UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN: URGENT, please read if you or your DC applied/attend

[LincolnConcern]

Over last week, enormous redundancy plans have been announced internally at the University of Lincoln, with an aim to cull 220 staff. This has been disproportionately spread across subjects, so some courses are due to be stripped to the barest of bones and will be massively impacted when it comes to module choices, quality of teaching, and general environment.

I implore you to contact the university and check how your/their course might be affected, because these actions have been timed so that the changes will take place quietly over the summer, away from unsuspecting students who may turn up in September to find that their course has been decimated.

Understandably, this has also resulted in strike action being planned, which will disrupt teaching even further.

“This is all a shame, but,” you might reasonably assume, “perhaps these courses are being selected due to their poor performance”. They are not. On the contrary, staff report that one of the hardest hit departments will be history, which is currently ranked the highest in the entire university for overall GPA and outputs, and achieved a triple gold award for its excellence in teaching in the latest TEF.

Please just check - sorry if this affects you. 😥

Thanks @titchy that link is really useful and it is great to see it all in one place. I am not looking to start a course but working in HE and looking at job opportunities so this is very helpful to understand

I didn’t say she can’t talk. I said I didn’t think she should be doing what she’s doing. It will make the situation at Lincoln worse not better.

anyway I have no skin in this particular game since I have no connection to Lincoln so I’ll leave it there.

Universities now lose money on teaching home undergraduate students and undertaking government-funded research. They increasingly rely on international students who pay higher tuition fees.

Unfortunately, Lincoln has never likely to attract a large number of international students who pay higher tuition fees. Just 4.4% of students at Lincoln are international students. Without the international fees, Lincoln is the unenvious position of seeing costs rising every year with little prospect of an increase in income.

In contrast, universities such as Imperial, UCL, LSE. etc. attract very large numbers of international students. Over 70% of students at LSE are international students and 60% of students at Imperial and UCL. These universities can keep afloat as they have so many undergraduate and postgraduate students paying high tuition fees,

Just to add that even universities doing well are slashing staff numbers departments such as history.

Many of the teaching staff at the history department in UCL will be made redundant at the end of the academic year. Durham also had a voluntary severence scheme recently.

Not sure the impact of postgraduates but I just went to DS's Lincoln Master's graduation and the vast vast majority were overseas students.

If you believe this then I think you may be deluded. The uni I worked at had a similar cull in 2017 and managed it in a scattergun and haphazard way which was embarrassing and resulted in many staff who hadn't been targeted leaving too, as the management were exposed as the clueless bunch they were. I really would like to believe that you're right but, in my experience, university management are ill equipped to manage in this environment, and possibly any environment.

Watching with interest as DN is a first year history student at Lincoln. Are current students likely to be affected?

It’s happening across the RG unis too, as international students are increasingly choosing to go to Australia or Canada instead - in part due to the ‘hostile environment’ re immigration and the changes to dependant visas.

Guess what!- most universities are in the same boat love. My university has announced a wide spread voluntary severance package this week. Every single week in the HE press there have been announcements!

Typically current students will find the number of optional modules to choose fromsignificantly less. Sorry

Times HE this week:
Too hard, too fast? One in three campuses now making redundancies
Number of institutions making redundancies passes 50, reflecting scale of financial challenge facing sector, but even some senior leaders fear rush into irreversible changes will do long-term harm

As others have said, this is happening right across the UK in post-92s and RG unis and everything in between. The sector is in dire financial straits - inflation means that the money brought in by home students is now worth about 2/3 of what it was when the current fee structure was introduced. Universities are increasingly reliant on international students but the government is deliberately making it unappealing to them to come here as they have lumped them in with the migration figures they want to cut.

And yes it is affecting academic staff and professional services staff equally - where I am (not Lincoln) they want to reduce staff numbers significantly as a way of cutting costs and don't really care where you work, ie which role or dept.

https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/lincoln-news/new-university-lincoln-offices-built-8597643.amp

they can spend 17 million on this though. So maybe things aren’t too bad 🤷🏻‍♀️

Bet you anything we are!

Don't be ridiculous. Customers (for that is what students are) deserve to have all the information available when taking a purchasing decision.

My dss works at Sheffield Uni.

They want to cut 200 staff

Totally agree. I’d rather have the facts so any prospective student knows what they are going to be getting into substantial debt for. It’s abundantly clear there are simply too many universities at present with an unsustainable funding model.

As this is a year old thread, I’m just posting the link to all the current redundancy plans again. Almost 100 universities now: https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/

Thank you for posting, OP.

The entire sector is in a mess and students and their families do have a right to know IMO. I don’t think most pay much attention until something actually happens which affects their DC, but that is the way of the world.

The only real answer is to either raise Home fees, or to raise taxes and allocate more to the universities. I don’t see a government of any political persuasion doing either of those any time soon.

Quite honestly the next best solution for the sector as a whole, though obviously a brutal one, would be to let a few of the worst managed universities fail so their funding and resources could be re-allocated. Whether that can be done whilst treating the students and staff at those universities ethically is a separate question. I am not suggesting it absent this condition, which may be nearly impossible to meet.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/higher_education/5164744-some-universities-will-go-bust-thread-2?page=17&reply=143511859

this thread takes a wider sector view

Are all universities facing a £30m deficit? No they aren't." he said."

Dundee University to cut 632 jobs to plug £35m deficit
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8yzvmjzy6oo

Cambridge runs up £53m deficit ‘without knowing what happened’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/28/cambridge-university-runs-up-53m-debt-without-knowing-why/

Edinburgh University to seek £140m in savings
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c204kn5n4z6o

[Cardiff] university had previously said it had to take action to address a £30m black hole in its budget
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy08v7jxr20o

Coventry faces ‘new financial reality’ after £59 million deficit
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/coventry-faces-new-financial-reality-after-ps59-million-deficit

Just a few of the other universities with huge deficits.

To be strictly accurate, Edinburgh doesn’t have a huge deficit. It is seeking savings in order to avoid a deficit position.

The TEF is an institutional award - it is not broken down by subject, so History couldn't have achieved a gold rating.

Righteo. So what do you want them to do? Not have redundancies and go bankrupt? What are you hoping strike action will achieve in this scenario?

And LSE is undergoing an 'operational excellence programme' - management consultants are in, reviewing all processes. Apparently the aim is not redundancies, but restructuring - but that is obviously what they are going to say at this point.