Shahidha Bari should count herself lucky that she has an office so that she can pursue her job in quiet and privacy (“Give me room to breathe”, Opinion, 16 April). I have heard on the grapevine that when our local university moves to a new campus, staff may find themselves hot-desking, with only a locker for their possessions. You won’t want to visit on a busy day because there won’t be enough seats; meetings will be held in “break-out areas”.
This is being done to move the university towards becoming a “paperless” institution – or maybe so that money doesn’t have to be spent on pesky offices and so that staff have less time together to complain about management.
The new campus will also have no lecture theatres despite the current ones being booked solid – the largest number of people who can meet together will be 80. In an age of laptops and tablets, addressing large groups in person is so 20th century! Classrooms, on the other hand, may be bigger – to accommodate those larger classes that everyone will be teaching.
Also, there will be no parking for students and not much for staff – wonderfully “green”, you think, until you realise that, for example, many students are mature and have to drop kids off – they’ll now need to park in town (good luck) and catch a bus.
Still, once the older staff have rushed to retire rather than face the move and have been replaced by cheaper youngsters, think of the money that will have been saved in our wonderful, brave new world!
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