In the Dark

It seems that financial emergencies are spreading around the United Kingdom like a contagion. About a month ago I posted about the crisis at Cardiff University, but now there’s a bombshell about the University of Edinburgh which, according to the Times Higher is planning to make cuts of around £140 million in recurrent expenditure, about 10% of its annual operating budget. This level of cuts is greater than those previously listed at other universities, including Cardiff, the largest of which are measured in tens of millions. The piece goes on to explain that target can’t be reached by voluntary redundancies, which presumably means compulsory redundancies are looming.

I don’t know which particular academic units are under threat, but I’m sure this episode is causing a great deal of stress to a great many people. The only advice I can offer to anyone at Edinburgh worrying about the future is, if they haven’t done so already, to JOIN A UNION!

Talking of which, the University of Edinburgh UCU has pointed out that the University revealed a budget surplus last year and has huge reserves measured in the billions. It accuses managers of manufacturing a crisis in order to cut staff and bring about even more centralisation – thus achieving an even greater level of corporate control over teaching and research activities. The subordination of academia to management is the aim. I don’t doubt that university managers around the world believe that teaching will be largely done by AI anyway which will allow even more lecturing staff to be cut.

I believe that universities need less centralisation not more. The Principal of the University of Edinburgh, Peter Mathieson, is quoted in the Times Higher piece as saying:

We can no longer afford to run duplicative services across the university, often with inconsistent practices which create inefficiencies, increase staff workload and impact our student experience..

This is fair enough, but it is quite wrong to assume that greater centralisation is the solution. In my experience it is “The Centre” that creates inefficiencies, increases staff workload and impacts student experience. That is because it knows far less than Schools and Departments about what is needed to achieve their academic objectives. Universities need a flatter and more responsive structure, not the ever-increasing management bloat that has been imposed on them for decades and which is now causing them to capsize.

This entry was posted on February 26, 2025 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Education, Finance with tags Higher Education, The University of Edinburgh, UCU, University and Colleges Union, university funding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.