Staff at a redundancy-hit university have voiced concerns that the institution’s relationship with banks is being prioritised over saving jobs.
The University of East Anglia is proposing to cut 170 roles, on top of 400 that had been cut last year, prompting renewed concerns over the university’s financial plan.
Academics and union members now fear that poor financial management and overly optimistic enrolment projections mean that job cuts are becoming a “cycle” at the university.
“Placating banks and the financiers is more important than staff livelihoods and jobs,” said Nick Grant, co-chair of the UEA branch of the University and College Union (UCU).
“It’s just easy for executive teams to offer up salary as a solution to try and balance the books. I think that is behind a lot of this. A lot of universities are indebted for various building projects, and they need the banks to sign off on future loan agreements. We think that is something in the background that is playing a massive role in terms of driving these cuts.”
More than 80 UK universities – half of the sector – have announced job cuts in recent times.
Nadine Zubair, fellow co-chair of the UEA UCU, added that there was a lack of transparency around the university’s decision-making, and a “rhetorical disconnect” between public statements made by the university and the vice-chancellor, and “what they’re actually doing to the institution”.
She said the future of UEA’s strength in research was being called into question, something echoed by Katherine Deane, an associate professor in the School of Health Sciences.
“Lots of my research colleagues have been put into at-risk pools within my school, and that’s particularly worrying because our school does not have huge numbers of researchers,” Dr Deane said.
“We’re gradually increasing the number of people with doctorates, but it really does seem to have particularly landed hard on [researchers], which within health sciences is particularly problematic because that’s actually an area we need to grow.”
A UEA spokesperson said the job cuts were needed “to save an additional £11 million to stay on track with our financial sustainability plan”.
“Although our long-term finances remain sound, this shortfall has arisen because of inflationary cost pressures and a reduction in international postgraduate numbers, reflected across the sector,” they said.
“These decisions have not been taken lightly, and we know that this is difficult news for our UEA community. We remain committed to being an excellent dual-intensive university.”
But Dr Deane, who is at risk of redundancy, said of vice-chancellor David Maguire: “He’s got one tool. It’s a hammer, we’re the nails and we’re just getting hit.”
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Print headline: UEA favours banks over jobs, say at-risk staff
