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All UK universities now making cuts, says UEA vice-chancellor

‘Quite a few’ institutions actively considering mergers, claims David Maguire

November 22, 2024
Tom Williams
David Maguire

The University of East Anglia (UEA) has been forced to make additional cuts?as a result of unforeseen extra costs, according to its vice-chancellor, who predicted that every university in the UK would now be making savings.

After?being one of the first hit?by what is now a sector-wide financial crisis, the university announced this week that it will?have to make a further ?11 million worth of cuts,?with compulsory redundancies a possibility as 170 more staff members face losing their jobs.

David Maguire, who was?brought in as UEA’s vice-chancellor 18 months ago, told a Westminster 中国A片 Forum policy conference on addressing UK university financial sustainability that the?institution had a “credible plan to reach financial sustainability in terms of deficit-surplus position within three years”.

“But last year, due to higher-than-expected inflation rates and lower international recruitment, which we – like many other providers in the sector – face, we are having to go around again looking at our expenditure and earlier this week I unfortunately announced we would be looking for a further ?11 million in savings from our plan.”

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UEA has already made changes to save ?30 million?in recent years and staff unions fear the institution will struggle to survive further reductions.

Professor Maguire said making “deep and repeated cuts” was “really difficult” but was something being considered across the sector.

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A “back of the napkin” calculation based on announcements that have already been made meant it was “possible to?estimate that around 10,000 jobs will be lost?in the university sector in the current academic year”.

“That is an enormous number,” Professor Maguire said. “And if it was at one point in time or one place in the country, it would be considered a national disaster – there would be a huge outcry.”

Most universities were looking at reducing their expenditure by 10 per cent in real terms, said Professor Maguire, which was an “enormous undertaking and comes on the back of a series of difficult years for universities already”.

He said there were two types of universities currently:?those making savings in public and?others doing so in private. “Everybody has high up their agenda efficiency and effectiveness reviews and financial savings.”

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Professor Maguire?said universities seeking to make savings were faced with a “cascading” series of options starting with interventions such as not replacing staff through to structural changes – UEA has reduced its course portfolio by 20 per cent – and then more radical options.

“Quite a few” universities were actively talking about mergers as a possibility, claimed Professor Maguire, although none have yet gone public.

Cuts were also likely to involve reduced net zero targets, pauses in estates management projects and outsourcing services, he said, which could store up problems for the longer term.

On the more positive side, there were also drives to invest in marketing and new geographies as well as “sweating” assets such as conference facilities and research intellectual property.

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“All these things have been going on in universities for years, but a number are now coming to the boil,” said Professor Maguire.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (7)

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#1 Submitted by uob_professor on November 23, 2024 - 7:55am
“On the more positive side, there were also drives to invest in marketing” Says it all.
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#2 Submitted by Maverick2 on November 24, 2024 - 4:54pm
Yep what about slashing the excess bureaucracy in UK universities, stuffed with useless senior management teams that are not fit for purpose. Each Dean has around 6 deputy deans and each President / Vice Chancellor has about 6 to 8 deputies and then the deputies each have 6 to 8 deputy deputies...time to cut cut and cut.
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#3 Submitted by AlisonWW on November 24, 2024 - 9:14pm
And it can all be done via a school meeting without these silly ranks being bestowed
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#4 Submitted by AlisonWW on November 24, 2024 - 9:11pm
Universities now have VC's on 500k who refuse to use Zoom but insist on travelling nonstop to everything from COP to student recruitment and dodgy alumni drinks parties in far flung places in first class with a big team of PVCs doing the same and on similar salaries. The first port of call is to cull the number of PVCs and get management back to the school level and cap all pay at that of a professor salary Grade 12. All travel should be for research only, student recruitment does not need the VC to go on a 5 star holiday, but can be done via online adverts. All the VC grace and favour mansions need to be sold and their cars sold and their drivers made redundant. From there, it is necessary for the Government to bring back standards to that universities many Russell Group universities that now have 30000 plus students are subject to caps so no one is reading for a degree at a Russell Group without BBB at A Level. This will leave some students for the newer universities. In fact, all Russell Groups should be capped at 12,000 undergrads and 5000 postgrads to bring prestige and standards back. If the numbers are capped at the Russell Group they will be worthy of their name and status, if not, then the pretence must stop. Nottingham is now taking students with CCC. Universities have removed all competition to entry making themselves not attractive. The weakest 20 universities need to be let fail and several mergers ought to be forced onto the sector. The caps need bringing in across the board. In addition, having a PhD should be mandatory for anyone teaching at a university and those who fail to publish for many years ought to be sacked not matter the rank of the University. This will mean much smaller universities, but they will be highly competitive and highly sustainable. Universities ought to have high rejection rates if they want to make people desperate to join them, they currently let anyone in.
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#5 Submitted by kjk on November 25, 2024 - 7:55am
I think the comments above illustrate the biggest problem in the sector, experienced, knowledgeable, professional staff simply have no input into how these institutions are run. We do get constant staff surveys which simply give the 'illusion of inclusion' and lead to no tangible changes other than the obligatory quick win, trivial 'you said, we did " nonesense. My Department had a massive expansion of staff over the last couple of years, which was unfathomable given the uncertainty around student numbers, particularly as some of the roles are definitely a nice to have rather than a necessity and roles which are further adding to the bureacracy which is killing the sector. The resulting staff cost increases are now contributing to a callous and discriminatory mandated return to campus, attempting to make people's work/ life balance unbearable and forcing them out of their jobs without paying severance.Invariably you will lose knowledge that can never be replaced, yet the transient managers who made these decisions ( which are completely at odds with the principles of the Institution) will have moved on before there is any accountability
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#6 Submitted by Wilting Rose on November 25, 2024 - 11:33am
There is a theme emerging here - for far too long VCs and Senior management teams have been overpaid and ineffective, on the whole. Unfortunately those of us doing the day job have been demoralised by a sector in decline. It is way past time for a shake up of the whole sector and a long hard look at management structures and accountability.
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#7 Submitted by Anonymous Reader on November 25, 2024 - 5:35pm
Professor Maguire, whose current renumeration package is ?340,000, has, just in the past five years, been Vice-Chancellor of four different universities (Greenwich 2011-2019; Dundee 2020; Sussex 2021-2022; UEA 2023-date) as well as of one private institution of 中国A片 (Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology 2022-2023). It is utterly scandalous that the people in charge as our sector has headed further and further into the abyss continue to be grossly overpaid, rewarded again and again for failure, as they hop from one lucrative position to the next, making more and more loyal, hard-working, expert academic staff on a fraction of their salaries redundant. Accompanying a emergency injection of proper government funding, we need a wholesale restoration of democratic decision-making in our universities, and a cap on senior management pay, with no-one to be paid more than a normal Professor. With a sector now in a dire, dire funding crisis, and given that universities are legally constituted as charities, not businesses, there is really no reason for anyone in them to be paid more than around ?90,000, when so much of the hard work actually teaching and supporting students is being done ('sweated', you could call it) by people on half of that or less.

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