Goldsmiths fine art students demand compensation as record tutor strike disrupts courses

Students who arrived at Goldsmiths, University of London this autumn found a campus caught up in a bitter industrial dispute that has upended timetables and disrupted courses. Among the hardest hit are those on the master of fine art (MFA) programme, where some are now asking the university to compensate them for lost learning.

At a gathering of unhappy students on Friday, one international student told the Guardian that induction sessions kept turning into discussions about strikes. "I was really excited to start my studies at Goldsmiths," the student said, adding that the experience on arrival was "quite shocked" territory.

The MFA course has seen 10 of its usual 12 tutors take strike action. Florence Sweeney, a part-time student, said many fine art students had received "virtually no teaching" so far this term and that a group of them were seeking remuneration. She described the situation as a financial drain and said she had seen classmates become distressed, anxious and in some cases depressed. Some had moved from the other side of the world, she said, only to go without a proper welcome or briefings.

Goldsmiths is known for the artists who studied there, including Steve McQueen, Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. In recent years, however, it has been squeezed financially by falling applications in core humanities subjects and the erosion of domestic tuition fees. One staff member described the result as "non-stop" rounds of redundancies and restructuring.

The current strike by University and College Union (UCU) members is entering its 21st week with no end in sight. It began as a staff marking boycott in April over proposed job cuts. Management responded by deducting 100% of pay from those taking part, which the union argued amounted to a lockout. After a formal ballot, a group of UCU members at the south-east London university has been on indefinite strike since early June.

Joe Newman, a co-president of the Goldsmiths UCU branch, said the action was a response to the "unprecedented scale and speed of the cuts" management is pursuing. He said students were largely supportive and mostly "aghast" when told why staff were striking.

The university said only "a small portion of our staff, around 8.5%" were on strike, leaving most students unaffected. It said it had offered significant compromises, including a pause on compulsory redundancies, but would not drop the 100% pay deductions for the marking boycott, citing the large sums it had spent to ease the impact on students. A spokesperson said the university faces significant financial challenges and that continued disruption risks harming its reputation in the long term. The spokesperson added that it was offering regular updates, meetings with schools and other support to affected students.

MFA students said they were disappointed given the two-year course charges nearly £15,000 a year for full-time UK students and £33,000 for international students. John Carver, a part-time second-year student, said he suspended his studies after a "dismal" departmental meeting at the start of term. He praised the regular tutors but said replacements brought in did not know the students.

James Evans, an international student from the US, said visa and funding restrictions meant he had to stay on the course despite the disruption. He said he never received marks last year and still has no feedback on projects from then. This year, he said, there is "no structure, barely any communication" and students have been "left to our own devices."