University of Hull trouble.

[felissamy]

Adding to the shit show that is UKHE - Hull university.

The 127 staff are due to be sacked by Monday 9 December (2024) as part of a programme of cuts to save £23m over two years. In a letter sent to UCU earlier this month, the university claimed it needs to make the savings because of an apparent £7m fall in domestic and international student income and to meet the requirements of its banking covenants with lenders.

UCU believes at least 95 of the staff set to be sacked are academics, which would mean a loss of around one in 10 of the already reduced academic workforce. In some areas the cuts are much deeper, including in biomedicine (20%) and the faculty of science and engineering (22%), where around one in five staff are set to go. The plans include the closure of chemistry with existing students only guaranteed instruction until the end of this academic year (2024-25).

My daughter got an offer from Hull in Early Clearing - she's still getting emails from them urging her to accept it even though she's actually asked them to stop as she's accepted an offer from somewhere else.

So they're clearly very keen to get people.

Thanks for telling us about this, OP.

Your summary of the situation comports with UCU’s view. UCU also largely blame a the administration for a failed, overambitious green initiative.

The situation in Chemistry is appalling. Universities have a fiduciary duty to see their students through to the degree.

UCU say that Hull is sitting on £100M of reserves. Taking these steps seems disproportional

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/what-is-a-university-surplus/

Probably worth reading this before suggesting any uni uses its reserves - it would mean selling buildings.

Those at Hull have my every sympathy though. The loss of Hull would be devastating, particularly to the local economy.

UCU say that Hull is sitting on £100M of reserves. Taking these steps seems disproportional

I’m not sure where that number comes from as reserves at last financial report date were £200m but the issue is what reserves ( equivalent of shareholders funds) are represented by. In Hull’s case they have negative reserves if you exclude fixed assets ( buildings and equipment) as you can’t use those to pay salaries. If you look at the cash flow their cash reduced by £50m last year. The previous year they increased their pension provision by £30m ( non cash) but that represents a future liability that will have to be paid at some point in the future. It’s clear that they are financially quite shaky.

I am sure UCUs lecturers strikes which led to students at many universities not graduating/getting degrees marked didn’t help attract international students,

The support for students there is shocking too! I know some former lecturers and they weren’t treated great during Covid either so sounds like not a lot has changed

My DS was looking at Hull for MChem for this year, we went to an open day last summer and had subject talks, tours etc. Then just before the 2nd open day he checked on UCAS and it was no longer offering any chemistry courses, when he contacted Hull they eventually told him they were not offering it for 2024 entry even though it was still on their website but hoped to offer for 2025, looks like that's no longer the case.

Thanks for the info on reserves, @titchy and @LaPalmaLlama

Oh no I loved it when I went there!

It's not going to be the only university making significant redundancies. There's one not too far from there that will be following suit.

There's pretty much half the sector with significant redundancy programmes:
https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/

Thanks for the link. Very useful to know, a bit shocking and just sad.

Crikey that’s quite a shocking list.
I don’t understand how somewhere like York who’ve recently built new halls on East campus now say they need 34m and looking to get rid of 400-700 staff. Surely the additional accom was costed (and needed), so why the deficit?

The best drama department in the country.

Boring accounting answer but it’s because capital expenditure ( building the halls) doesn’t go through the income statement, at least not all at once. You recognise the building as an asset and then write it down over its life ( probably 50 years or so). I agree it has sucked cash that it seems they don’t have though.

However, possible that they committed to building the halls before they knew the full impact of covid and Brexit on patterns of study so they expected undergrad expansion that didn’t happen. I guess there’s also a bit of an arms race between the Unis re halls in terms of attracting students in the first place.

it’s a really tough situation for the Unis but I do think there needs to be some contraction because structurally I don’t think current levels of Uni attendance are sustainable or the best way to skill a workforce- while I accept “education for educations sake” , realistically most people go to Uni primarily to improve their career prospects, not because they have a passionate and all consuming interest in Russian political history ( talking about me here).