UCC postgrads in strike threat

Postgraduate assistants in UCC have threatened a strike in the university unless the issue of payment for student tutorials is addressed. A portion of the college's part-time budget is used to fund "studentships", through which postgraduate students are paid a stipend to assist with demonstrations and tutorials for undergraduates. These stipends vary in size from about £1,900 to £4,000, though postgraduate fees are deducted from the studentship and the remainder is paid out in 12 monthly instalments.

According to Sheila Griffin, president of UCC students' union, the result is that some students receive as little as £25 per month for 12 hours' work, while postgraduate assistants who are not in receipt of studentships, receive £12.80 per hour. Griffin says that postgraduate students are "very angry and very bitter" about the situation and the college has been given two weeks to find a solution.

The majority of the disaffected students, about 500 to 600, are in the arts faculty. In 1994, a similar strike by 150 postgraduate students over cuts in the university's part-time budget affected 15 departments and 3,000 undergraduate students.

A spokeswoman for UCC says that the university has a postgraduate support scheme which compares "favourably" with other Irish universities. The number of postgraduate students in the university had grown at a faster rate than undergraduate numbers and postgraduates now account for almost 20 per cent of the student population. "As a consequence, there is a variation in the amount of support given to individual students," she says, depending upon the department in question, its budget and the number of research students working in the department. "It is not possible, as a general rule, to support all students," she says.