Nottingham University Management Messages
Last week I posted about the dire situation at Nottingham University and particularly in the School of Physics & Astronomy there. I since learned that I didn’t get the nunbers quite right: it appears that there are 71 staff in the School and 56 received notices that their jobs are at risk. There are 23 Professors in the School and 20 have received letters. The intention is that about 20 jobs will be lost across all academic and technical staff.
The open letter and petition here has already garnered over 2000 signatures, but more can’t do any harm.
I’ve heard also that staff at Notitngham are about to start a Marking and Assessment Boycott in response to the plans. This seems entirely reasonable to me and I would support further industrial action too. There is more about the situation in Physics World here.
I mentioned in my previous post that
Not all those in receipt of an “at risk” letter will actually be made redundant, but the intention is clearly to scare people into leaving in order to save on redundancy payments.
No doubt some positions will be saved by retirements and voluntary severance, but cuts on the scale being planned will be difficult to achieve without a significant number of compulsory redundancies. The messaging from the University Management is not subtle.
I have no idea what the management “plan” is at Nottingham, but I suspect it goes something like this, from the current Private Eye:
The effect of all this on staff morale will be devastating, but there will also be a practical effect. The more mobile, especially those with portable individual research grants, and those not tied to laboratories, will already be looking to move elsewhere. That will no doubt include some of Nottingham’s best researchers. It won’t be easy to move elsewhere in the UK, however, as the higher education system is collapsing. Other universities will no doubt follow a similar path,
Unfortunately, the recent goings-on at the Science and Technology Facilities Council will almost certainly be taken as a cue to shed posts in PPAN areas (Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics), as grants in these areas are to be drastically reduced. This is a clear signal that STFC wants the PPAN community to shrink. As far as I can see, Nottingham University currently employs about eleven Academic Staff in Astronomy and a similar number in Particle Cosmology.
On a personal note, in the interest of full disclosure, I joined Nottingham University as Professor of Astrophysics in January 1999. Neither of these groups existed then and the School of Physics (as it was) was struggling in the doldrums. The incorporation of Astronomy led to the name being changed to the School of Physics & Astronomy, led to a boost in undergraduate recruitment and improved research assessment outcome. The Particle Cosmology group came a bit later. The University’s original plan for Astronomy was just one Professor and two lecturers! I pushed particularly hard for this when I was there. I left Nottingham in 2007 and watched from the outside as both groups prospered over the years, due not only to teaching and research but also to an effective outreach campaign centered around Sixty Symbols. I feel very sad to see their future so drastically threatened.
While I am on the subject of messages, the Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham University, Jane Norman, has recently announced publicly that she thinks the University might go bust by 2031 without these cuts. Now, if you were a prospective Nottingham University student, how would you respond to a statement that the University you are thinking of applying to could run out of money in five years? The VC can’t possibly imagine that recruitment will remain buoyant in this situation, can she? Her blundering attempt to justify the planned cuts brings the prospect of a death spiral at Nottingham closer.
As James Binney put it in his comment on the open letter:
If these redundancies go ahead, the best physics faculty will leave Nottingham, outstanding candidates will no longer accept offers from Nottingham and the quality of the student body will rapidly decline. It takes generations to create a world-class department, but one can be destroyed in less than a decade.
In the Dark 
May 19, 2026 at 10:57 am
[…] stolen the title for this post, and the cartoon below (© Private Eye), from Peter Coles’ most recent post on the bleak situation for Physics & Astronomy at Nottingham. A massive thank you to Peter for […]
May 19, 2026 at 10:59 am
As ever, *thank you*, Peter.
On the subject of inhuman resources, you may be interested in the email they sent yesterday to those of us whose jobs are at risk: https://muircheartblog.wpcomstaging.com/2026/05/19/inhuman-resources/
May 19, 2026 at 11:16 am
I cannot believe that they are outsourcing the support and advice to an external company. Why do they have an HR department and senior management, if they outsource something like this? The scale of the proposed cuts look far far larger than those implemented elsewhere, including my own. (Where it was a voluntary scheme).
May 25, 2026 at 2:42 pm
i can’t remember if you were on AGP when the “consolidated grants” came in? the way these were advertised swelled the applicant pool for STFC astronomy grants in an unsustainable way (PPE’s closed-shop model dealt with this far more successfully) – which is still having knock-on effects. new research is no bad thing, but the problem with grants panels is that something “new” frequently looks more exciting and that factored in with the quasi-socialist approach of dividing limited resources – eventually means things are spread too thinly to be useful.so, if STFC really do have a coherent plan to shrink the “astro” part of the PPAN community – then that might be no bad thing. however, i doubt they do have a coherent plan (which would probably need to focus on a modest number of core institutions with sufficient volume to justify the offer of medium-term support [i.e. “rolling grants”]).
May 25, 2026 at 3:56 pm
Dear Ian
Yes, I was indeed on AGP at that time (2010). Was it really that long ago? There’s a post about the then new-fangled Consolidated Grants here. I didn’t like the plan at the time but we had to lump it. I’ve been out of the loop since 2017 so don’t know what it evolved into, but it will need to change to reflect the new reality. As you say this may well mean locking some groups out entirely.
Peter
May 25, 2026 at 4:33 pm
yep… ancient history now.
i didn’t like consolidated grants either (i’d guess – unsurprisingly – that view was common in rolling grant institutes).
…but consolidated grants turned into another case of PP (supported by others, including the admin – where the claim was the new software couldn’t deal with tapers) pushing through a change – which they knew they could work around [the concept of “core” posts survived in PP, not in astro] – leaving the more diverse astro community to – as you say – lump it…
the current situation is basically the old “standard grants” round for everyone with a success rate that is near the bottom of what it was (but that may just reflect an increased applicant pool, plus hugely inflated [realistic?] overheads). however, the funding pot does appear to be down on the recent past – even before inflation is factored in. but that may simply reflect cuts imposed to balance budgets in other parts of STFC (such as the light source running costs, or the exchange rates – which seem to have reappeared on their books – having been previously absorbed by BEIS).
…frankly it all seems to be a bit of a mess.
May 25, 2026 at 5:03 pm
It seems to me that the UK higher education system may well be heading back to pre-1992 configuration with some institutions going back to mainly vocational courses and not doing research at all.
May 25, 2026 at 5:33 pm
which perhaps would be no bad thing?
i never understood the justification for the completely arbitrary 50% of school leavers going to university (further training of some sort, absolutely!) – given the mismatch between the apparent “prestige” of degrees/institutions and the lack of a cost gradient in the courses… which means actually useful courses (for the long-term future of the students taking them) get pushed out by short-term offers of much less beneficial courses at “fancier” places.
and then there are the courses which are of little benefit to anyone other than the institution offering them…
the problem now is that the over-expanded university sector will find it painful to contract… as we’re seeing.
May 25, 2026 at 6:15 pm
Indeed. Many truly excellent polytechnics – with clearly defined aims and capabilities- turned into third-rate universities.