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