**TL;DR -- It's not just universities: Politics rules our public schools, too.** Universities aren't the only battleground in which teachers face off against (or play into the hands of) politics. It's in our public schools where we send our children. When I was a student teacher, I saw firsthand how teachers have to play the system to get anything done for their students. Half the time they're blockaded from making the best choices in their classrooms by higher-ups who want to dedicate every single minute to pleasing government know-it-alls who stick their noses in where they have **no** experience and **no** understanding of what its like to be a student or a teacher in a real classroom. They have no clue what different children from different races, cultures, and economic/social statuses face in the classroom, and don't care to utilize or even consider teachers' own experience with and intuitions about each individual student. No, instead of understanding any of that, it's a one-size-fits-all approach to learning, which *doesn't work* in a diverse and globalized world. And ultimately, the government doesn't care what our students learn -- they have agendas and will force-feed our students whatever it takes to meet those agendas. Don't even get me started on state-mandated tests, which force teachers into spending precious learning time on test prep for tests that have no real consequence, and don't prepare our children for life in the real world. Maybe when I have more time I'll come back to this post and share some stories about my experiences with playing politics in the public school system. And I imagine that universities, being monetarily driven, are even worse.

TL;DR – University strikes use students as pawns in disputes that put students learning in jeopardy. Innocent students paying £9250/year do not need to suffer because of union and university politics. An interesting case study to look at here would be the current (June-July 2021) marking strike taking place at the University of Liverpool. More than 1,000 staff started a marking boycott on 18 June, the University and College Union (UCU) said and therefore about 1,500 university students have not had their degrees classified. - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-57754901 While myself and other students sympathise with our professors and lecturers reasons for striking and support the aims of the action, I believe that it is unfair to drag innocent students into the disputes as it is disruptive to our studies. This is because of the effects it has on our learning such as: - Added stress and anxiety regarding exams and assignments - Delayed feedback exacerbating this - Having to teach high level content to ourselves despite paying £9250/year for expert teaching - In addition, international students often pay more than double these fees - Pressure on students not to cross the picket line despite us wanting to use the facilities we pay for This happens at least once a year and so it's time for administration to actually do something about it and negotiate effectively so that students can get the learning they deserve and pay for and our teachers can also get the pay and conditions that they also deserve.

**The argument here is that academics are more invested in the outcome of their work than in its accuracy - particularly when it comes to issues of equality.** [Cory Clark](https://www.parlia.com/article/equalitarianism-liberal-bias-cory-clark) and Bo Winegard describe the framework as 'Equalitarianism' and suggest it threatens research integrity. [Francesca Minerva](https://www.parlia.com/article/journal-of-controversial-ideas-francesca-minerva), founder of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, worries that the very idea of academic enquiry is changing: that truth is ‘constructed’ rather than ‘discovered’. She says: "I don’t know if university as we know it is going to survive.”

This is a bogeyman created by right-wingers. Research often goes against their viewpoints and younger generations are more left-wing, so they gotta spread lies against academia to make it seem like it's all *post-modern Marxism* (which is a contradiction; Marx was a critic of post-modernism). This culture war and the distrust of intellectualism is what actively damages research. Now whenever bad research enters the right-wing information pipeline, it can't be criticized without seeming like the people behind those studies were shut out by academia for being 'free thinkers'. In actuality, their methodology was biased and the study didn't meet the standards of these studies should be done.