Media Storm - SOAS on strike: Why are university staff refusing to work?

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Support us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! UK university students pay almost £10,000 per year, and international students about four times the amount. Tuition fees have skyrocketed over the past generation. So has the number of higher-paying, international students attending. So where is all the money going? Has the quality of education improved with the cost? Have more staff been hired to cope with the workload? Or are existing staff being paid more to carry it? According to tutors at SOAS, PhD students are being exploited for cheap labour, and are often expected to work for free or without valid contracts. Meanwhile, growing profits are reportedly being used to shut down those pointing out injustice. This week, we investigate an unreported story that shines light on today’s fractional labour movement, the commodification of education, and the paradoxes of economic migration. The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-draining tread plus at OnePeloton.ca. Hey there, Media Stormers, it's Matilda. This week, something different, before we're back to our usual program next week. Stay with me.

I've just finished reading Matter 210. It's a Korean novel by Huang Sok Yong. Sorry, I'm probably butchering that. About three generations of railway workers. One family, repeatedly caught up in the same unavoidable struggle for labour rights. But while their struggle may be the same movement at its core, it has very different manifestations in different times and places under Japanese imperialism, post-war liberation, and US anti-communist occupation.

The story, which I hugely recommend, by the way, doesn't really end. I wanted it to end. nicely and tidily, but I suppose that it didn't was entirely the point. Some stories don't have an ending, but that doesn't mean they're not worth reading. So do some battles not have an ending, but that doesn't mean they're not worth fighting. Reading the novel made me see this week's Media Storm story in a different light to see how small, seemingly unrelated movements fit into their larger history. histories like the centuries-long power struggles and negotiations between employees and employers, labor and capital, workers and management.

The activists behind this week's story have struggled to get much press attention, which you may have noticed is when Media Storm tends to come knocking. The reason for that, I think, is because, on the surface, it's quite niche. Academic staff at a major London university are refusing to mark students' work until they say working conditions improve. Niche, perhaps, but I imagine you'll have heard many of the issues they point to grumbled about in many different sectors. I have been working every day, at least 10 hours, at least six days a week, because this is the only way, that you can pay your rent, that you can pay your food, that you can pay your transport in London. Typically, you pay around 1,000 to 1,200 pounds or so in a flat share.

One day weekend, 10 hours of work, at least per day, you come out with maybe per month 1,600 to 1,800 pounds. So now I imagine your rent is 1,100, then there comes electricity, then there is internet so you're left with 400 500 pounds for food right so you know if these are the conditions that you make education no wonder that people who don't have savings who don't have a family that can support you through that won't pursue a academic career want to research won't be teaching and won't understand the issues of people as well who are having to live lives And this is how we are basically recreating a class society in the universities.

And these are then the people that teach the next generation. They don't have the same experiences. They don't have the same understanding. That's Tabal. We'll meet him again later. This is another story about the labor movement. But not just that. It's also about education.

At a time, UK universities are increasingly run like businesses, having to generate revenue internally rather than relying on government subsidies. That means expensive student fees and inexpensive labor. In many countries, university degrees are free. This includes most countries in Europe, Russia, India, and a good chunk of South America and the Middle East. The UK did make universities free back in the 60s.

This lasted nearly 40 years. In that time, the number of young people attending university shot up from 5% to over 50. But in 1998, Tony Blair's Labour government reintroduced tuition fees, capping them at £1,000 a year. It's not popular, obviously, because people would like everything for free. Primacy, they're a poorer student who are being underprivileged. In 2004, Labor broke a manifesto promise and tripled this to £3,000.

And then in 2012, the Conservative-led coalition tripled it again, to £9,000, once again, breaking a manifesto promise made by their Liberal Democrat partners. There's no easy way to say this. We made a pledge, we didn't stick to it, and for that I'm sorry. The Conservatives raised it again before their time was out, and also abolished maintenance grants for lower-income students. I mean, it's starting to get a bit boring this, but maybe Kirsteim had a different view. Here he is in 2020. What about university tuition fees then? Will you remain committed to scrapping them?

They're all pledges, Andrew. So the answer to these questions is yes. As we all know now, that turns out not to be true. But many question whether the quality of education has improved with the extortionate leap in price. It also begs the question, how do we as a society see higher education, as a collective investment or an individual expense? And finally, this is a story in part about economic migration, a system that values people as commodities or consumers or colks in a machine,

but which has caused more controversy about the numbers coming in than the way in which they are treated. Let's get on with it. We're all afraid of getting deported. Like you don't feel safe with where you work. Keep working, keep working. It's not just about salaries. It's not just about that.

It's about being taken seriously as a working class. It is just shocking. We learn something in class. and then the administration does the exact opposite. It's a good question, where the money is going, really. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson, and it's just me today. This week's Media Storm, SOAS on strike.

Why are tutors refusing to mark? SoS University, London, where junior staff are on a kind of strike. A letter signed by over 100 staff members and 200 students has accused the university of unacceptable working conditions. These include underpaying and overworking staff. It reads, most of us are expected to work without contracts. So as or the School of African or Oriental Studies has, as you can tell from the name, a unique focus.

But it's not just geographic. We need a new approach. To look at the world from an alternative perspective. How do we make the world more equal and just? At SOAS, we view the world through a different lens. It is known for a decolonial, anti-indjustice approach that centers global self and underheard perspectives. In other words, it's politically progressive, even radical.

You'll hear this come up with many interviewees as something that drew them to studying at SOAS, or something they took away from doing so. I heard from my friends back in India and also from other colleagues that, you know, SOAS is the place if you want to do a research on labour. My PhD looks at migrant labour exploitation in India. So I applied because it's quite well established in terms of labour.

That's Manish Mascara, senior teaching fellow at SOAS. You'll hear from him again. Like I picked Sawas because it is very well renowned for it being a very progressive institution, a decolonial one. And I appreciated that. And that's Lynne, a student. You get the point. So, tutors are on a kind of strike. It isn't a strike strike, though,

because the work these workers are refusing to do isn't actually work they're contracted to do. It's just work they're expected to do nonetheless. That work is piles and piles of marking. The problem is your contract is only of teaching. Your contract is not to do with marking. Manish again. To me, that's the key area of pain.

So marking is like an add-on obligation, but it's sort of assumed that if you are teaching, you are marking. Marking periods is very difficult. You finish a whole day of teaching. You come back home and I sit in the evening to mark. I also marked on weekends. It's like your marking calendar rescheduled my entire social life, I would say. Bodily, I also faced fatigue in the sense of you keep working, keep working.

Your mind is constantly churning and reading. So my mind then has nothing left to think and write as a PhD scholar as someone who is intellectually trying to develop something. You have no brain space to actually do any writing. That fatigue, that exhaustion is not going to disappear. So who are tutors? Tutors are staff who provide students with tutorials, mentoring, assignments, marking, and it makes up a key part of their degree.

Hi, my name is Hwani, and I am a patient. PhD student in economics department at SOAS. I taught a microeconomic analysis module for three years. At SOAS, the vast majority are PhD students. And the work they do as tutors likely helps to fund their course. I think ultimately it is the super exploitation of the cheapest possible labor, like cheapest possible workforce. That is the case for Huanhi Bay.

So now as part of this action, you are collectively refusing to take on work that is not already in your contract. You're basically refusing to take on extra work. But why does it take a strike to do that? Surely that's always a choice. This is a really good point because a lot of the tutors even were not aware themselves that they had the right to refuse. This just has been the expectation that tutors will mark, even though it's not specified in the contract at all. Given the fact that a lot of the PhD students need the teaching experience if they want to remain in academia after their degree. Like really competitive job market. I think the universities, like not just so as,

but universities really take a huge advantage of that. You know, you should be grateful to have a job. Yeah, it's kind of like the workforce being pitted against each other. I think that's something that's across industries. But the tutor's demands have not exclusively been focused on marking. The length of the contracts is another issue because contracts for tutors are only during the term. So as soon as the term is over, our contract is over. So we're no longer employed by SOAS. But assessments at SOAS, most of them happen after the term is over. And that means obviously when we are no longer employed by SOAS. Short term contracts also mean tutors remain informal employees, even if working in the same role over years. They also

have to reapply for the same job every year. Because each contract is term-based, even though, for example, me, I taught the same module for three years, I had to apply every single year despite getting really amazing feedback from the students. So your work performance doesn't even matter. Soas didn't reply when we reached out to them, asking for their response to the criticisms and the protest. But Media Storm has seen a motion indicating changes are underway. They're just not the changes the tutors have requested. The university is introducing a new role that would minimize the number of tutors hired

and shift marking and other tasks onto a smaller number of more senior employees. Soas' memo on the new role says, quote, there are risks in the over-reliance on GTAs, aka tutors, to undertake key aspects of the student journey. In something of a slight to PhD-level tutors, it adds, our students also expect their teaching and learning to come from experienced academics. No change will, quote, create a precarious environment for planning and delivering excellent teaching due to this over-reliance.

Now, tutors say this is a punitive decision that will deprive PhD students of work opportunities, many of whom rely on that to fund their studies. They also told Media Storm that those affected by the resulting redundancies are disproportionately those involved in the strike. One of those we speak to in this episode, a lead organiser in the protest, has already been cut, that we cannot verify whether it's directly connected.

So why is this all happening? Year after year, universities started to recruit more and more students without actually increasing the number of staff. And that just really led to tutors, like the cheapest workforce, taking on unreasonable amount of workload. Why were they taking in so many more? students all of a sudden. Because they want more money and especially international students.

I think a lot of universities even have a lower academic criteria for international students simply because they pay much higher fee than home students. But presumably if they have a lower academic threshold for the international students coming in, that means a higher burden on teachers to get them up to the standard they need to be at. Absolutely. Yeah. That is something that tutors really notice that students are not given the support, like the level of academic support that they were promised. They came to university from their home countries and then just find out that no support is given, which is, yeah, not reasonable. International student visas in the UK began increasing in 2016, peaking at over 650,000

in 2023. Cast your mind back. Do you remember at that time? newspaper front pages reeling at record levels of net migration. We've got stories in the papers this morning in the Times all over the place saying that basically they were shocked at the increase in immigration. You know, this is reaching epidemic mad proportions, isn't it? What was little understood or little explained was that a substantial share of that record figure over a third came from international students.

neither long-term immigrants nor asylum seekers, both of whom got more media focus. Nor was the student visa increase a shock or an accident. It was a government plan laid out in the 2021 International Education Strategy, a goal to reach 600,000 international students a year by the end of the decade. This was an economic choice. International student fees are considerably higher than those for residents, reaching up to 38,000 pounds, so four times the UK amount, and up to almost 68,000 pounds for medical degrees.

That takes us back to Huanhi. So they are bringing in more and more money by bringing in more and more students. On the other hand, they're not hiring more and more teachers to provide the additional educational support needed. So my question then is, okay, all this money that's coming in, but these enormous student fees, where is it all going? Yeah, we'd really like to know as well. So last year, SOAS actually turned, I think it was 43 million pounds profit.

I checked. It was actually 41 million. The huge thing about universities these days is that they make investments, financial investment, real estate, and that's also connected to the students' demand on BDS. Soas had the first Students' Union to vote in favour of the BDS campaign way back in 2005. That's the boycott divestment and sanctions campaign, led by Palestinian civil society organisations, calling for economic protest against organisations allegedly funding genocide. Since all-out war broke out in Gaza in 2003, so-as students have been among many to set up Palestine,

solidarity encampments. Beginning May 2024, theirs stood the longest, well over a year. It was often a sight of tension between protesting students and university security, including incidents of violent confrontation.

Funny because last year or two years ago saw us spend nearly 700,000 pounds just on securities that coincided with a really heavy crackdown on student protests. It was actually 711,000, according to SOAS's accounts. This figure does include caretaking and cleaning as well as security, so it's not exact,

but it did increase 25% on the year before protests began. We are not seeing that money coming to the lecturers nor the tutors, not even the cleaners, but I think the management are having a pretty comfortable life. So it's a good question where the money is going, really. After the break, we'll look at the bigger picture. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door?

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Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. Maybe it's just a phase you're going through. You'll get over it. I can't help you with that. The next appointment is in six months. You're not alone. Finding mental health support shouldn't leave you feeling more lost.

At CAMH, we know how frustrating it can be trying to access care. We're working to build a future where the people, path to support is clear, and every step forward feels like progress, not another wrong turn. Visit camh.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health care. Tabo is another PhD tutor, and he's been a key organizer of the protest. However, he requested he went by first name only, as he feels penalizing measures are being taken against organizers. Tabo says it began with a feeling of individual blame.

Why was he finding the work just too much? Why couldn't he complete it in the given time? Maybe he was the problem. You notice, oh man, I have to work longer than the contract specifies, which is then, of course, unpaid. I think, or maybe that's my fault. I'm just too slow. You know, I cannot read fast enough or I cannot write fast enough. You immediately start blaming yourself that you're not able to accomplish a work in the specified time.

And it feels very depressing, actually. And then you talk to other tutors and everyone says, no, of course I'm not able to finish on time. It's impossible to finish on time. And then, you know, it's, oh, damn. It's not me who's deficient. It's our contractor, it's the working conditions that are deficient. And we all really suffer under these workplace conditions. And so we started organizing to actually change the structure.

Do you see this as a problem specific to SOAS or even specific to academia? Or are there wider societal issues driving this? What do I think is driving this? I think in the education sector, what we experience, you experience in many sectors, because there's a general trend that you can see all over the global north or the west or whatever you want to call it, which is the neoliberalization of all the different sectors of society. And this is definitely something that obviously started with Thatcher and Reagan in the 80s. Okay, Tamo, I have to stop you. I'm assuming all our listeners are not academics. So I'm going to need you to explain what you mean by the term neoliberalization of society. Right. Liberalization, how can I explain this?

It's the idea that decisions about like how we organize society, how we organize work, how we organize life in general, is mainly a decision that is made by private individuals. This is a withdrawal of the state. It's basically a self-mutilation of the state saying all these different things with education and with the regulation of work and with the environment or whatever, all these things. It's not us to decide. It's not the state to decide.

It should be the free private individual who decides. Starting to feel like a student again? It's basically a rejection of the idea of a common good, of a common interest. There is no such thing as common good. It's just the sum of all the individual parts. And we have to give all responsibility to these individual parts, which is private individuals. What does this mean? In reality, in reality, it means a redistribution of power.

The state is giving up the responsibility to organize education, health care, the workplace, and so on and so forth, and gives this up for grabs, basically, right? So who is able to regulate it instead? And then it becomes a question of power. And the most powerful actors are big corporations, usually. And then these corporations become bigger and more and more powerful. Why?

Because in a free marketplace, it's unregulated. The biggest corporation usually has the most money and market share and so on and so forth to underbid. This is what we see a lot, right, to underbid all the other competitors, to kill them off to increase their market share. And this is how they become more and more powerful, more and more profitable. And also with this power are then able to basically determine the rules in society, right? When you boil it down, I would say neoliberalism is about a privatization of power. It's diverting power from the democratic state to the undemocratic, monopolistic corporations in society that then are able to determine the rules, what is produced, how is it produced, how do we treat the workers in all of this.

and what happens is when we as employees have to face a corporation or any kind of powerful employer we don't write the contract it's a it's a strange fiction that an employer is bargaining with an employee the contract is already written like you have no you have barely any space to to negotiate and when we don't have the capacity to determine our contracts and the contract and the corporation as a more powerful player is the possibility to write the contract and to determine the conditions, what is happening is a precarization of work. Another term I'd love you to explain for us, please. The precarization of work. What does that mean? Precureization means insecure working conditions. That means you have a terminate contract

that always kicks you out after two years, a year, or in my case, after eight, eight months or so. all. And then you have to reapply. You have to prove yourself again. Like, oh, no, I'm a really hard worker. I'm a really good worker. It puts you under a constant pressure to prove yourself vis-à-vis the employer. Like, this is very stressful and precarious. Like, you don't feel safe with where you work, right? Not feeling safe. That's precarity. After the break, how did the students feel about this? Run! This champ is picking up speed, but they found a lane. Phenomenal launch into the air! Absolutely incredible! Air Transit!

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You're speaking anonymously to us today. Do you feel worried about being vocal about your frustrations with the dispute? Yes, I do. It's been quite publicized that the school. has taken quite a bit of action against pro-Palestine protesters who are so as students. That combined with what's going on in the United States with how protesters are now being systematically attacked on college campuses. I just, I don't want to take the risk. This is Ali. She agreed to speak about the dispute between her tutors and her university

only on the condition of anonymity. Here she speaks to Helena, my Media Storm co-host. I came to SOAS because I was told it's the best school in basically the world for development and the work that I want to do. So when I got into the school, when I was accepted, I was really excited. I moved, became an international student. I'm paying, well, my family, thank God for my family, but 25,000 pounds a year for a master's program. What has the impact of this dispute been on your learning?

I have to say I really appreciate the tutors because they've tried as hard as possible to have it not impact my learning. So they're still teaching our tutorials and it's because they want to make sure that we're still getting our education. But it does mean that it's taking a lot longer for my papers to get back to me. And, you know, I work really hard on my papers. I'm working up to a month ahead of time on my papers. So these essays are really important to me. previously sometimes I would get just fantastic feedback on my papers other times it was barely anything at all and I think that it's apparent that the school is not paying our tutors enough

to mark our papers so since then since the strike I don't get my papers back as quickly I feel frustrated that the school is absolutely unwilling to negotiate with our tutors but I repeatedly have seen indications from the administration that they do not care about students. What would you like the powers that be at SOAS to understand? What do you want to change? I would love for SOAS to change how it looks at our tutors. I have seen them work so hard to make sure that we have a good education. And I think that's a testament to how unique and incredible and important.

as is. As the strike has gone on in negotiations with the school has gone on, it seems like while academic staff understand that, administrative staff do not, and they don't seem to care. And it's just another situation in which the administration is unwilling to listen to students. The situation with the tutors is not the only situation that's happening. A fantastic example is that pro-Palestine students want the school to stop, you know, investing in organizations that have an interest in having the Israel-Gaza or Israel-Palestine conflict continuing. And students keep talking about this, but the administration is not listening. The biggest thing about this school is that we study decolonization. So like, how do we

get out of the colonial mindset when we were helping all of these communities? The through line with the situation with the tutors, with the protesters for Palestine, is that they're international students. I do wonder if SOAS is stuck in this colonial mindset, that because you're an international student or an international worker, SOAS can get away with a lot more. And they can because of that. We're all afraid of getting deported. We're afraid that we won't get our diploma, things like that. But something has to be said, and I think SOAS needs to look at the fact that people not from England, they are disproportionately getting attacked by Soaz. Soaz is seen as one of the best universities in the world for especially development.

And it is just shocking that we learn something in class and then the administration does the exact opposite. Over 200 undergrad students at the university signed the tutor's demands to SOAS management. expressing their support of the protest. One of them was Lynn. I'm Lynn. I'm from Syria, and I came to the UK as a Chevening Scholar to study global development at South. Lynn is a recipient of the prestigious Chevening Scholarship,

a UK government-funded Masters. It seeks out aspiring leaders from over 160 countries, and it requires them to return to their home country after studying in the UK to feed back into their community. She met me at my apartment, and as soon as I hit record, she took out some notes. Here was someone who knew what she wanted to say.

So I let her. Back in Syria, I spent years working in the humanitarian sector, and I was able to see the effect of the crisis on the academic system and education. And it's one of the first things people often lose, and it's one of the things that people always talk about that they want to rebuild. So that's always stayed with me.

Yeah, so when I started my course at Tsawa, I expected more involvement from the university. I realized that we get a one-hour lecture per module. By the way, like our lectures and professors, they're amazing. But then again, most of the heavy lifting was being done by tutors. You'd have one tutor, like teaching like 10 tutorials. That's crazy. So when the movement, Tutors for Change started out and tutors were telling us about it,

we started realizing that, oh, like our tutors are not being paid well for teaching at an institution that is the second institution worldwide in development studies. Our tutors, they had fragile job security. They have huge workloads, and many of them are international. Coming from Syria, from my background, I have really seen how institutions can fail people. And I'm perfectly well-versed with injustice. During our lectures, we learn about labor movements. We learn about labor rights.

I'm even doing my thesis on labor rights in Syria after the fall of the regime. And it's just crazy that we talk about those things, learn about those things. We're encouraged to pursue those issues, yet when we get out of the classroom, room we see it happening in front of us. It's not just about like salaries. It's not just about that. It's about being taken seriously as a working class. We need to make sure as a working class to not allow anyone to dismiss us and to continue to speak up for our rights and you only know when you speak up and when you talk about it and you realize how people can relate to you. Even if they're from a very different background, like I am from a very different background yet I was

very able to understand and relate to all the so girls that our tutors in the UK are facing. So, yeah. When you got the scholarship that you came to the UK on, were you excited? How did you feel? Oh, yeah. I was like crazy excited. Yeah, because Chivning is one of the best scholarships. So I was thrilled.

I was really happy, yeah. Because otherwise, it wouldn't be possible for me to study at Zawas because it's expensive, very expensive. for international students. What are you hoping to do with their scholarship going forwards? Okay, so my plan is to finish with my master's and then trying to go back to and work in the development sector because there is an opportunity. Although it's very chaotic right now and it's very crazy what's happening,

but still there's an opportunity to use what you learn. And I cannot deny how amazing the experience has been and the quality of education I've received at SOS because it was the best. Regardless of everything we talked about, when talking purely about the quality of education that the tutors played a big role in, but also our lectures and professors, it has been so good if I would like apply again, I would apply to South us. I wouldn't apply anywhere else. Yeah. Lynn, thank you so much for joining us on Media Storm.

Of course. You're welcome. I'm really happy. I'm here. Labour rights, education, immigration. Each feels the tug of war between questions of ethics and questions of economic. That tug of war is happening all around us. This is just one story. Thank you for listening. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already.

We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast. So please do tell your whole. friends. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helen Awaddea and follow the show at MediaStorm pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfire.