University vice chancellors up and down the country appear to be taking a lead from Rachel Reeves and discovering black holes in their finances

UK-based students have suddenly become hot property over the past couple of months, in a mad summer dash to fill university courses. Premier league universities in the Russell Group lowered their entrance qualifications due to the drop in overseas students, in part driven by the Tories’ anti-immigration policies and rhetoric. 

UCEA, the employers’ body, estimate a 40% drop in overseas students. Many university business plans have been built on increasing numbers of overseas students, who pay much higher fees than UK students. These plans are now in tatters.

Economies of scale have been deployed, with the logic that a lecturer can teach 100 students as easily as 40 students. This is, of course, nonsense. There is more to teaching than a single lecture in a massive auditorium, and more students means more work for the staff who support them across the board. 

Without increases in staff numbers, workloads – already causing ill-health among staff and among lecturers and professional services staff in particular – are now rising even higher.

In addition, the scramble for domestic students is likely to have seen some universities losing out. As the more elite universities lower their entry qualifications, the numbers recruited by less well-off institutions are likely to fall. The domino effect in the UK higher education market is leading to redundancies.

Pay and conditions

In the midst of all this, trade unions and employers have been negotiating this year’s (2024-25) pay deal. Long outstanding issues around workload, equality and casualisation (previously part of the “Four Fights” dispute) have also been discussed. 

On pay, the offer is 5.7% for staff at the lower end of the pay scale earning just over £20,000, tapering off to 2.5% for those on £47,000 and above. Most staff will get around 3%. 

This falls far short of what junior doctors have just won through prolonged strike action. It is also less that the awards for teachers. It does nothing to address the huge drop in real term pay that the sector has endured since the financial crash of 2008.

The pay award will be staged and institutions can defer the award for up to 11 months, with no backdating as long as they claim it is in the wider interests of the institution’s sustainability or that they have immediate cashflow issues. Simply discussing this with the local trade unions opens this door.

On the issues of workload, equality and casualisation, the unions have been offered talks to develop guidance for local employers to deal with these issues. This is no further than we were last year.

Job Losses

Already there are redundancies and strike ballots at the University of Hull, with 127 jobs at risk, University of Kent over the threat of compulsory redundancies and Open University over fire and rehire of associate lecturers. The UCU website lists 24 HE and FE branches in some sort of dispute, mainly over job cuts.

This week, a branch delegate meeting with reps from branches across the country will discuss the way forward after a failure to agree with the employers over pay. Proposals for balloting for strike action will be on the table. The final decision will be taken at Friday’s Higher Education Committee of the NEC. 

It doesn’t look like we have much choice but to enter another period of industrial action backed up by a massive campaign, together with students, emphasising the value of a properly funded higher education sector. 

The employers are no doubt exaggerating their financial woes for their own benefit. Nevertheless, in order to prevent total dysfunction, the new Labour government does need to reinject funding into higher education in the UK, which has been neglected and deliberately undermined by the Tories for over a decade. 

Jacking up student fees is not the solution. Fees should be abolished and universities should be funded by government as a social good, rather than subjected to some foolish neoliberal experiment, which has failed.

UCU branches need to rally round their affected colleagues who are facing redundancy. This is a national crisis and requires a national response. Treating these as individual disputes is not adequate. 

Along with pay, we need a national fight back over job cuts with a clear focus on Starmer’s government to come up with a solution which will, whether they like it or not, involve funding the sector properly. 

If the government can afford £55 billion for defence, it can afford to invest in the teaching and research that the country desperately needs. Linking up with other unions in a fight for a fair deal across the public sector could energise colleagues and force the Labour government to do what people voted for it to do.