No exams?! Lecturers to vote on strike action

They’re feared. They’re dominating. And they’re unavoidable. But exams may not haunt Easter Term 2015.

In fact, they may not exist at all this year.

Uni lecturers are voting in a University & College Union (UCU) ballot on whether to strike over their pensions deal.

If it passes, lecturers wouldn’t set coursework or give students formal marks. And there would be no exams.

Second-year historian Krysia Waterhouse was unperturbed by the news, telling The Tab “I’m chill man.”

They’re…erm…chill

This is serious stuff, though: UCU says lecturers could lose as much as 27% of their pension under new proposals.

A UCU spokeswoman told Cambridge News, “this is the hardest thing for our lecturers to do, because they know how much our students rely on it.

“Teaching wouldn’t stop. Lecturers would still look at work and give comments, they wouldn’t leave students dangling, but they wouldn’t say ‘you have got an A’.”

However, she went on to say “I haven’t talked to a single academic who wants to do it.”

This is just the beginning of strike season: Michaelmas Term sees some of the biggest and most frequent strikes and protests of the year.

They upset poor Wolfgang

Cambridge Marxists ran CUSU’s strike involvement last year, and October saw huge student participation in protests and strikes. Activist group Cambridge Defend Education (CDE), which almost caused a diplomatic incident involving the German Finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, held its first meeting last night and will no doubt have plans for this term.

Worried you’re not going to get the validation you crave? Do you support lecturers’ fight against cuts? Or are you chill?