Editorial: The graduates of today will not enjoy the sort of pensions their striking lecturers do

This evening it was confirmed that all students at Queen’s University Belfast will graduate this year, but an estimated 750 will have their classifications pending. There had been uncertainty as to graduations, due to industrial action by academics over pay, conditions and pensions. The University and College Union (UCU) has led strikes this year and a marking boycott.

Queen’s has said any student with a pending classification can continue to a postgraduate course. This is welcome but it is alarming that graduations were ever in doubt. Those graduates will emerge into a world in which they will almost certainly have to work beyond 70. In fact, the generation now aged 50 will have to wait to 68 to get the state pension, so you can imagine how long people less than half their age will have to work. Why? Because people are living longer. This is a triumph of science but has wreaked havoc with pensions in workplaces except public ones. For years private employees have been in so-called defined contribution pension schemes, rather than final salary ones. The latter pensions are so unaffordable they bankrupt businesses yet in the public sector they have continued with minor reform. The cost is borne by the taxpayer, most of whom are private sector workers who can only dream of such a pension.

Someone on the UK average wage of £28,000 would need a private pension fund of £400,000 to get the index linked pension for life, half their salary (£14k) that is the norm for someone on that wage in the public sector with long service). A tiny fraction of private workers will have such a fund and most less than half it, even after three decades in post.

Lecturers have legitimate complaint on matters such as being diverted from teaching to administration. But in their grievance over pensions, the reforms they resist are essential.