Edinburgh staff fear ‘manufactured crisis’ in £140 million cuts

Academics have accused the University of Edinburgh of using UK higher education’s financial crisis as a smokescreen for “incredibly arbitrary” job cuts.

Scotland’s largest university shocked staff after it announced that it needed to cut £140 million from its annual budget, adding that an ongoing voluntary severance scheme would not achieve sufficient savings by itself.

Workers were “gobsmacked” by the announcement, according to Sophia Woodman, president of Edinburgh’s University and College Union (UCU) branch, highlighting that Edinburgh’s income increased by £49 million last year to over £1.4 billion. She feared that employees were the victims of a “manufactured crisis”.

The institution posted a £25 million surplus for 2023-24, with staff costs declining as a proportion of expenditure to 53.7 per cent, compared with 58.8 per cent three years previously.

UCU argued that instead the “most concerning parts” of the university’s finances were the “unrestrained” growth of capital expenditure, which hit £186 million in 2024.

“We don’t know how they’ve come up with that figure [of £140 million],” Woodman said. “It’s important to note that it’s not a deficit. The university is not in deficit, and quite when it is projected to be in deficit is rather unclear.”

Edinburgh’s principal, Peter Mathieson, told Times Higher Education that the university “appreciates” the concerns raised by staff, but that “we have been very clear that our current financial position is not sustainable and we are not immune to the challenges that the higher education sector is currently facing”.

“Like other universities, we need to ensure that we remain strongly placed for the future. While we are not currently in deficit, we must take clear and decisive action now to avoid this,” Mathieson said.

“Many of our peer institutions are experiencing comparable difficulties and have also been forced to consider similar measures.”

Edinburgh has blamed its predicament on “inadequate” teaching funding from the Holyrood government, a downturn in international student recruitment, and inflationary increases in costs.

But Mary Senior, UCU’s Scotland official, said that the university’s announcement had felt like “sabre-rattling”. 

“It’s a challenging time in the sector for some organisations, and at a time when Edinburgh’s voluntary severance scheme – which has been extended – is about to close, it feels incredibly arbitrary,” she said.

“We absolutely don’t accept that they need to make people redundant, and that they need to force people out of the door.”

Senior agreed that she had concerns that the university was taking advantage of the financial crisis plaguing the sector, but added, “I sincerely hope it isn’t.”

“They don’t have a deficit. They don’t have a black hole, and I think it’s disingenuous to suggest that they have, so indicating that ‘nothing’s off the table’ and making strong statements that imply they’re going to cut staff is really frightening,” she said.

Mathieson said previously that Edinburgh was projecting several years of consecutive deficits, with school and degree closures among the options for savings under consideration.

But Kate Davison, a lecturer in the history of sexuality at Edinburgh, said that the university’s communications had “eliminated any sort of last remnants of trust we might have had with management”, and that “they’ve either been lying to us [about the figures], or they’ve been mismanaging the university”. 

Davison, who previously left her position at Goldsmiths, University of London after being handed a redundancy letter, said: “If you work in higher education in the UK, it feels like you are running away from a wave that is just going to take you over. You can go from institution to institution and eventually management will say, ‘We’re going to cut staff.’ It feels like a tsunami of job cuts that’s almost impossible to escape.”

Edinburgh will continue to liaise with its trade unions, Mathieson said.

“The actions we must take now – which include a reduction of both staff and non-staff operating costs – will ensure that we can maintain our position as a world-leading university and emerge stronger for the future,” he said.

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com