UK universities may subcontract marking to help deal with a planned boycott, as vice-chancellors make last-ditch offers to persuade staff not to take part.
Some academics who refuse to set or mark assignments and exams have also been told by their institutions that they may lose 100 per cent of their pay for every day the action – part of long-running disputes over pay, pensions and working conditions – runs.
But, alongside managers‘ attempts to mitigate disruption, internal divisions over tactics within the University and College Union (UCU) and the fact that a lot of marking has already been done meant that it was unclear how effective the boycott would be as it got under way this week.
