# If You Want the University to Change, Don't Theorise—Organise!

## TL;DR

Academics should organize as workers to address challenges like job cuts and market pressures in universities.

## Contribution

The paper emphasizes organizing as praxis for academics to build industrial power in universities.

## Key findings

- Organizing is essential for responding to redundancies and marketisation in higher education.
- Practical steps for organizing are drawn from the author's experience in the University and Colleges Union.
- Long-term strategic aims for academic workers are outlined as part of workplace organizing.

## Abstract

Organising as workers to build industrial power within our universities is a key element of how we respond to redundancies, marketisation and other political pressures on higher education. This piece argues that academics, as a subset of university workers, must interrogate their own working practices and commit to organising within their workplaces as a form of praxis. Practical steps of what organising might involve and long‐term strategic aims are identified drawing on the author's experience of organising within the University and Colleges Union in UK universities.