Author: L Scott Blankenship

Email sent to members on 13th April 2026.

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 look at the implications of what redundancy means for academic staff. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

The Academic Dream

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a footballer. Then, around age twelve, I realised I was crap at football. So instead, I decided I wanted to be an academic. Sad and nerdy, I know — but that was my dream.

It wasn’t easy. Academic jobs are bloody hard to come by. I had to finish top of my degree, survive a PhD that was one of the toughest things I ever did, then spend years bouncing around postdoc positions, moving countries every couple of years, unable to settle down. And my partner had to do the same. I was pushing thirty with no security, while my friends were buying houses and starting families.

All of it for the dream of one day getting a permanent academic post. When I finally did, my partner just cried.

Because she knew what it meant. We could finally settle down, just like everyone else.

I love my job. I love teaching, doing research, and being part of a community that creates knowledge. But if I lose this job — I’m screwed. Academic jobs are rare. You don’t just walk into another one. For most of us, redundancy means the end of the dream. The end of a career we’ve spent decades building.

A lucky few might find another post, but not in Nottingham. Probably not even in the UK. Those who do will see their families once a month, if that.

This is what redundancy means for academics. It’s not just losing a job — it’s losing your identity, your community, your way of life.

That’s why I’m asking everyone to fight for my job, my life — and I promise to fight for yours.

Why We Take Action

To strike or take part in a MAB is one of the most generous things you can do.

I love teaching my subject because it’s a brilliant subject. At least that’s how I see it. And I hate telling my students I won’t be in class or that I won’t be marking their exams. I don’t want to lose salary. But I’m putting that aside because I’m fighting for something bigger — for the soul of this university.

I’m striking so that no one’s academic dream is crushed by managerial ideology. I’m striking for our students — not just those here now, but those who’ll come here in five or ten years’ time. They deserve to be taught by staff who feel safe, secure, and valued — not by ghosts in shiny new buildings.

Because that’s the vision of our senior management: more buildings, fewer people.

“The University is Skint” — Really?

I’ve heard some colleagues say, “Why are you bothering? There’s a national funding crisis. The university’s skint. There’s nothing we can do.”

Bollocks.

Even though we threw tens of millions down the toilet with the failed castle meadow campus vanity project we remain one of the richest universities in the country. Yes, there are problems with how higher education is funded — of course there are — but make no mistake: redundancies are a choice.

The Vice-Chancellor admitted this. Our leaders are chasing after a crazy 9% surplus. The VC herself said that the sector operates between 3% and 6%.

So when UCU calls for reducing the surplus target to 3% or 4%, that’s not radical. That’s common sense. It’s about £16 million a year that could be used to keep staff in work and give students the support they need.

But she won’t do it.

Why? Because like so many Vice-Chancellors, she dreams of shiny new buildings — paid for with lost livelihoods. Buildings in which students will be taught by ghosts — ghosts of the staff whose passion and dedication were thrown away on a bonfire of redundancies.

And for what? For a neoliberal fantasy? For a gong and a place in the House of Lords?

People Before Buildings

At a number of town halls, the VC has spoken about “excellence.” Someone asked her how she defined it. Her answer, and I paraphrase: “I know it when I see it.”

I mean, wow.

Is this the kind of critical thinking steering our university into the abyss?

Shame.

I want an employer who puts people before buildings. An employer who will negotiate meaningfully with trade unions instead of just paying lip service. An employer who puts the education of students before managerial ideology. An employer who protects the livelihoods of the people who make this university what it is.

We need to stand together — for our colleagues, for our students, and for the future of the University of Nottingham.

Save our jobs. Save our university!

                                                 On behalf of the UCU Branch Committee

Email sent to members on Monday 23rd March 2026.

As part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we look at one of the central pillars of the “Future Nottingham” strategy: the plan to dramatically increase the University’s student–staff ratio (SSR).

The plan

Nottingham currently operates with a student–staff ratio of about 13:1, broadly in line with other Russell Group universities.

Management’s target is 18–22 students per academic.

For context, no traditional Russell Group university currently operates above about 14.3 on the Guardian dataset. The proposed range would therefore place Nottingham outside the operating norms of research-intensive peers.  

For sure, they will huff and puff about operational SSR vs HESA returns. But no matter how they dress it up, the goal is to get rid of loads of staff that will radically change how this university operates. This is not a marginal efficiency tweak. It is a proposal to run Nottingham on a staffing model that no comparable research university uses.

The miracle metric

SSR is now being treated by management as one of the key tools for “rightsizing” the institution. That is odd, because they themselves recognise that SSR is a very crude metric. It compresses a huge range of academic activity into a single number and ignores things like lab teaching, research buy-outs funded by grants and major disciplinary differences in teaching intensity. Trying to manage a research university using SSR is a bit like running a hospital using the metric “patients per doctor”. Technically measurable. Strategically absurd. Yet this single ratio is now driving decisions about staffing, courses and institutional strategy.

QS Rankings: gravity still applies

One awkward complication with cutting academic staff is that rankings tend to notice. Our December analysis examined what happens to Nottingham’s QS World University Ranking if SSR rises to management’s target range. Even under the most conservative assumptions the result is simple: Nottingham falls well out of the global top 100 – a catastrophe for overseas recruitment.

Once the longer-term effects of reduced research time are included, the projections become much worse:

• Year 2: ~156

• Year 5: ~215

• Year 10: ~240

Universities can choose to shrink their academic workforce. What they cannot do is shrink it and expect rankings to politely ignore the change.

The Guardian table: another disaster 

Domestic league tables are no better. The Guardian ranking gives SSR a 15% weighting, meaning the effect shows up immediately. Our modelling suggests that moving to SSR 20 could push Nottingham from 51st to around the 80s, with more realistic scenarios placing it close to or below 100.   In other words: from the upper half of UK universities to the lower half.

Which matters, because rankings influence where students apply.

The revenue problem

The financial logic behind raising SSR is simple: fewer staff means lower costs.

The problem is that students respond to reputation, rankings and teaching quality — not management spreadsheets. Using established peer reviewed evidence on how Guardian scoring affects applications, we modelled the likely admissions impact.

If SSR rises to 20, the estimated five-year loss in tuition fee income from reduced undergraduate recruitment is roughly £22–27 million.  Push SSR to 22, and the loss rises to around £29–34 million.  And that estimate is conservative. It does not include the full effects of falling QS rankings on international demand. The strategy intended to fix the University’s finances may well damage the revenue base instead.

A final thought

To be clear, the union’s modelling was never presented as a crystal ball. Predicting the precise trajectory of a university over a decade would require a major academic study. Our aim was simply to identify likely trends.  

Those trends are fairly clear. Higher SSR means:

• fewer academics;

• less research time;

• lower rankings;

• weaker student recruitment.

The university says we need to create savings, but what they are really creating is a death spiral.  When a patient cuts their finger, the doctor doesn’t stop the flow of blood by removing the heart.  

This is what our management are doing. 

This is now a fight for the survival of this university. 

You called for a formal dispute back in December, now vote in the UCU ballot.

Save your future and the future of UoN!

                                             On behalf of the UCU Branch Committee