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. 😥

Yes, buildings and facilities are how you attract more students, in order to remain financially sustainable. Tell me you understand this?!

I don't know why British Steel would be supported, to save only 2,700 jobs and then a uni should be allowed to go under. My uni alone supports > 4,000 jobs.

I agree.

Applicants have been sold one thing, accepted, and then will get a ‘sorry but’ email when it’s too late to do anything/find a new place.

On the contrary, whenever there are voluntary severance schemes the admin (or professional services) staff tend to make up the majority of the savings. A lot of them like PAs, accountants, project managers and HR professionals can more easily take the money and find another job in another sector. It's the academics who stay.

I don't know why British Steel would be supported, to save only 2,700 jobs and then a uni should be allowed to go under. My uni alone supports > 4,000 jobs.

As I sit and look at the prospect of cutting courses and staff for the third year running I'm asking the same question.
These are courses that recruit relatively well and train people to work in a sector that is under resourced, but the courses are expensive to run due to regulatory requirements.

What buildings and facilities which aren’t open to being used by the students?

Maybe because it is a good idea not to have to rely on potential adversaries for basic materials to build the countries defences.

Oh apologies, my bad! Didn't click through the first time.

Very very sad indeed, and grim for students to have to make choices based on which unis they think might cut their chosen course or not.
Can I ask a really stupid question? Is it the financial deficit that has led to contact hours being so low on some courses? I've been to a few offer holder days with DC, and the unis have an average of about 6/8 contact hours a week. This is insane to me- paying over 10K for so few contact hours. I realise that staff will be working more than that, with marking etc, but it still feels nuts- I spend more time than that cooking!

Well I would prefer to raise Home fees or taxes (in that order) but I don’t imagine that will happen any time soon. Governments from both parties have been warning of the possibility of university failure(s) for some time.

To my knowledge British Steel didn’t go hog wild in the way that the university system did when £9K fees were introduced: there was a huge amount of poorly planned capital expenditure - some but far from all of which was necessary - and administrative growth.
British Steel seems to have been a victim of international economic forces, and the government took the decision not to become the only G7 nation without the capacity to make our own virgin steel.

As things stand I cannot think of a nation or consortium of nations it would be wise to rely upon for steel. So the two situations seem quite different.

PS Applogies, my message above was to @DeskJotter

Expenditure on large building projects, which was committed to when income was higher, is one of the reasons so many universities are struggling now.

The university sector has expanded well beyond what is sustainable - there needs to be some significant contraction of the sector. I disagree with increasing fees or taxes for HE as things stand because I think it is very poor value for money for a good proportion of students. It would be far better to have additional investment, if there is to be any, in the Further Education sector.

British Steel has been propped up a number of times by the Government hasn’t it?

Thing is for a number of locations it won’t just be the employees and students of the university impacted if one goes bust, the whole economy of an area will be impacted

British steel is not about jobs or local economy. I am amazed how many posters seem to think it is.

More students than ever are applying to university.

I can totally see that. If British steel folds there’s no other steel manufacturer in the uk which is not good for the uk. If a university folds then there’s lots of other universities and like others have said maybe there’s currently too many universities. Which I get is sad for any university and staff/students affected.

Saying that the govt could make things better without having to step in financially, they could improve overseas students visas back to how they used to be. Think about how many students worldwide will currently want to avoid the USA and can’t go to Canada in previous numbers, as a country we could be capitalising on that.

I agree with your scenario analysis. I believe very strongly that far too many young people are getting into debt for a higher education of dubious value and that this also comes at great cost to the public purse. Resources need to be allocated to training people for jobs that are needed: the "knowledge economy" has not panned out as optimistically envisaged a few decades ago and education and training need to be reengineered to prepare people for a jobs scenario that is more realistic about human potential at population level.

The UK university system has traditionally been predicated on very few teaching hours and a lot of private study, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The traditional phrasing is "to read for a degree" rather than "study at university". Reading, digesting that reading, discussing that reading and writing essays is IMO far superior as a way of internalising knowledge and developing critical thinking skills than copious lectures, note taking and regurgitation (albeit in esoteric formats) that is still common in continental Europe at undergraduate level.

And how many will graduate and end up retraining at college? There are now several subjects where a degree lowers your earning potential. Even for careers like Law only 20% of those who take a law degree manage to become solicitors. And yet they nearly all start adult life with tens of thousands of debt to repay.

The higher education sector is bloated and needs paring back. A lot of the former polys should not have become universities churning out worthless degrees. We need more vocational course graduates, not holders of BAs in Mickey Mouse subjects.

I agree in theory, @Ceramiq . However in truth only strong students seem able to benefit from assigned but unassessed work.

This may be why a number of our students on 2.1s or low Firsts when they leave for a year in North America or Aus/NZ, where there is much more routine assessment, do so well there - they are forced to stop procrastinating. They return and several who maintained the good habits attributed their solid Firsts to this system.

I wish it wasn’t necessary but clearly it does help. OTOH I am not talking about the kind of formal pedagogy you mentioned - we agree there - but a system designed to keep students working.

One of DH friends is a Prof at The University of Nottingham and msg him that they are cutting 20% of posts. Unsure is that’s across all staff group's, voluntary or complusory.

They generally try to do it through voluntary redundancy and retirement as otherwise the unions threaten strikes. But they are likely to struggle at 20%.

Eh? Vanishingly few people with university degrees retrain at college.

Yes, law degrees are notorious for having poor employability, that has been the case for 15-20 years.