given me is that our education has been turned into a battlefield for parties beyond our sight and control to fight over, and as things stand, we’re still going to be paying for it – whether academically or in cold, hard cash.
