Severe academic cuts at Lancaster

[poetryandwine]

The SLT at Lancaster have just announced the intent to cut up to 20% of academic staff by July, 2026. They are currently refusing to rule out compulsory redundancies.

My understanding is that all Schools and Departments have been informed that they are at risk.

The situation feels similar to what’s happening at Edinburgh. And it is equally sad - in some ways more so as Lancaster has made great strides in recent years, in terms of both research and Teaching and Learning. It has become a wonderful university. All of this is at risk.

Academics at Lancaster have not yet formulated a response.

I know Lancaster well, it's a terrific university and already runs on the smell of an oily rag. This will be a very tough call.

I tend to think that cutting a whole department is better than slicing a little bit off everywhere. Staff will still be required to deliver programmes, designed around higher levels of ataffing than they actually have.

And empathy from students and their parents about these cuts in UKHE tends to be conspicuous by its absence.

Fully agree, @ParmaVioletTea

I suppose the fact that everyone is currently at risk doesn’t necessarily imply that the cuts will be made across the board. I hate it when small programmes that speak to important values are closed, but if these are maintained around the country, with adequate staff retained, all is not lost.

Increase workloads by 20% across the board and I really think any British university would be in crisis

I agree @poetryandwine - although we often frame universities as stand-alone institutions and value a broad range of subjects per university, I increasingly believe that for some subjects there are too many small departments not offering students enough breadth or depth. All human organisations have a critical size and in education this tends to get bigger over time. Rationalisation at a country wide level would probably do some universities/subjects good.

It's not just Lancaster though - it's many other settings too. Spiralling costs of running them mean they aren't viable/solvent.

You forgot to mention that they are cutting professional services as well.

Should we be worried, DD is hoping to go there in September?

Send thanks to Rachel Reeves. The NI increase didn't help. HE was expecting a little more support.

If courses aren't enrolling they stop becoming viable. It's real shame.

@ParmaVioletTea if whole departments are cut, how would you propose dealing with the teach out.

Have to agree with with this. I was a student at Lancaster many moons ago, worked for them briefly (non academically) and also for LUSU for a few years, and now professionally come into significant contact with them as I offer their students in the subject I studied work based placements.

I have a lot of love for LU but I also offer placements to UCLAN and UCUMB and frankly there is no need for three providers of the same course in what is actually quite a small area and LU haven't kept up with the the offerings of the other two for this specific course. From speaking to recent students the course hasn't changed much since I was there 2 decades ago.

I did read the OP though and wonder if the management school are genuinely on the same notice or if it's just the arts subjects that will actually be impacted.

I'd be very, very wary. My son's university has taken a wrecking ball to many of the humanities and is clearly prioritising STEM. It has affected his degree badly, almost no choice of modules and not the things he'd picked this uni for. If he'd known in advance, he'd have chosen a different uni. The pastoral care has gone to hell and a lot of the staff no longer give a damn because they are under threat and feel under valued. There's very much a sense of the students being used as pawns and his grades have very much been affected.

The university employs the full-time equivalent of 1,300 academic staff and 1,700 professional services staff.

This is from the BBC. What the hell are professional services staff and how do they outnumber academic staff in a Uni?!

Estates, IT, Library, Security, Student Services, Timetabling, Exams, Recruitment, Welfare, Catering, Cleaning etc etc - all the things you take for granted

For example Marketing/Events who do things like organise open days and graduation, placement teams, careers, accommodation, fees and funding, HR etc

Lancaster University to cut one in five academic jobs

So does that mean that of the 400 jobs, 260 will be academics and 140 professional services?

Bloody hell. Sorry I am shocked, I stupidly assumed that academics would account for the largest portion of staffing.

@Sweetpeasaremadeforbees Not necessarily, the professional services staff support academic functions. If they dissolve a department, then the also dissolve the support staff in that department. Other areas will restructure to make staff savings. Typically they offer voluntary severance first, before going to compulsory redundancy. The remaining staff end up doing more with less.

I agree @ceramiq that regional if not nationwide rationalisation of smaller programmes may be a reasonable way forward. A number of countries do this already and it seems to work.

We’ve just heard from a member of staff at Lancaster on the university staff board. Their programme needs to cut 23/84 FTE staff.

From context I think she was talking about academic staff but I am not positive.

Staff will be offered voluntary redundancy in the first instance, but a round of VR was just concluded.

The people who keep the university running!
Marketing, recruitment, admissions, course admin, registry, timetabling, careers, disability and well being services, international, visa and compliance, academic skills, library, student finance, estates, HR, payroll, financial services....I will have missed some!

Exactly, although I'm surprised the professional services staff outnumber the academics by so many. Perhaps catering, cleaning and security at Lancaster have not been outsourced.

Accommodation and conferencing can be added to the above list.

The shitty end result of running education like a business... neolibralism...🙄

The difficulty is that while courses are being cut, there's no joined up agreement between institutions over who offers what. Everyone just competes.

My own course has been running for over a decade. Numbers dropped because other institutions locally added courses similar to mine in the last 4 years, including FE colleges who are also doing degrees. These used to be our feeder colleges and now they're also competitors.

But FE is poorly funded so they want to offer degrees because of money too.

We end up fighting for small numbers of same students.

So where we could have had a cohort of say 50 per year we have to fight for 25 with a handful being shaved off going to FE degrees and new courses that are not needed but get validated anyway.

Sorry for colleagues everywhere. It's horrible.

As well as departmental technicians who keep the teaching labs running.