Staff voice can bring proper scrutiny of UK higher education meltdown

The good folks at Queen Mary University of London’s University and College Union branch are probably finding it difficult to keep their notorious “UK HE shrinking” list of redundancy rounds up to date.

That list, updated almost daily, makes clear how the only solutions that vice-chancellors and executive teams appear to have to financial instability are euphemistically named “sustainability” projects aimed at quickly reducing staff headcount. At many institutions – including here at the University of East Anglia (UEA), where management is now seeking to cut 163 people, a year and half after a previous round of cuts accounted for 400 posts – this is becoming a cycle.

Rushed and often poorly planned, these rolling cuts impact all parts of the university. Valued colleagues disappear, and those who remain are left to pick up the workload – all the while wondering if it will be their turn to leave next. With few jobs available in the sector, these cuts mean the end of careers and the permanent loss of world-leading research and innovation from the UK’s knowledge economy.

None of the “external factors” vice-chancellors cite when announcing job cuts should have come as a surprise. The UCU has been predicting many of them for years. Many were highlighted by the UCU Manifesto 2024, which offers some clear recommendations on student number controls; equity, diversity and inclusion work; casualisation and the Research Excellence Framework, Teaching Excellence Framework and Knowledge Exchange Framework that would not only make universities better places to work but could have genuine and immediate economic benefits for institutions.  

And yet, so far there has been a complete failure to hold university leaders accountable for the crisis currently tearing through higher education in the UK. This state of affairs is even more galling when it is accompanied by an expansion of senior management teams and increases in executive pay. Hard-working staff cannot continue being made to pay for the mistakes of unaccountable “leaders”. 

This is why UEA UCU will challenge any decision by management to pursue large-scale compulsory redundancies, while also raising fundamental questions about the way our university operates. We now have our largest-ever mandate for potential local industrial action at UEA, with a dispute that has three interrelated points. First, we are asking that management works with us to avoid compulsory redundancies at UEA. Second, we are seeking fundamental changes to the way in which the institution is governed. And third, we are insisting on increased scrutiny and oversight of UEA’s finances and strategy.

Point one is about protecting jobs now, while points two and three are designed to challenge the negative cycle of endless cuts and builds accountability and transparency into university processes. There is a lot of uncertainty in the sector at the moment, but one thing we know for sure is that things cannot continue in this way. We need to tackle the lack of democratic structures and absence of accountability that currently characterises how universities in this country are run.

How might this work in practice? First, it would require universities to embed genuine forums for democratic decision-making within their ordinances. Staff assemblies, senates and other similar bodies need genuine staff representation and should be able to hold executive teams to account. These structures also need to acknowledge the civic role that universities play in their locale, with local leaders in education, public services and other areas playing a role in deciding university strategy alongside business leaders. Democratic governance should be seen as a strategic benefit and integral to the health of any university, but it has been consistently and deliberately undermined by vice-chancellors and executive teams who are all too dismissive of the staff voice and seem eager to avoid proper scrutiny of their plans. 

Second, proper oversight of financial strategy is needed. While declining student income (in real terms) against a backdrop of high inflation was always likely to cause problems for universities, the debt position faced by many institutions is also a result of an estates arms race that has seen many universities owing tens of millions of pounds for hotel-level accommodation that impoverished students are struggling to afford. Highlights at UEA include a failed London campus for international students and millions of pounds on preparatory works for a “gateway to UEA” that never opened, but there are hundreds of such examples across the UK. Taken together, these projects are symptomatic of a governing structure that lacks proper oversight and has few if any measures to hold leaders accountable for their financial mismanagement.  

Finally, we need to ensure that these new processes are transparent. Universities are multimillion-pound institutions that should operate for the public good and be accountable to that public. Here in Norwich, the city’s universities and further education colleges are integral to the regional economy. Whether directly through the skills training, research and development they provide, or indirectly through the spending power of the thousands who live locally because they study and work at these institutions, the contributions these establishments make to the east of England spread far across the region. UEA’s rightly lauded Civic Agenda must include ways to make university governance more transparent to the people whose lives depend on its success.  

While many of these issues are fundamentally a question for the new Labour government, it is vital that university leaders recognise the value, voice and skills of their staff. If they don’t, they will not be in a position to effectively respond to the secretary of state for education’s priorities in terms of economic growth, civic engagement, widening access and improving teaching quality. The reforms we have outlined would cost very little, but would be transformational for the sector. We just hope that university leaders will take them seriously before it is too late.

Nicholas Grant and Nadine Zubair are co-chairs of the University of East Anglia’s University and College Union branch.