Tag: 2026 redundancy campaign blog

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

Email sent to members on Monday 30th 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 accountability procedures for senior leadership and here especially the Vice-Chancellor. Feel free to share this email with non-UCU members in your area.

UoN unveils Strategic Holistic Accountability Model for senior leadership

After listening carefully to staff concerns about accountability, transparency and the apparent absence of consequences at senior level, the University of Nottingham is pleased to announce the Strategic Holistic Accountability Model, a new framework designed to embed a culture of excellence in senior leadership governance.

SHAM will support the delivery of excellence in leadership by demonstrating that senior leaders are appropriately accountable within the institutional framework agreed by senior leadership, as defined by the Board Oversight and Governance for University Strategy model. In doing so, long-established norms of institutional leadership excellence will be safeguarded.

The Vice-Chancellor, who has repeatedly emphasised the importance of accountability, graciously agreed to be the first senior leader reviewed under the pilot process.

Pilot Accountability Reflections: Outcomes, Developments, and Yardsticks

The review panel comprised leading members of the University Executive Board, including several directly associated with the Castle Meadow Campus project. This was widely welcomed as ensuring that the review was informed by those with direct understanding of the decisions under consideration, enabling a self-consistent and well-contextualised interpretation of outcomes aligned with institutional priorities.

The Chair of the panel described the resulting review methodology as both “robustly self-informed” and “appropriately insulated from hindsight.”

Staff Lived Experience

The panel welcomed the Vice-Chancellor’s recent Town Hall clarification regarding the historic “compact” between staff and the University:

“I understand that the compact you felt about working for a university has now been broken. You know, the compact where… you had a secure job for life in a comfortable environment with a low workload.”

Panel members congratulated the Vice-Chancellor on her correction of a persistent misunderstanding within the sector, agreeing that widespread reports of sustained 50–80 hour working weeks were entirely consistent with a low workload when understood within a modern, delivery-focused and outcomes-aligned institutional framework.

The sector’s reliance on discretionary labour, routinely extending far beyond contracted hours, was further welcomed as a significant institutional strength, enabling current levels of activity without the unnecessary constraint of formal workload limits, and as evidence of a mature and high-performing organisational culture, for which the Vice-Chancellor was also commended.

Estates Strategy and Capital Investment

The panel highlighted the University’s £80 million investment in the Castle Meadow project, noting its significance as a major strategic estates initiative of a type unmatched in the UK higher education sector. Particular value was attributed to the insight brought by panel members directly involved in its development and delivery.

While reviewing the Vice-Chancellor’s ongoing management of the project, the panel highlighted the institution’s agile approach to post-acquisition strategy. Earlier reflections that “as we’ve now bought this campus, we need to find a good use for it” were cited as indicative of a flexible, opportunity-led model of capital deployment unburdened by extensive financial modelling or detailed analysis. The Vice-Chancellor was commended for maintaining continuity in this approach.

Student Engagement

The panel welcomed the Vice-Chancellor Q&A sessions as a wholly positive example of student engagement in practice. The introduction of enhanced security measures, including bag searches prior to entry, was commended as helping to place students at ease and create a reassuring environment for constructive dialogue, aligned to UoN’s institutional values. Panel members noted that these arrangements reduced the risk of unstructured contributions and ensured that student voice could be expressed within clearly defined and appropriately controlled parameters, supporting students in developing a clearer understanding of the Vice-Chancellor’s strategic vision.

Rankings and Reputation

The panel also commended the Vice-Chancellor for her continued emphasis on the University’s performance in the QS rankings, noting the strategic advantage of a system in which institutional standing is shaped through targeted engagement with professional networks. This was recognised as a highly efficient mechanism through which universities could enhance their position by actively encouraging participation in reputation surveys, without unnecessary reliance on underlying teaching or research outcomes.

Panel members further observed that traditional academic expectations of methodological rigour and objectivity were of diminishing relevance in this context, with one noting that “the ability of institutions to mobilise their networks to recognise excellence provides a sufficiently robust basis for evaluation.”

The panel recommended that the Vice-Chancellor’s focus on league table performance be further strengthened through the formalisation of a peer engagement framework, Bilateral Academic Collaboration and Knowledge-Sharing through Collegial Recognition And Trusted CHannels, to be rolled out as part of the next QS reputation management process.

Summary of Outcomes and Strategic Forward Positioning

The panel concluded that the Vice-Chancellor had demonstrated strong and consistent leadership across all areas of review, with no material issues identified. The process was widely regarded as a valuable exercise in reinforcing accountability, confirming that existing arrangements remain effective and appropriately aligned with institutional priorities.

No further action was required.

On behalf of the UCU Branch Committee

Email sent to members on Monday 16th March 2026.

As part of our fight to protect jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails outlining various aspects of our campaign. Today, we discuss UEB’s decision to suspend a whole range of degree programmes and how this violated the university’s governance processes. Further details about our campaign can be found on our webpages, via the Future Nottingham tab.

The University of Nottingham’s Course Suspensions: Two Claims That Don’t Hold Up

The University has offered a public justification for its decision to suspend over 40 courses, including the whole departments of Modern Languages and Music. Here is why some of those justifications deserve a closer look.

Claim 1: “Our governance processes are being followed across all the [Future Nottingham] programme, including the decision to suspend courses.”

What happened? Heads of Schools were informed of the decision approximately a week before staff were notified on 5 November 2025. The courses were taken off UCAS by 7 November. And as for the “two main bodies […] involved in the governance of the University”, Senate and Council, the former was invited to comment on 13 November, while the latter only voted to approve the strategic case for change on 25 November.

On governing processes, it might be worth looking at the University’s Quality Manual, as a “robust quality assurance framework which sets out the regulations, policies and procedures around teaching and learning at the University of Nottingham.”

Section 4.1 on closing or suspending a course is unambiguous: “School and Faculty endorsement is required to close or suspend a course”  (emphasis added). That is mandatory language, not aspirational. It also specifies that “at the end of this stage there must be clear evidence of support from both the School and the Faculty” and that this evidence “must be retained for audit purposes”.

Heads of Schools were informed but not asked. Notification isn’t endorsement. The Quality Manual does not state that Schools should be kept in the loop, but that their support should be sought and evidenced before the process moves forward.

Now, the University Executive Board (UEB) may contend that Future Nottingham, as a top-down executive programme, operates outside or above the Quality Manual framework. However, this argument does not hold either.

The Quality Manual states that “all closures and suspensions […] will require endorsement at School and Faculty level” (emphasis added). It contains no exception for strategic restructuring programmes, nor any provision allowing UEB to disapply its requirements.

The logic of a “top-down” decision superseding the Quality Manual also defeats itself. Its stated purpose is indeed to:

• Enable the effective and efficient monitoring of academic standards and the quality of the student experience in relation to internal priorities and external requirements (such as those stated in the QAA’s Quality Code   and from accrediting professional, statutory and regulatory bodies);
• Ensure consistency and transparency, whilst enabling and acknowledging appropriately diverse discipline practices;
• Provide a mechanism for critical review and, in doing so, highlight and promote good practice across the institution.

The endorsement requirement has its greatest value precisely in situations like this one: where an executive decision is being imposed on Schools that have not asked for it, and where the outcome of following the procedure would have been a documented objection. The University bypassed a mechanism that would have produced a formal, recorded refusal to endorse. That is not a procedural technicality. It is a substantive governance failure.

Claim 2: “This decision was made to ensure compliance with Consumer Protection Legislation (CMA) as well as to ensure transparency to potential future students and not promote programmes that may ultimately not exist. No final decisions have been made about the future of these courses.”

This argument, repeated on many occasions, deserves closer reading.

The University says, in two sentences, that it removed courses from UCAS to avoid promoting programmes that “may ultimately not exist”, and that “no final decisions have been made.” If no final decision has been made, then these are courses that may well continue to exist. Removing them from UCAS, therefore, does not protect prospective students from applying to closing courses. It deprives them of the chance to apply to courses that the University itself admits might survive.

That is not a consumer protection measure. It is the operational implementation of a decision that has not yet been taken.

Furthermore, the CMA requires that prospective students be given “clear, intelligible, unambiguous and timely information by HE providers”. Thus, transparency, according to CMA, is telling people what’s happening, not suddenly withdrawing options without explanation. If the University’s genuine concern was transparency, the appropriate step would have been to add a visible notice to the relevant course pages explaining that these programmes were under review. Instead, the courses disappeared.

There is also the matter of the withdrawal date. The University’s public communication of 6 November told students that courses would be suspended from UCAS from Monday 10 November. They were, in fact, removed on Friday 7 November, without correction or explanation.

Other than a misleading public statement, it undermines the University’s CMA compliance argument. The University’s statement claimed that the suspension was made in the interests of transparency and CMA compliance. It is very difficult to maintain that position while simultaneously having communicated an incorrect withdrawal date to the public. This was either an administrative error or a deliberate choice. If it was an error, it demonstrates inadequate control over a consequential operational decision. If it was deliberate, it raises the question of who made that decision, on what authority, and why the public communication was not corrected before the earlier withdrawal took effect.

All in all

These two claims share a common thread: they assert compliance and good faith while the documented sequence of events tells a different story. Governance procedures were bypassed or substituted with lesser forms of engagement. A withdrawal date was communicated incorrectly.

The University said that no final decisions have been made. If that is true, there is still time to act consistently with it, by reinstating the courses on UCAS pending the September 2026 decision.

The students, staff, and communities affected by these decisions are entitled to more than statements of reassurance. They are entitled to governance that matches the commitments set out in the University’s own documentation and to an institution that, when it makes claims about compliance, can demonstrate them.

                UoN UCU Branch Committee