Higher education has been headline news repeatedly this year as members of the University and College Union (UCU) have repeatedly taken strike action over pay and conditions and face the prospect of further industrial action later in spring as an assessment boycott takes effect.

The situation of academic staff at universities is one which is typical of many workers in today’s post-recession world.

According to UCU, pay has declined in real terms by 13 per cent since 2008 despite the sector hoarding a surplus of over £1 billion and allowing salary increases for many senior managers and vice-chancellors.

Equally worrying and less well publicised is the increasing dependence on casually employed staff in higher education (HE), including use of zero-hours contracts to employ teaching staff.

For many students, substantial amounts of their contact time will be with hourly paid workers employed in this insecure way.

Around half of HE institutions use zero-hours contracts and the sector overall is one of the most casualised in the British economy.

Many of the staff employed in this way are doctoral researchers — PhD students — or early career researchers. Students in this situation are highly vulnerable since they face the burden of paying fees to their institution while at the same time needing to find work which accommodates their study and provides experience for a career in academia or industry. They have minimal negotiating power and limited powers of organisation.

UCU has recognised, for example, that hourly paid members of staff face particular penalties during strike action as they may stand to lose a huge proportion of their pay compared with salaried staff.

Nobody would suggest that employing research students is a bad thing.

They are often highly motivated, eager to experiment with different pedagogic techniques to build their experience, and may be more approachable for students than acclaimed professors.

The experience which they are able to build while teaching is crucial for both their own development and the development of better techniques and practices in the entire sector.

However, they must be employed as equals on the principle of the same pay and conditions for work of the same value and their work must not be seen as a type of internship or work experience programme.

UCU has taken the anti-casualisation cause seriously, and May 7 marks a day of action against casual contracts which threaten employment conditions in the sector.

What makes British universities among the best in the world is not just the quality of the teaching but the quality of research and it is research which is the primary focus much of the academic community.

Universities are not schools — they are centres of scholarship and learning from research as well as teaching. Ultimately, anything which compromises research also compromises the quality of universities as well.

Tutors and lecturers are able to deliver exceptional programmes to students because of their engagement with and contributions to research in their chosen fields.

The road to academia is a hard one requiring immense dedication — often at least seven years in higher education earning little or nothing before entering a highly competitive job market, all the while passing up potentially lucrative opportunities outside academia.

This is why the current industrial action in HE is so important. Where staff face decreases in their real earnings, unreliable working hours, limitations to their ability to organise effectively and increased workloads, the quality of university education will suffer.

The very best researchers will be increasingly tempted to deploy their talents and knowledge elsewhere — in the private sector or at universities abroad. Cutting-edge teaching is dependent on cutting-edge research.

Meanwhile, teaching by research students remains a large part of many universities degree programmes and they must be given employment conditions which allow them to carry out their research, minimising stress and economic insecurity.

Unfortunately, it seems not everybody sees it that way. Recently, the hashtag #markmywork has appeared as disgruntled students take to Twitter to complain about the impending assessment boycott, part of the industrial action in a campaign for fair pay in HE.

Academic staff take their responsibilities towards their students seriously, but this includes a responsibility to future cohorts also.

The increased marketisation of HE through higher tuition fees and an increased role of the private sector alongside attacks on pay and conditions places a duty on academics to defend the sector and, in the absence of productive negotiations with employers, this can only be through industrial action.

Hopefully the use of such a strong form of action will end the dispute quickly and alleviate the need for future disruption. When it was last used in 2006 it was a successful strategy for UCU’s predecessor the AUT.

The current marketisation has a final worrying trend, turning students into customers.

The academic environment should be one of collegiality, understanding and tolerance.

It is not unheard of for undergraduate students to present research at high-level conferences and see exceptional work published in academic journals.

Students and their tutors, lecturers and professors are all there for a common cause — to build understanding about the world.

This is not an environment in which a “customer focus” is appropriate. Instead, it is one which requires mutual respect between staff and students and a shared responsibility to preserve the role of universities, teaching and research in our society.

A reversal of this trend, by industrial action if necessary, and the establishment of secure employment conditions for researchers is essential for retaining our world-class standards in higher education.

Robin Jervis teaches at a Russell Group university and is a member of UCU. He writes in a strictly personal capacity.