Academic Staff

Be careful of the Minister's arithmetic here (for a guy who supports the back-to-basics movement he is a selective user of new maths when it suits him). Over the quinquennium there will be an increase of 80 staff over the whole country (an average of 2.29 each year at each university). What you are not generally told is that even by government figures there were already 550 staff short in 1979. So the 80 additional staff will mean we are still 470 staff short at 1979 figures. Add the expected growth in rolls by 1984 and we are up to 558 staff short by 1984. They are all official statistics and in my book there's only one word to describe a man who says that this all adds up to no cuts in university expenditure!

But you won't mind if you are one of the 558 classes that has to wait a bit longer for essays, labs, projects, theses and examinations to be evaluated; or if your lecturer uses last year's notes in a subject where that gives you out of date material, will you?