Today’s #WhyIStrike is about pensions, and particularly my take on why this action is important for academics (while never forgetting that #UCUstrikes are about all university workers) given the challenges of entering the profession /1

Academics at the top end of the scale get a salary that looks good on paper, but what often gets elided is the length of time before they start drawing that salary or being able to pay into a pension #UCUstrikes /2

The standard route into academia is still to take three degrees in succession in order to achieve minimum entry requirements of a PhD. This can take 7 years if you’re amazingly fast; it took me 10, doing one part-time to pay my way through #UCUstrikes /3

Then, given the dearth of jobs and the sector’s structural problems with short term contracts and precarity, it can still be many years until you secure a full time, let alone permanent, position #UCUstrikes /4

As such, most academics may be well into their 30s or later before they are financially secure enough to be paying into a pension - a decade or so behind the normal graduate earner #UCUstrikes /5

I cannot stress this enough - most of the students in the first cohort academics teach WILL BE DRAWING SALARIES BEFORE THE PEOPLE WHO TAUGHT THEM. #UCUstrikes /6

In addition, during this long, long period before we start paying into our pensions, we’re accruing debt. Not only the extortionate interest on £9k student loans, but the money we’ve scrimped and borrowed to pay our way through three degrees, often unfunded #UCUstrikes /7

Unless you were already wealthy, then, it can be years before academics become financially stable. Students are being taught by lecturers who are often struggling to make ends meet, even after getting a permanent job #UCUstrikes /8

The pension is part of what makes all this investment viable. We take MASSIVE setbacks at the start of our career in the hope that, although we will have a shorter working career because of a late start, we’ll be looked after in retirement #UCUstrikes /9

The pension is our deferred salary, and especially important because, in all of this precarity and debt, there is no time to start saving. The career does not let us financially plan because we are living hand to mouth for years #UCUstrikes /10

To take up to £200,000 out of our retirement plans is to cut the number of years we’re expected to live, after the point when we can do anything about it #UCUstrikes /11

And this brings me back to a fear I’ve already expressed. The pension is part of what makes it viable for people from low-income backgrounds to commit to the profession. For those who don’t have inheritance or trust funds to know that they’ll be okay #UCUstrikes /12

To keep the profession diverse and accessible, to ensure lecturers aren’t just drawn from the already-wealthy, we need to understand that pensions are not a luxury - THEY ARE ALL WE WILL HAVE TO LIVE ON #UCUstrikes /13