Email sent to members on Tuesday 26th May 2026. Zoom link removed for security reasons.
As part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails, authored by different UCU members, examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we discuss the recent approval of contingency regulations by Senate. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.
Contingency regulations approved – we are prepared!
On Thursday, 21 May the Senate of the University approved contingency regulations, which will allow management to award students ‘part for whole’ marks. The result was very narrow, 49 in favour of approval, 45 against.
Apparently, several Heads of School spoke up for approval in the interest of students. They could not have been more wrong. When the contingency regulations were initially applied during Covid 19 in 2020, all universities across the country were in the same situation. It was normal that students graduated without a full set of marks. This time it is different. While students elsewhere will graduate normally, UoN students will receive incomplete degrees. Considering the additional drop in UoN’s reputation, the degree won’t be worth the paper it is printed on. If management really wanted to protect students, it would come to its senses, drop its course of savage job cuts and agree with UCU on a way forward, which would allow restructuring without job cuts and without disadvantaged students.
The story remains the same. It is not just staff, who are threatened by this management’s latest folly. It is equally students who are going to suffer. As management intends to teach the same amount of students with 700 fewer staff, the consequences are obvious. Following Phase 1 of Future Nottingham, there are already fewer staff available to assist students. Now their plan is to increase class sizes drastically and contact time with over-stretched and over-worked staff will decline further.
But perhaps more importantly, if staff don’t take this action and force management to backtrack on its disastrous plans, the students will be the ones who pay the biggest price. This is because Nottingham will transition to a very different uni that is no longer research led and no longer top tier. The value of a Nottingham degree will rapidly decline. Today’s students have worked hard to get into a ‘top’ university. They deserve their degree to retain its long term value on their CVs. If the VC and others get their way, that won’t happen. This is an existential fight, not just for jobs, but for the future identity of UoN
For us as UCU members, we have always known that approval of the contingency regulations was highly likely. And indeed, management had prepared for the eventuality that Senate was rejecting the contingency regulations. A meeting of Council had been arranged for the same evening to override Senate, should the result have not been to management’s liking.
Approving the regulations is, however, one thing. Implementing them in practice is another. As we know, management simply has not got the capacity necessary for implementation. Too many people have been made redundant over the past two years, almost 300 colleagues in 2024, followed by another 350 in 2025. As long as we stay the course and continue with the MAB, graduations in summer remain threatened as will progression between years. This significant disruption remains the best tool available for bringing management back into negotiations. If the Vice Chancellor wishes for the disruption to cease, she knows precisely what to do.
If you have MAB related questions or are looking for a collective space of solidarity, remember today’s Zoom coffee from 12 noon to 1 p.m. at
Solidarity!
