Lancaster University to cut one in five academic jobs

探花视频

Lancaster University to cut one in five academic jobs

Institution says it is ‘not immune’ to financial challenges as it looks to axe 400 jobs

六月 20, 2025

Juliette Rowsell

Twitter:

Source: iStock/Peter Shaw

Lancaster University has become the latest UK institution to announce large-scale cuts as it looks to save ?30 million.

The university has informed staff of plans to cut 400 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by July 2026,?with?academics the first to go.

This will include more than 212 FTE academics, equating to almost one in five of the academic workforce, according to the University and College Union (UCU).?

Lancaster said it “can’t rule out the possibility of compulsory redundancies as a last resort” as the union branch plans a meeting next week to decide on a response to the cuts.

The union added that the university is looking to cut more than ?35 million per annum from its annual expenditure by 2026-27, leaving every department at risk and “no part of the university unaffected”.

A university spokesperson said Lancaster is “not immune” to sector-wide financial pressures, including increased operating costs and declining international student numbers, but added that it will not be looking to close academic departments.?

“We have achieved significant savings on non-payroll and through a voluntary severance scheme this year but unfortunately our financial projections show that payroll savings of about ?30 million are required over the next academic year to ensure our ongoing financial sustainability,” they said.

However, they continued, “We are in a better financial position than some other universities, which has bought us time to work through strategic options, which will ensure that research and the student experience is prioritised and protected”.?

Jo Grady, UCU’s general secretary, said it is “simply impossible for Lancaster to bin such a huge proportion of its workforce and provide the same level of provision to students”.?

“As well as harming the livelihoods of those staff who are forced out, cuts of this magnitude would have a devastating impact on the staff who stay, students, the local community, and the university’s standing in the academic community. Our members will meet next week, and a strike ballot cannot be ruled out if management refuses to change course.”

It comes as academics raise concerns that widespread?university job cuts have entered a “dangerous new phase”, with Liverpool Hope University, Cardiff Metropolitan and Arts University Bournemouth among those pressing ahead with compulsory redundancies.?

At Newcastle University, however, where union members have undertaken prolonged strike action, bosses have now ruled out compulsory redundancies, as well as offering students compensation for missed teaching.?

A university spokesperson said it had?achieved its ?20 million target of salary savings in full "without the need for compulsory redundancies" through a combination?of voluntary severance, redeployments,?and "a range of other mitigating measures"".

"This is an immensely challenging time for universities across the UK, and we are grateful to everyone in our community for their commitment and patience as we navigate towards long term financial sustainability," they added.?

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com

阅读更多相关文章

阅读更多相关文章:&苍产蝉辫;

Employment

University funding/finances

请先注册再继续

为何要注册？

注册是免费的，而且十分便捷
注册成功后，您每月可免费阅读3篇文章
订阅我们的邮件

Reader's comments (19)

#1 Submitted by ... on June 20, 2025 - 3:59pm

Oh dear, not another one! When will this nightmare end?

#2 Submitted by a.... on June 20, 2025 - 4:47pm

When the managers who failed are brought to account, as happened at Dundee.

#3 Submitted by ... on June 21, 2025 - 9:17am

I am afraid that only happens after the fact and when the institution is no longer viable at present.

#4 Submitted by k.s.... on June 20, 2025 - 7:00pm

Yep time for a rebellion in the Universities we need to put the academics in charge and start sacking en masse the failed managers and bureaucrats and each one made to explain exactly what they do to justify their existence. If they are useless or no value added (which is at least 50%) then instant dismissal.

#5 Submitted by ... on June 21, 2025 - 9:20am

I agree with you in general but in the case of my University which was one of the first to get into trouble and is now cutting jobs for the second time in two years, the VC was an academic who had worked in the institution for his whole career. He was useless. He resigned in ignominy to a well-funded retirement.

#6 Submitted by ... on June 23, 2025 - 10:07am

Yes I tend to agree, it's what they call the 'Peter principle' which I heard Sir Stephen Fry speak about recently on QI. You have a good academic who is a competent administrator and they rise through the ranks. But at some stage they get to the point at which they struggle with the demands of the job but still rise and get paid more. Many will end up as PVCs and even VCs. I think it's rare for an academic to make a good VC tbh. The best VC I worked under came into the University from the NHS. I men be honest, most academics can't mow the lawn without twisting their ankles or knees. And as Sir Stephen points out, once they reach the level of incompetence they fail to recognise it, as if they were able to recognise it they would be able to address it.

#7 Submitted by g.m.cox... on June 20, 2025 - 8:56pm

It goes on and on. One of the upshots of all of this and the sea change in university management style that goes along with it, is that you have ended up with a situation where the 'product' of the organisation - lecturers and students - is now the lowest down in the hierarchy and has almost zero agency any. We are ordered about by those with 'support' in their name, a name that once meant, support us, along with managers who tell us stuff and never ask us anything. And senior management are wondering why they are in trouble. It is like deciding the product your company sells and has built its reputation on and that is its financial foundation, is now irrelevant to the business.

#8 Submitted by oliver.... on June 21, 2025 - 7:22am

Yes, I agree with the comments above. This is a perverse situation. The first to go should be non academic staff and buildings, other assets. Research and teaching should be preserved at all costs. Like much in the country and the world right now, the reverse is happening.

#9 Submitted by ... on June 21, 2025 - 9:27am

And we could lose all that EDI and HR empire, along with Advance HE and all those parasitic resource hungry consultancies and just focus on the roles of research and teaching with limited, relevant, efficient admin to support the things the University needs. I am not against the idea of assessment but the REF and TEF have become so extraordinarily onerous in the ways they impact on our work and resource that they need urgent reform and to be slimmed down. We seem to live in a meta-profession where most of our work and time is taken up with servicing things that are peripheral to the main tasks rather than the main tasks themselves. The managerialists of course love these things as it provides work for them and position and power.

#10 Submitted by ... on June 21, 2025 - 10:26am

It's a Catch 22 on the buildings. They paid a fortune to build them and hamstrung their institutions with debt, but when you try to sell then you have to offload onto a market and the more that's offloaded the less the value of the assets. Some institution will say they have xx millions of estate but that's just another accountancy fiction. if they tried to realise the value of some of it then they would find the market rates it much lower and, in any case, they will still have the debt they are servicing and the covenants they entered into to fund. It's a real mess they got us into, and one that;s very hard to get out of, even for brilliant managers, and that they ain't!

#11 Submitted by ... on June 24, 2025 - 11:16am

What a wonderful show of solidarity with your PS colleagues, many of whom will already be bearing the brunt of job cuts and "Voluntary Severance" schemes. "Sack him first. I'm alright, Jack".

#12 Submitted by ... on June 26, 2025 - 8:35am

Yes we have now got to the stage of "Dog Eat Dog". Although interestingly enough, the natural scientists inform us that a dog will not eat another dog, whereas we know that in certain situations humans will eat other humans. Another of life's little ironies. When the stakes get to job losses for people who have not got an alternative or enough pension savings etc and mortgages, kid's school fees etc etc, then they will turn on each other I am afraid though often presenting a veneer of solidarity. I fear this is where we are now and I find it hard to see when or how this conflicted situation can be healed or who could heal it (management and government can't). I just wish it was all over and done with but it seems to drag on and on until the crack of doom itself!

#13 Submitted by ... on July 1, 2025 - 12:51pm

I couldn't agree more. The tendency on here to leap to 'sack the useless support staff' is shocking and illustrative of one of the most pervasive problems with HE in the UK - the belief that academics left to their own devices could run a university! Not only are PS staff often the first to go, they are also the lowest paid and may have had little capacity for building up savings thus leaving them in a very vulnerable position. Maybe something to consider for those whose initial response is to immediately seek to throw them under the bus to save themselves - it's disgraceful.

#14 Submitted by ... on June 21, 2025 - 10:14am

I wonder in the job loss announcement stakes is it more advantageous to be first out of the traps as it were and announce redundancies straight away or to be go later and come up on the rails like Lancaster when everyone else has made these announcements in the hope the sector is so traumatised it won't respond? Surely, they must have known they would be doing tis months ago (and if not why not, everyone else worked it out?). I can see it working for admissions when everyone else takes the reputational hit and loses admissions while others say we are unaffected and get the numbers and then say, actually we are in the same boat as the rest in the hopes the students won't switch having committed themselves to some extent?

#15 Submitted by ... on June 21, 2025 - 10:21am

I think you very generously credit them with a degree of acumen and intelligence that they simply don't possess (look at Dundee). They probably didn't have good financial oversight or know what they were doing in the first place and this is the usual knee-jerk panic response. They tend to cover up these things as long as possible as we know. The management of so many Universities is beyond mediocre and verging on the incompetent. That's one of the reasons they pay themselves so much as a psychic defence against their inner realisation that are essentially sub standard.

#16 Submitted by ... on June 22, 2025 - 9:21pm

https://nation.cymru/news/cardiff-university-chief-accused-again-of-misleading-senedd-members/

#17 Submitted by n.j.... on June 23, 2025 - 10:58pm

The Peter principle is correct . Often you put people into admin roles because they are no longer active researchers and not very good teachers then they move up the admin chain and suddenly are provcs etc and they are not equipped to run a several hundred million pound organisation. They appoint eachother to roles. Are we surprised that when a crisis comes they can’t cope with it? There are academics who are good managers but they are exception and it is luck if you have one Glasgow is not an exceptional case - before bailing out unis we should scrutinise the management teams

#18 Submitted by ... on June 26, 2025 - 8:40am

Yes any additional taxpayer funded support should be conditional on there being the right management team in place with the right strategy. Otherwise they risk good money after bad. And please when such bailout do occur, if they do, don't allow the management to pay themselves exorbitant pay rises!

new

#19 Submitted by ... on July 1, 2025 - 4:50pm

Watch this space.... The treatment of De Montfort University’s first-ever female Vice-Chancellor is a textbook example of the gendered double standards that continue to shape leadership in higher education. As 探花视频 has reported time and again, women in leadership roles are disproportionately subjected to personal attacks, excessive scrutiny, and unfair narratives that male leaders are rarely forced to endure. Assertiveness is misread as aggression, difficult decisions are labelled as dictatorial, and strategic change is framed as chaos—especially when led by women. What’s unfolding at DMU is not a failure of leadership! The intense and sustained efforts to discredit the current VC are not just disproportionate—they are disturbingly familiar. Instead of recognising the significance of her position as DMU’s first woman Vice-Chancellor, there has been a concerted effort to undermine and remove her. This is part of a wider pattern in UK academia, where women who drive reform are punished for their success. And yet, under her leadership, DMU has made nationally recognised strides in equality, inclusion, and institutional culture. The university has been awarded the Stonewall Workplace Equality Award, earned the Race Equality Charter, and hosts the UK’s only UN SDG Justice Hub—concrete signs of values-led leadership. Crucially, her tenure has also seen a deliberate and strategic increase in the number of women appointed to senior leadership roles across the university, helping to build a more diverse and representative leadership culture for the future. These are not the actions of a “toxic” leader—they are the actions of a woman leading meaningful change in a system that is still uncomfortable with that change. Instead of vilifying her, the sector should reflect on its own resistance to equity. If higher education truly values inclusion and transformation, it must stop treating women in power as threats—and start supporting them when they lead with courage and vision.