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This board is for university-based professionals. Find discussions about A Levels and universities on our Further education forum.

Redundancies at your university?

409 replies

Oh2beatsea · 02/03/2024 17:27

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.

OP posts:
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jennylamb1 · 26/03/2024 20:09

As a PhD researcher who will be 53 when I finish, I've completely discounted the idea of entering the jobs market. I've seen so many really excellent colleagues on 1 year contracts and having to move round the country every year for a new post, preventing them from getting on the housing ladder or looking to settle down with children.

Loveliesbhhfd · 26/03/2024 20:12

What about unis in the north west? How is Lancaster managing ,

gyrt · 26/03/2024 22:07

@Loveliesbhhfd

I noticed Lancaster has been doing increasingly well in league tables

Flockameanie · 26/03/2024 22:11

gyrt · 26/03/2024 22:07

@Loveliesbhhfd

I noticed Lancaster has been doing increasingly well in league tables

I don't know specifically about Lancaster, but league tables mean jack shit. We were top 10 in one league table, top 20 in all, and we're still going through slash-and-burn cuts...

gyrt · 26/03/2024 22:16

Flockameanie · 26/03/2024 22:11

I don't know specifically about Lancaster, but league tables mean jack shit. We were top 10 in one league table, top 20 in all, and we're still going through slash-and-burn cuts...

Sure, I meant I don't think there are any clear specific reasons why they would be in anymore trouble than anyone else. But like you said it sounds like its all rather ideological anyway.

AcademicBurnOut · 27/03/2024 07:11

Yes there seems to be no correlation between league tables and financial issues. Aren’t Durham going through redundancies?

DoorPath · 27/03/2024 08:08

gyrt · 26/03/2024 22:07

@Loveliesbhhfd

I noticed Lancaster has been doing increasingly well in league tables

That is completely unrelated to what is happening.

DoorPath · 27/03/2024 08:11

@gyrt it is not ideological, that is a really juvenile take. Read some of the articles linked in this thread, and my post above outlining a bit more insight into how the finances of universities work. This is your sector, you really ought to educate yourself about the national picture.

decionsdecisions62 · 27/03/2024 08:34

League tables 🤣🤣🤣 I find looking at those about as significant as I would reading tarot cards!

gyrt · 27/03/2024 09:18

@DoorPath

Wow. How incredibly rude and condescending. Are you like that in real life or only with the anonymity of the internet?

I know RGs are in trouble too. As I said, I was responding to the person who singled out Lancaster - out of whole of the NW - as if it was somehow a failing uni.

And of course league tables matter, if somewhere - mid tier, post-92 - is rapidly improving I would say it may be a sign it is well-run. Not necessarily of course (I know of a post-92 that rapidly improved under a lunatic VC) but it could be a sign.

And of course it is partly ideological, why are cost effective, high performing A&H and Social Sciences deps being targeted over loss-making STEM?

gyrt · 27/03/2024 09:23

And I understand factors in home countries are impacting international students also, but the UK government trying to dissuade them is also ideological - they bring a huge amount to the economy aside from HE.

GinForBreakfast · 27/03/2024 09:59

decionsdecisions62 · 27/03/2024 08:34

League tables 🤣🤣🤣 I find looking at those about as significant as I would reading tarot cards!

League tables are an artificial construct, imperfect, subjective and biased. Problem is, lots of people and organisations take them as gospel so they do matter.

You can "game" league tables - and some universities devote significant resources to do so - and improve ratings where there are no tangible improvements to teaching, student experience or research quality.

I treat it a bit like Crufts.

drwitch · 27/03/2024 10:30

If we were in charge what could we do to solve the problem?

gyrt · 27/03/2024 11:09

@drwitch

In charge of the country? Welcome and value international students, change funding model to graduate tax (much fairer), value advanced education and research across the disciplines and across unis, including the huge social, economic and cultural value of creative arts and humanities. Not put the burden of all welfare for students on university because other parts of public services are struggling....rejoin the EU :p. Rethink how research funding is allocated...

In charge of the sector/ unis? There are some interesting implied recommendations here: eg, allowing students to chose a wide range of elective courses (which could potentially support more struggling courses - the article gives the example of music which I think is a good one; would guess it was the type of thing many students would be interested in as an elective but might avoid as a degree.). Allowing students to take longer doing a degree, as they do in so many Euro countries, would put less pressure on students, staff and welfare services. (However, I guess the funding model would have to change to allow this). And while investment in estates is needed, unis need to be careful how new builds are funded and not build for the sake of it.

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/there-may-be-ways-to-make-uk-higher-education-cheaper-to-run/

There may be ways to make UK higher education cheaper to run | Wonkhe

Is UK higher education really the world's third most expensive way of getting a degree - and if it is, what might the alternatives look like? Jim Dickinson explores the hypotheses

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/there-may-be-ways-to-make-uk-higher-education-cheaper-to-run

titchy · 27/03/2024 13:22

And of course it is partly ideological, why are cost effective, high performing A&H and Social Sciences deps being targeted over loss-making STEM?

Because A and H and SS are loss making - why of earth would you think they're not? Confused

It's NOT ideological - it's financial.

gyrt · 27/03/2024 14:08

titchy · 27/03/2024 13:22

And of course it is partly ideological, why are cost effective, high performing A&H and Social Sciences deps being targeted over loss-making STEM?

Because A and H and SS are loss making - why of earth would you think they're not? Confused

It's NOT ideological - it's financial.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldselect/ldsctech/37/3709.htm

  1. Imperial College London explained the different costs associated with STEM courses, compared with a humanities course, as follows: "in 2009-10, the full cost to the College of educating a HEFCE fundable taught student in some engineering subjects was £15.7K per annum. Hence, despite the rise in undergraduate tuition fees, leading institutions will still face a deficit on much of their taught STEM provision. In contrast, we calculate that the average cost to Russell Group institutions of educating a humanities student is around £7.1K per annum."
gyrt · 27/03/2024 14:11

"Another possible consequence of the new funding model is that cheaper humanities courses may end up cross-subsidising the generally more expensive STEM courses, "thus creating an unhealthy and unwelcome tension between different areas of academia".287] Humanities students are likely to object strongly to their fees being used to subsidise other courses and STEM students may object to funding allocated to STEM being spent elsewhere"

(on the fee rises 2012)

FurryGiraffe · 27/03/2024 14:42

That paper is nearly 12 years old. UK HE has changed beyond recognition since then. It was once the case that humanities and social sciences were cross subsidising STEM. It's really not the case now.

All the A&H/SS departments I'm aware of that are facing redundancies/course closures are making losses. My institution isn't looking at redundancies (yet) but nobody in A&H is breaking even.

gyrt · 27/03/2024 15:41

FurryGiraffe · 27/03/2024 14:42

That paper is nearly 12 years old. UK HE has changed beyond recognition since then. It was once the case that humanities and social sciences were cross subsidising STEM. It's really not the case now.

All the A&H/SS departments I'm aware of that are facing redundancies/course closures are making losses. My institution isn't looking at redundancies (yet) but nobody in A&H is breaking even.

Of course its old, but I'm assuming it hasn't changed so STEM is any cheaper.

2019 KPMG analysis found that cost of humanities teaching also less than 9k

I find it hard to accept that government attitude makes no impact at all on what unis are doing.

But yes maybe this is all wrong and they are targeting the only departments that are making losses and it has nothing to do with the subject area.

Phphion · 27/03/2024 15:56

Those quotes are about home student undergraduate fees. These do not represent the total income / expenditure of an academic department, i.e., whether it is profit-making or loss making, even less so now than was the case in 2012.

Since 2012, diversification of income has become increasingly important, primarily through increases in numbers of overseas UGs and PGTs, but also in things like commercialisation, sponsorship, executive education and tapping into various types of research-related income outside the standard UKRI funding streams.

It is the total income / expenditure arising from all these income streams that determines whether a department is profit or loss, and unfortunately many A&H subjects and some SS subjects perform poorly in these areas (and have little potential to do better) so they have ended up as loss making departments.

This is particularly an issue now, as the cost of teaching a home undergraduate student has gone up considerably since 2012 so that even cheap to teach courses in A&H and SS may still make a loss on home UG students, and they have no or limited other revenue streams to off-set this loss.

There have also been all kinds of other things going on in HE and the government since 2012 that have reduced the financial viability of A&H both now and in the future, from both the point of view of universities and of the government (who, when you take into account loan repayments and write-offs, subsidise the teaching of A&H subjects more than any other subjects).

As academics, I am sure that many of us would wish that academic excellence and education were the primary determinants used to judge whether an academic department or subject was viable, but that isn't HE now. Unless you can leverage your excellence into cold, hard cash, you are always going to be vulnerable. The bottom line is always financial.

drwitch · 27/03/2024 16:12

The problem with A&H is two fold - first knowledge is a bit more specialised - so much harder for Dr A to teach a module designed by Dr B. This means that to create a workeable programme you need more staff - so its very hard to make small departments cost effective
The other problem is that as posts don't get filled - the profile of academics gets very top heavy and expensive - more profs fewer early career researchers

STEM is complicated - the OfS does top up but I have really found it hard to find out whether this is enough to make up the shortfall

For largish departments in say economics - teaching can be very cheap - well under half the tuition fee

GinForBreakfast · 27/03/2024 16:39

There are no profits and losses of course, just surpluses and deficits 😉

It may be possible to drill down to individual programmes and even modules in terms of income and costs but there so are many assumptions and inaccuracies in the data. E.g. Humanities may be required to make the same contribution to overheads as STEM yet be much less expensive in terms of those overheads - depending on how they are calculated and what's included.

Business schools tend to create the largest surpluses, but their success is often contingent by collaboration with STEM and Arts/Humanities/Social Sciences colleagues, so they need each other.

It's not sustainable to run courses with high costs and low student numbers, but the deciding factor is almost always the number of international students a course can attract.

DoorPath · 27/03/2024 17:33

gyrt · 27/03/2024 09:18

@DoorPath

Wow. How incredibly rude and condescending. Are you like that in real life or only with the anonymity of the internet?

I know RGs are in trouble too. As I said, I was responding to the person who singled out Lancaster - out of whole of the NW - as if it was somehow a failing uni.

And of course league tables matter, if somewhere - mid tier, post-92 - is rapidly improving I would say it may be a sign it is well-run. Not necessarily of course (I know of a post-92 that rapidly improved under a lunatic VC) but it could be a sign.

And of course it is partly ideological, why are cost effective, high performing A&H and Social Sciences deps being targeted over loss-making STEM?

League tables matter not a whit in the context of this conversation - i.e. who is in a deficit budget and who is not. Many universities made what were sensible decisions at the time - to run a temporary deficit budget to fund a large project to support future growth. This was on the basis of projected growth in both home and international numbers. Factors affecting recruitment really were unforeseeable, and so this is not a good/poor management issue, and it is CERTAINLY not a league table issue.

Don't be silly. Courses making a surplus are not being cut in favour of courses making a loss. You are misunderstanding the figures here (if you even have access to them, which unless you are involved in senior management of the university, you almost certainly don't).

DoorPath · 27/03/2024 17:34

gyrt · 27/03/2024 09:23

And I understand factors in home countries are impacting international students also, but the UK government trying to dissuade them is also ideological - they bring a huge amount to the economy aside from HE.

Yes, the government's dissuasion of international students is ideological. University closure of courses is not.

DoorPath · 27/03/2024 17:35

drwitch · 27/03/2024 10:30

If we were in charge what could we do to solve the problem?

Good question. There is no one coming to save the university sector, including Labour. We will need to radically restructure - confederacies of universities, for example - to make mass savings.

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