Over the past decades universities have been transformed into businesses, reducing education to a product through fees and driving down working and learning conditions to maximise financial returns. Under mountains of unpayable debt, unaffordable rents, and poverty pay students and staff are exploited from every angle and plunged into a cost of living crisis. Meanwhile, the wealth universities accumulate is invested in the exploitation of global resources and labour, as well as war and climate breakdown.
Join us to discuss the free, accessible public education system we need; how we ensure it serves the needs of the many over corporate and colonial interests; and how we build student, staff, and community power to win it.
Fraser is a student organiser, outgoing Young Labour Student Rep and Unite West Midlands Young Members Committee member.
Chloe is Vice President for Higher Education at the National Union for Students and was elected on a platform for a free, decolonised and democratic education system.
David Whyte is a UCU activist. He led a number of industrial disputes against management as Vice President of the University of Liverpool Branch.
Nehaal is current NUS Vice President for Liberation & Equality, and a very (very) part-time PhD student in Education at the University of Sussex.
The National Union of Students is a confederation of student unions across the UK
