Redundancies at your university?

[Oh2beatsea]

Are any of you working at one of the many universities that are struggling financially?
Our university announced the financial pressure it's under recently and they are now talking about redundancies. I know a few in the sector are in a similar position and wondered what stage you might be at and how has the process been managed? Have they offered voluntary redundancy first or have they gone straight to compulsory redundancies?
Unsettling times.

Thank you, I'm not sure I would have guessed that!

No - Lincoln have stopped offering ‘bite size’ French, Spanish and German courses, offered as an add-on to some Business courses. I think these courses ran for 12 weeks. The decision was actually taken last summer, ie before the financial issues, but became embroiled in union negotiations

A friend has told me of the worst one yet I think. There’s currently 6 full time lecturers on a healthcare course with 225 students. They’re making 4 of them redundant. 2 people will keep their jobs but only work at the uni 4 days a week. The other day they will have to go and work a shift at the hospital.

the university are then going to get most of the teaching done by clinical staff from the hospital, paying them an hourly rate to teach a lecture.

Just can’t believe it…..it makes a mockery of the skills which a lecturer has. Not everyone can teach, it’s more than just having the subject knowledge. I would feel so unvalued if I worked there. I also would not want to have to work a clinical shift once a week. There’s a reason I left the nhs! And also 2 part time staff for over 200 students…..answering emails, marking, planning timetables, going to meetings, prepping the lectures! I would leave. It’s heartbreaking

That is monstrous. And in Healthcare too, as if that were not something where we needed the highest professional standards to be taught brilliantly. I am so fearful of what is happeninv. My own Hums department is now about 65% smaller staffwise, with a push to recruit as many students as we can. It is unsustainable. I don't know if I am coming or going. Everyone who can is leaving snd not being rreplaced. I am too advanced to be offerred another job. What is endgame? I sill try to cling on till retirement, but also want to less "less arsed" - ref other thread. Feel I have to sign up to all to prove my value.

But it is coming to all, or do some people in HE still feel secure? How I miss the relative innocence of 3 years ago, which we had

@AcademicBurnOut

I'm guessing that course would be accredited somehow if in healthcare - so am surprised those numbers would get past regulations

Anyone got any idea on whether these redundancies are primarily affecting those who are focused on teaching? (rather than research?)

At my husband's university they went for the professors and readers. The teaching fellows weren't put at risk of redundancy. It's going to be an interesting REF submission for his former department, next time around. They were ranked 5th in their UoA in REF2021.

At my place, we have teaching associates rather than fellows - so all on fixed term contracts. It's precarious enough as it is with the pressures alluded to above in the hope of extending or renewing. There's no long term stability as many posts are just not renewed as things are shuffled around and needs change. 😕

At my place it was targeted equally, 20% profs, 20% readers, 20 % senior lecturer, etc, plus professional services. Plus freezing hire and loss of all TAs, as remaining staff had to at least double teaching hours.

@AcademicBurnOut they will be lucky if clinical staff want to do hourly lecturing, I never do it for our local medical school, it's a right faff, takes hours to teach one session and there's no bond/continuity with the students.

My understanding is that they’re going to be told to by the trust as part of their job, so one shift a week for example could be at the uni 🤷‍♀️. I don’t think they will get a choice. I don’t understand how this benefits the hospital trust to be honest.

I have been lucky to have been spared - so far - in this round of redundancies. Horrible meeting this week in which 15 staff at my school were put at risk, with the aim of losing 10. It could easily have been me.
I have every sympathy with colleagues, and there is now talk amongst within my school about offering to go on fractional contracts or take voluntary salary cuts to save jobs. I have been very quiet on this issue so far, because I don't want to engage with this at all. I have given my life and health to this job in the last few years and the institution is treating us really badly. Even if they were to give guarantees this year that such a move would save jobs, how about next year (when I have been living on a lower salary and hence lower savings, pension etc.). Everyone I talked to outside of academia has also said this is a crazy move ("only in academia, etc."). Has something similar been suggested were you are? And is anybody with me on the thought of "this is bonkers"?

The regulators are generally engaged with senior management who are always adept at smoke and mirrors to imply programmes meet fully with regulatory requirements. Students and staff are generally handpicked for any validation events - those likely to actually say how it really is are kept very far away.

Dear heavens

this is SO similar to what’s happened at a literature and languages school in my Uni (south east of England). Horrified that 10 at risk.

But not solely lit and lang at mine though also couple of medical/science Dept like physics and so.

Absolute clusterfuck

At mine, academics came up with idea of going fractional to save posts…I thought, not on your Nelly and guess those proposing it come from dual-income households.

I am actually from a dual income household but am still finding this idea ludicrous. Could still afford life if going on 0.9 but the 'extra' that I would be using is paying for holidays and extra assessments and therapy my two kids are going through. I wouldn't expect any of my colleagues to offer this either if the shoe was on the other foot.

I wouldn’t be up for going part time at all. Problem is everyone would end up doing the same work for less pay 🤷‍♀️

I'm not in a dual-income household and won't be volunteering for this any time soon.

Also going part time has significant impacts on pension plus what happens if future redundancy package is focused on a percentage of your pay? ( as the current package at our university is) It's fraught with issues.

I would absolutely not go part-time unless you were genuinely about to request to do so anyway. (It always looks like a poor deal in academia anyway -- full-time work for part-time pay, it's not like it's a job where you can just work fewer actual shifts.)

I'm in a different situation because I've just voluntarily resigned from my UK professorship. We made an initially temporary move abroad a while ago (I was on mat leave, then research leave, and latterly unpaid leave while I made up my mind) but have decided to stay. My particular job was pretty secure I think, but even in depts like mine the erosion of the conditions and the quality of the education we are offering has been marked over the last decade. It's not the job it was when I started nearly 20 years ago and I don't really have any appetite for it anymore. But it's pretty grim watching what's happening from overseas.

The fractional thing is tricky. I'm taking VS anyway, but if I wasn't I would be tempted to go down to 0.8 (dual income house, but I'm the main earner) to save colleagues/ the integrity of my dept. However, the thing that would probably stop me is that if/when the next round of VS/ redundancies come, the VS payment is calculated on your current salary. So it's a massive risk, as I think the direction of travel for humanities (and my particular department) is very clear. We know there's a 'portfolio review' happening next year as part of the merging of my department with two others, which will include 'streamlining' modules across the new mega-department's programmes and presumably more job losses down the line as part of this consolidation.

It's a shit, shit, shit time in HE and I think we're going to see the HE landscape change quite dramatically over the next 5 years. Fewer providers, fewer young people going to university, etc.

At Surrey - the VS situation is compounded by the restructuring of the entire arts and social sciences faculty. The school of literature and languages which has been targeted is being made part of what looks obviously like a Humanities school (the other two being social sciences school and a business school type school). No humanities school is safe in my view today in the UK and the morale is very low even for those who aren’t in the literature languages boat.

I reckon they go for profs/readers as they tend to be paid more, so cost the uni more.

This - but in my university - the 3 or 4 depts chosen for "further measures" seem to be distributing it right across the board.

So for e.g. Profs in English, but Assoc Prof in translation/morphology, and lecturers/seniorlecturers in languages.

In 3 other depts of same uni - these 3 are NOT being targeted for extra measures - whilst Prof or two did indeed voluntarily take the VS, they also decided to v happily accept VS apps from Readers, SLs and such - and also decided to top it off nicely by simply not renewing contracts for lecturers who were meant to have been renewed.

So wider than just Profs i guess...