Page 2 | I applied for the Voluntary Redundancy

Newcareerat50 · 2025-02-28T08:01:46+00:00

Posting here because it’s still a secret and I have a lot of feelings. I am 50 and have been working at this university since my very first job as a lecturer straight out of my PhD (the early 2000s. When it was good). Luckily, my expertise will translate to industry. I have a skill. The VR buys time. I will need to keep earning the same income eventually. I worry there won’t be VR next time. I am relieved, and scared, and mostly sad. My job would have been safe, but it’s getting so grim. I don’t see how the university will function with cuts this deep. Our university has replaced academic heads with managers who are remarkably not curious about what we do. I love teaching. I am 50! Why have I stayed so long? What else can I do? Wish me luck.

Original poster

Newcareerat50 · 06/03/2025 15:55

The other issue was when the cap on how many student each university could accept was lifted. I work at what was a mid-tarriff university. It had an excellent reputation in a few areas, was unique in enough ways to attract a lot of good, but not top students. We taught and cared for them very well.

Then Russell Group unis like Liverpoool, Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham, Exeter could take as many students as they like. They like a lof students They start taking more students with lower marks and cramming them in and hiring staff on fixed term contracts. School leavers struggle to see beyond league tables and take up places as these universities, and no one comes to our mid-tarriff university anymore when they can go to the Russell Group.

Maybe we don't need so many universities. Maybe its an appropriate market correction. But something has been lost.

I am not confident that my, failing, regional and now low-tarriff uni is actually going to give me VR. I am valued for working like a dog and covering all the teaching that my staff team dump on me when they need (fill in the blank) leave.

OP posts:

OxfordInkling · 06/03/2025 16:36

@Newcareerat50 id forgotten about the cap being lifted - yes, you’re right, that was a massive disruption and should never have happened.

theribbonroom · 06/03/2025 23:08

I am working in a fixed term contract in a low tariff uni in professional services.
I can't believe the money that is being spent on stuff while at the same time there are people likely to be made redundant - vacancies frozen.

GCAcademic · 07/03/2025 13:18

theribbonroom · 06/03/2025 23:08

I am working in a fixed term contract in a low tariff uni in professional services.
I can't believe the money that is being spent on stuff while at the same time there are people likely to be made redundant - vacancies frozen.

Interesting. What kind of stuff? In my academic department there is no budget for anything at all now, not even replacing people's laptops or PCs when they die. No tea and coffee for visitors on open days (a false economy, in my view, if recruitment is your priority). Yet, I see endless, proliferating and pointless "initiatives" being churned up by central PS and various PVCs and I can't work out where the money is coming from.

Pepperama · 08/03/2025 18:41

OxfordInkling · 05/03/2025 13:07

@KilledAnotherPlant the sector started to dive with the Blair decision that half should go to uni. Degrees cost money, and when they were rarer, it was worth paying for it. But there was a 50% target which set the stage for the next act in the crisis.

Universities expanded, but in terms of home students and internationals. Yay, bums on seats, all bringing in the cash. Salaries of the top bods rose (though, notably, not for the rest) and there was investment (borrowing based) in fancy buildings and other things that looked nice). Some investments were needed, but others…not so much.

It was an era of expansion. But then it started to go wrong. Turns out that borrowing has to be repaid. This becomes harder and harder when the fees you are allowed to charge fail to rise at all, let alone with inflation. You become reliant on milking money from the internationals and grad students to try and keep the ship afloat (and continue to pay the captains ridiculous sums). You have no wiggle room for shocks - which come in the form of the financial crash, Brexit, wars, and hostility to immigration due to insufficient care being paid to the majority of the coal inhabitants..

To compound matters, there’s an ever increasing weight of regulations weighing you down. In the same way the government tries to make schools responsible for everything, that ideology infects the HE sector (or how it’s viewed). Rules and regulations proliferate, meaning you need an army of managers just to handle them all. Every thing that happens to a student becomes your fault, regardless of whether you had anything to do with it.

And the tsunami of SEN issues heading up from schools also have to be accommodated - putting pressure on the teaching staff who you can’t afford to provide with help because there’s no money now. So you accommodate by allowing twenty seven opportunities to resit. The disability centre tells the lecturers they have to differentiate all their slides and be forever available to everyone. You remove the research periods (and then wonder why your top researchers hate working for you now).

Your admin staff seem to come and go like via a revolving door. All institutional memory of how systems work and what needs to be done, when, is lost because you pay so badly that no one sticks around. admin workload magically transfers on to the academics (who can’t run the systems either), increasing their workload yet further - but don’t worry! the top echelons are going to implement some random expensive programme that won’t work, without ever asking what people need, rather than using the money to hire competent help.

Then comes the day that you can no longer cook the books enough to look viable. Game over. But you’re too big to fail and your demise will destroy the economy of a town/city/entire county. So there are more loans and deals done in the background, so that you can continue to stumble along as a zombie entity, for another 20 years, progressively decaying until you collapse.

Spot on.

KStockHERO · 11/03/2025 14:15

smooththecat · 05/03/2025 14:09

Sure, I’m in tech manufacturing but on the software side. Had already developed some of the skills. However, I cannot recommend the way I went about things in terms of career change. It would have been quicker to go back and redo both UG and Masters degrees. I had funds behind me but not enough to do that.

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Thank you, I hope you're loving your new career 😀

KStockHERO · 11/03/2025 14:18

GCAcademic · 07/03/2025 13:18

Interesting. What kind of stuff? In my academic department there is no budget for anything at all now, not even replacing people's laptops or PCs when they die. No tea and coffee for visitors on open days (a false economy, in my view, if recruitment is your priority). Yet, I see endless, proliferating and pointless "initiatives" being churned up by central PS and various PVCs and I can't work out where the money is coming from.

Show quote history

I'd also be interested in hearing the take of professional services staff on this.

Our academic budgets have also been cut right to the bone while central services and initiatives have been expanded hugely. I can actually see a very clear rift developing between academic and PS colleagues because of this.

MatchaTea1 · 20/03/2025 22:52

KStockHERO · 11/03/2025 14:18

I'd also be interested in hearing the take of professional services staff on this.

Our academic budgets have also been cut right to the bone while central services and initiatives have been expanded hugely. I can actually see a very clear rift developing between academic and PS colleagues because of this.

Show quote history

I took VR as a professional services staff member last year. I’d worked in my old department for just over 20 years so got a decent payout as the uni has an enhanced redundancy package. My reasons for wanting to jump ship was that the university seems to want an army of interchangeable drones who can move from one role to the next with specialists or those with institutional knowledge no longer valued.

All the interesting work we did was being centralised and the quirkiness of individual departments was being stripped away. I knew I wanted to leave when the dean told us in a staff meeting that we were ‘no longer a recruiting university but a marketing one’. I think you are right in that once integrated departments where academics and PS stuff rubbed along well and provided mutual support will be a thing of the past.

Mostly I saw VS as a once in a lifetime opportunity and worried if I’d stuck around for compulsory redundancies (which according to ex-colleagues are now imminent) that the generous redundancy package would be much lessened.

Patterncarmen · 23/03/2025 23:49

Newcareerat50 · 06/03/2025 15:55

The other issue was when the cap on how many student each university could accept was lifted. I work at what was a mid-tarriff university. It had an excellent reputation in a few areas, was unique in enough ways to attract a lot of good, but not top students. We taught and cared for them very well.

Then Russell Group unis like Liverpoool, Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham, Exeter could take as many students as they like. They like a lof students They start taking more students with lower marks and cramming them in and hiring staff on fixed term contracts. School leavers struggle to see beyond league tables and take up places as these universities, and no one comes to our mid-tarriff university anymore when they can go to the Russell Group.

Maybe we don't need so many universities. Maybe its an appropriate market correction. But something has been lost.

I am not confident that my, failing, regional and now low-tarriff uni is actually going to give me VR. I am valued for working like a dog and covering all the teaching that my staff team dump on me when they need (fill in the blank) leave.

Edited

This is a great article on the decline of universities and the result of lifting the cap

www.historyworkshop.org.uk/education/a-decade-of-crisis/

poetryandwine · 27/03/2025 13:07

Brava, @OxfordInkling

Oh2beatsea · 29/03/2025 21:05

Excellent summary and a true reflection of how it actually is @OxfordInkling

ViciousCurrentBun · 02/04/2025 18:02

@OxfordInkling What a completely spot on post. DH took VS last year as a head of dept, I am already early retired from a University. We have 6 friends who have taken VS at 3 different Universities all age 56 to 61 so have taken their pensions. A mate of DH who works at the University of Nottingham msg him and said that the University needs to get rid of 20% of teaching staff unsure if that is voluntary or compulsory.

Igmum · 03/04/2025 07:50

@OxfordInklingyou’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m still there and fortunate to be in an RG in a subject area popular with students but oh my to the ever expanding SMT and to treating academic time as a totally free resource.