The Scottish tertiary sector looks likely to have to make many more compulsory redundancies than it has to date, writes Scottish editor Olga Wojtas.
Although the sector has suffered only one compulsory redundancy in higher education and fewer than ten in further education, the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council's early retirement scheme has already brought a wave of planned redundancies to higher education institutions. SHEFC launched a Pounds 10 million new-blood scheme 18 months ago, alarmed by the fact that 55 per cent of academics were aged 45 and over, while only 15 per cent were under 35.
There have been more than 320 early retirements, and 300 permanent full-time appointments under the scheme. Funding was on condition that institutions made a new appointment for each person retiring, although not necessarily in the same department, but this condition was waived for the colleges of education who have been hit financially by the Government cap on student numbers.
AUT assistant general secretary David Bleiman said: "There has been a massive loss of staff, although SHEFC has anticipated the need to reduce staffing bills with its scheme to enable universities to replace higher-paid staff with new recruits. All the universities are now budgeting for major staff reductions and it remains to be seen whether they can achieve this without threatened compulsory redundancies."
Rosemary Williamson, deputy secretary of the Committee of Scottish Higher Education Principals, said the SHEFC scheme had been very welcome, but there was still great anxiety over jobs, given the lack of scope for SHEFC to manipulate its budget in future.
COSHEP has already warned that if the cuts continue over the next three years, Scottish universities and colleges will face the loss of 1,100 jobs, half of them academic.
Confidential estimates from institutions show an overall 4 per cent drop in posts, and there could be losses of up to 16 per cent in smaller colleges.
Tom Kelly, chief officer of the Association of Scottish Colleges, said: "In further education, we face a reduction in recurrent grant of 12 per cent in real terms over the next three years. It is difficult to see how that can be accomplished without significant reductions in staffing, and we will be looking to the Scottish Office to recognise there is a transitional problem."