Vice-chancellors ‘prepared to rethink’ USS pension reforms

'UUK says that it is “open to changing the scheme again to reintroduce defined benefits if economic and funding conditions improve”.' - which is already part of their proposal. 'The letter warns that the USS faces a £6.1 billion deficit and that universities cannot afford to increase their contributions to the scheme any further.' - which is also simply restating their current position. In other words, UUK appear to be willing to talk without considering any change to their current position. That doesn't sound like meaningful talks to me.

If UUK want to be taken seriously they need to stop repeating this £6.1 billion deficit nonsense. The pension fund is doing fine (£60 billion and growing with payments significantly lower than contributions). The way to force it into a deficit is if all of the contributing universities went bankrupt at once, at which point we have bigger problems. UUK just wants to offload all their risk onto employees so that they can borrow more money.