We are hearing understandable discontent from our members about the new SEAtS system. Many of those concerns are practical, but the principal issue is a moral one. While communications from the University management have been insisting that the main impetus for SEAtS is to improve student welfare and academic engagement, this seems to be disingenuous. In fact, the information is being collected as a reaction to the last government’s ‘hostile environment’ policies that are, among other things, making the country more inhospitable for students on Tier 4 visas.
As justification, management have cited examples where institutions have been denied by the Home Office the right to offer international student places for having failed sufficiently to implement the legislation; hence, that UoM cannot afford to fall foul of the legislation. However, the legislation is unclear, and we believe that UoM is instead over-complying.
The result is that we are now being made to engage with an oppressive monitoring system, whose data allows any member of staff the ability to track the movements of individual students across campus. We therefore think, by contrast, that this system operates to the detriment of student welfare. On top of this, the implementation of SEAtS generates yet another addition to academic workload, as well as the stress of carrying the responsibility for ensuring international students do not lose their places through inaccurate registration. Lastly, we have not been hearing reassuring news on the robustness of the system. It is quite possible it will manage to fall over entirely on its own terms.
Members of the UCU Exec have been trying to lessen the impact on students by explaining their opposition to the system. Click the link below to download some template slides that you may wish to adapt and use.