In the Dark

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.