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.

Reserves means all assets, including the value of the land and buildings that make up the campus. Of course these can increase in value while still running a deficit.

It's disingenuous of UCU to call this "money in the bank". Universities can't sell off buildings to pay wages...!

Applications are up for programmes in my dept. Programmes on one side of the dept regularly gets 100% in the NSS. We bring in tons of research funding (for a humanities dept) thanks to two incredibly specialist, world-leading research groups. We're still being utterly decimated. We have the highest 'savings target' of any dept in the University. This isn't (just) about money. It's a strategic, targeted attack on the arts and humanities.

And yes, I'm the one with a 20-year career about to go down the toilet. And yes, some of my research has been world-leading. But I can be as world-leading as I like, it's still not going to help me get another job because there are ZERO jobs being advertised in my field this year. It sucks. I'm also the main earner for my family. My kids are still young and will be financially dependent on me for at least another 13 years. So I'm having to think about retraining in something that can potentially and quickly get me back up to my current earning level. At nearly 50. Wasn't my career plan... Oh, and the sum total of my university's support on that front was to direct us to LinkedIn. fuckers

This sounds SO like whats happening at the School of Literature and Languages at Surrey too :/

Not sure if this helps but a few of my DCs teachers are ex-uni. Probably not what you signed up for all those years ago.

I seem to be blocked from accessing "the knowledge partnership" the education consultancy that is being used by universities in their "portfolio review" -what about anyone else?

I just tried and cannot open their website either

Interesting @AcademicBurnOut do you think we are blocked or is it down?

We had a big redundancy programme five years ago and we've been going through this current restructure for a year, now. I think they did review the previous lot but the report has been buried - presumably it wasn't very kind to our brave and noble leaders, so us plebs will never get to see it.

Seems like a problem with their security certificate?? Normally you can still see the website if you click on the “I understand the risk and wish to enter the website anyway” button but even that isn’t working. I don’t think we’re blocked

@Flockameanie

Terrible

So sorry @Flockameanie

Don't know if we're at the same university, but probably common pattern across the RG. Competition for students means investing in impressive building projects to look good on Open Day. Lots of inefficiency - rooms far too hot, staff don't know how to operate expensive tech equipment, so just use white board pens. They don't have money to pay the actual staff that are the heart of the thing! People working ridiculous hours. No pay for people on marking boycott. Now redundancies. Disastrous mismanagement.

I don’t mean this to be offensive, but fuck that shit! Teachers are leaving the profession in droves for a reason. It’s all the crap bits of my job (especially the admin and dealing with endless new pedagogical ‘approaches’) without any of the good bits (the research - ie the reason that any academic got into this line of work in the first place), supervising research projects, etc. And worse working conditions for less money.

But thank you folks for the empathy! I’m not the only one in this boat, I know. It will probably all work out ok in the end - who knows what exciting new career ventures are ahead for me.

It’s such a sorry state of affairs for HE though. Commiserations for everyone else going through this.

Completely agree with not wanting to go into teaching. I don’t want to spend my life doing classroom management with a bunch of poorly behaved teens.

plus i don’t have qualified teacher status (pretty sure my pg cert doesn’t give me that) so i don’t particularly want to do teacher training.

I’d rather do minimum wage admin or retail work.

That's home applications. Sadly, international applications are down closer to 60%, sector-wide.

Costs are higher than ever before. To stay in the black, universities need to increase student numbers by around 5% every year (obviously an unsustainable plan, but the only one we've got, since home fees remain frozen). Costs for a university go up by at least 5% every year (inflationary pay increases plus increments are the biggest driver of this). For the majority of universities in the UK, whose academic staff are in the Teachers' Pension Scheme, employer contributions have risen from 23% to 28% this year. That's 5% additional cost per academic. We are talking an impact of millions in each university.

These are all necessary and good things for staff, but they are only funded via student number increases. A drop in student numbers is a drop from a necessary 5% growth year on year, so a 6% drop in home applications translates to an 11% drop to budget.

I hope this has been helpful.

We would feel lucky if our home applications were down only 6%. Ours are down 18%!

Eek! I thought the last UCAS report said 6%? ours are up although Covid gave everyone a battering.

I think that’s figures for this current year. But applications for Sept/oct from overseas students have fallen off a cliff. So the storm is coming rather than already being here.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20240301104624163#:~:text=She%20said%20the%20survey%20by,using%20data%20from%20London%20Economics.

44% drop in postgrad overseas students for courses just started in Jan.

I guess undergraduate figures we won’t know for sure for a while yet but it’s looking bad.

You’d like to think the govt would backtrack on their immigration policy changes which have caused this but I doubt it.

They see immigration as more of a vote winner than keeping universities afloat. Most people won’t care about that until their child is affected…..either can’t get a place at uni as so many have closed or their kid’s course folds mid way through it. By then it’s too late. Of course the govt will blame the individual universities of gross incompetence and refute any claims their immigration policy has had an impact.

Not sure if this has already been posted, but QMUCU page listing current and recent cuts/redundancies

https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/

That list has been updated since it was first posted further down thread. Now 48 universities (out of, what 150?) including several RGs with current or very recent redundancy programmes

Some of the amounts are crazy, how is Coventry going to save £100 million? Is that a one off saving or an annual saving?