Some 10,000 jobs could be lost each year at UK universities as leaders continue to cut staff numbers to tackle ongoing financial problems, new analysis suggests. 

Writing for ����Vlog, David Maguire and Alex Bols, vice-chancellor and chief of staff respectively at the University of East Anglia, updated their prediction made last autumn that 10,000 jobs could be lost in 2024-25, claiming this same amount could in fact be lost every year going forward. 

According to , there were 246,930 academic staff employed in the higher education sector in December 2023. 

Bols and Maguire trace the current financial problems higher education institutions are facing back to the government’s decision to remove the limit on student numbers in 2015-16 and deregulate student recruitment, while maintaining caps on tuition fees, thus limiting universities’ income. 

����Vlog

They found there were “winners and losers” within the existing system. “The former include those with the reputation, resources and geographic opportunity to expand, as well as those that are most responsive to change and able to take early-mover advantage,” they write. 

“The losers consist of providers that, for a host of exogenous and endogenous reasons, have failed to maintain their enrolment numbers – either domestic or international.”

����Vlog

Bols and Maguire found that 11 universities expanded by more than 11,000 students over the past decade, while the three institutions with the biggest growth expanded by more than 20,000 students – BPP University (28,915 more students), Canterbury Christ Church University (22,410) and UCL (21,490). 

However, even those institutions have not been immune to job cuts. Earlier this year, leaders at Canterbury Christ Church University refused to rule out compulsory redundancies as they sought to make “pre-emptive savings” of about £20 million. The local UCU branch objected to the move given the institution’s budget surplus.

Recent modelling by the Office for Students suggests the sector’s troubles are far from over. A report published in October found that 45 per cent of English higher education institutions were likely to face a financial deficit this year, with the sector experiencing a total net reduction in annual tuition fee income of £437.8 million in 2025-26 compared with forecasts.

Maguire and Bols’ prediction follows figures released by the University and College Union (UCU) in October, which calculated UK universities had announced cuts equivalent to more than 15,000 jobs over the past year. 

The UCU said university leaders have mooted staff reductions amounting to 12,230 jobs, while planned savings of £197 million could equate to the further loss of about 3,224 jobs, based on the average cost of employing a university worker. 

The threat of job cuts is causing widespread disruption across higher education providers. 

����Vlog

Union members at universities including Nottingham, Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam have already planned strikes this academic year in response to plans to cut staff members at the institutions. 

Meanwhile, sector unions are currently balloting their members on plans to take national strike action over pay.  

����Vlog

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said job losses in line with Maguire and Bols’ prediction are “completely unsustainable”. 

“They would torpedo learning and working conditions and leave institutions unable to function. Vice-chancellors must stop wasting money on new buildings, campuses and foreign ventures, and start protecting jobs. 

“Meanwhile, the government needs to lift its harmful restrictions on foreign students studying here and begin investing in the sector.”

However, Gregor Gall, an industrial relations expert who is a visiting professor at the universities of Glasgow and Leeds, was unoptimistic about the unions’ chances of turning the tide, pointing out that cutting staff numbers is the “quickest way” for universities to reduce expenditure – more so than limiting pay rises or selling off buildings. 

“The best that the UCU can hope for is to blunt the axe’s cut by delaying redundancies, bettering terms of leaving, having voluntary ones rather than compulsory ones and reducing the number of redundancies required,” he said.

“There is no ‘white knight’ riding over the hill any time soon with a Labour government overseeing all of this.”

����Vlog

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com