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UK higher education is in crisis. Of a total of 166 universities across the UK, 90 are proposing job cuts that affect academic, administrative and support staff. Up and down the UK, UNISON is on the frontline fighting against these cuts.
One of the hardest hit is Dundee University, where a catastrophic funding shortage has put hundreds of UNISON members’ jobs at risk.
Dundee University has a financial black hole of £35m, which senior managers propose to resolve by cutting 632 jobs. This is around one fifth of the entire university workforce and is accompanied by a recruitment freeze for over 200 vacant positions.
The situation is so dire that the Scottish government has stepped in to save the institution from total collapse. In the meantime, UNISON reps are on the frontline, fighting for members’ jobs.
Emma Preston, cultural projects manager at the university and joint branch secretary for UNISON at the university, says she first became aware of the scale of the disaster last summer.
“The problems began to surface in August 2024, when the director of finance resigned,” Emma recalls. “In November 2024, the principal announced over email that the university was in a £30m deficit and that staff jobs would need to be cut.”
Emma was shocked by the news. The financial state of the university had not previously been raised and, without any further explanation from management, Emma and joint branch secretary Catherine Cavanagh relied on local newspaper reports to discover more about the university’s financial position.
Catherine says: “To hear about job cuts in the press before you get something from someone who is meant to be your leader is in bad taste. And because there’s no communication, people are so frightened.”
While the job cuts are set to affect all departments of the university, the roles at most risk of cuts are in professional services, represented by UNISON. Many of these, Emma says, are low-paid women in admin, cleaning and security services.
The members that Emma and Catherine represent have been extremely stressed. “It’s a frightening situation. People are crying at their desks. People are walking out because they can’t cope with the stress. People are off sick,” Emma explains.
Emma and Catherine say their own mental health has been affected by the situation. “We’re working full time, going to all the meetings, and we’ve got all the members coming to us for support. The only thing that’s keeping us going is each other,” says Emma. She says if she had been alone, she’d have stepped down, given the psychological toll it has taken on her.
“We might lose our jobs too. You obviously are thinking about your own circumstances but are faced with people phoning you and it’s really difficult with no information. People think we know things, but we don’t,” she says.
Aerial view of Dundee University campus. Image: Iain Masterton / Alamy Stock Photo
‘Gob-smacking lack of integrity’
In order to bring people together amid the chaos, UNISON organised ‘town hall’ meetings where members can share their concerns and ask questions.
At an online town hall meeting held on 20 March, union members heard from several supportive MSPs, including Maggie Chapman, who described a “gob-smacking lack of integrity” from university senior management, and Michael Marra, who declared the university’s plans to save money by axing jobs “not fit for purpose”.
A UNISON vote found that 89% of staff had no confidence in the university’s management, which has seen six different principals in the last 10 years.
While there is no clear information on exactly how the situation has got this bad, media reports have linked it to a ‘severe drop’ in international student recruitment.
Scottish universities, which do not charge Scottish students fees, heavily rely on the income they receive from international students. In the last year, the number of international students at Scottish universities dropped by more than 10,000.
However, Emma locates the heart of the problem with “mismanagement and incompetence” at the most senior levels of the university. For her, the fact that the senior management that led the university into such dire straits is now tasked with coming up with a recovery plan just adds insult to injury: “The people who burned the house down are now putting the fires out,” she says, describing the governance structure and funding model as “unsustainable”.
“I’ve worked in lots of different places. I’ve worked for a local authority and for national organisations, and I’ve never seen anywhere run like this. Even businesses wouldn’t be able to run like this – it’s appalling.”
Dundee University is one of the biggest employers in the city, which means job cuts will have a direct impact on the wider economy.
In mid-March, the Scottish Funding Council approved a £22 million loan for the university. However, there is still no guarantee whether this will protect members’ jobs. UNISON continues to fight to protect as many workers as possible.
The origins of the disaster
The root cause of today’s university funding crisis is in the 2012 funding reforms implemented under the Cameron-Osborne coalition government’s austerity programme, which drastically cut state funding for universities across the UK and left them reliant on sourcing their own cash through student fees.
In 2012, despite widespread protests, university tuition fees in England and Wales tripled to an eye-watering £9,000 per year, initiating a shift away from education as a service and towards a model that treated students as consumers. This was also reinforced by the government’s removal of the cap on student admissions in 2014, enabling universities to recruit as many students as they wanted.
Within this model, universities across the UK were encouraged to recruit international students, who could be charged fees of up to £40,000 a year.
The writing was on the wall from the very beginning of this transition to a consumer model of higher education. In 2014, a Higher Education Commission report warned that “introducing market forces to a sector that does not operate a market puts the financial sustainability of the sector at risk”.
The report recommended the government moved away from treating students as consumers and advised universities to “plan for the potential volatility of the international student income stream and for the prospect that hitherto stable international markets may decline or change, possibly at short notice”.
A decade later, this is exactly what has happened. While funding shortfalls have gradually accumulated since 2012, the extortionate fees charged to international students have helped offset them. However, in recent years there has been a significant decrease in international students applying to study in the UK.
The London School of Economics has attributed this to strict immigration policies and tighter visa restrictions introduced under consecutive Conservative governments. Brexit has also been a key factor, as it made it more difficult for EU students to study in the UK. Now, it’s workers who are facing the brunt of the fall-out.
‘Heartbreaking’
In the east of England, UNISON is supporting members through a voluntary redundancy process affecting 163 full-time roles across the University of East Anglia (UEA).
UNISON UEA branch secretary Amanda Chenery-Howes (pictured below) describes how the university’s funding problems were not new, but suddenly became much worse in 2023. “Eighteen months ago, we were told of the deficit and the cuts that needed to be made. They were targeted towards our cleaning department, many of whom were UNISON members, with a number of academics also at risk, but the majority of other professional services staff were not put at risk of redundancy.
“Due to the work of unions, only a few staff went through voluntary redundancy and redeployment. We hoped that was over but remained sceptical. Then in September, the admissions figures came in.”
“We were down on student numbers with 40% on international student targets, which left an £11m deficit that they said could not be achieved anywhere other than staff cuts.”
Amanda Chenery-Howes protesting cuts at UEA
In response, Amanda and UNISON, working with the other trade unions on campus, put several mitigations forward to management, including a better targeted voluntary redundancy scheme, which was taken up in early 2025, for which the union fought to be as generous as possible.
Although they’ve come out of official collective consultation, Amanda’s branch is still meeting with management until all redeployments are complete. She’s exhausted.
“We’ve worked flat out,” she says. “If they were employed in a workplace that had no trade union present, these staff would have had a letter on the Monday and been sacked on the Friday. It’s really brought home the importance of being in a trade union.
“It’s heartbreaking. What’s really affected me, this time round, is the young people who are just starting their careers, who haven’t worked there very long and who have continuously said when they got their job that they were so pleased and thought it was the start of a great career. The VR isn’t anything for them.”
A young member’s experience of redundancy at UEA
As a staff member fresh out of university, I was shocked and saddened to receive the news of redundancy. I also felt very let down as someone who has worked considerably hard to support UEA and its continued success in achieving high student satisfaction rates.
Having never been in any sort of a redundancy position before, navigating this process has been very new for me. Although the university’s financial sustainability team sent links to wellbeing pages, and support contacts, I didn’t feel much better. The support meetings with directors which were offered around the redundancies involved a lot of language I didn’t understand and, despite having the opportunity to ask questions, I left meetings feeling more confused than before even entering them.
Staff impacted had been offered the opportunity to apply for voluntary severance, and I do appreciate this initiative. However, those who have only been present at UEA for a year or two and are younger than 30 will barely receive any payout, which feels a little bit of an insult. Those who are on the larger salaries or are close to the retiring age will receive larger payouts. This leaves younger members of staff with no other alternative than to ride out the storm and pray we are accepted into an alternative role, but still with the added risk of losing our jobs.
The UNISON team at UEA have been brilliant at helping me navigate these uncertainties and were also present with me during my individual consultation meeting and have kept in touch with me since. I’ve felt comfort in having someone there who would have sat these same meetings on many occasions and could pinpoint key information, so I knew I was not being provided with misinformation. I am really pleased I joined UNISON when I did.
Sadly, I’m not sure if I see the current issues in HE resolving anytime soon. During times like these, you need a voice, and it’s great that there are individuals within the HE sector who are willing to fight for workers and their best interests.
Student residence at the University of East Anglia. Image: Martin RP
Funding for the future
Alongside Dundee University and UEA, universities where UNISON members will be hit hardest include Bedfordshire, Brunel, Cardiff, Coventry, Durham, Edinburgh, Queen Mary University of London, Staffordshire, Sunderland and Swansea.
UNISON head of local government and education Mike Short says: “The combination of tuition fees, Brexit, falling international student numbers and inflationary pressure has placed universities in incredibly challenging circumstances. It’s UNISON members who are bearing the brunt of it – keeping universities going while their jobs are under threat.
“Across the sector, we are seeing cuts and redundancies at an alarming rate, and UNISON members are feeling the devastating effects of closures, cutbacks, and withdrawal of services.
“This has to stop and we need a fundamental change in the way HE is funded. UNISON is calling for a fairer system – with universities funded through taxation – and immediate emergency funding to save the universities that are under threat.
“We’re also working hard at all levels to support members whose jobs are threatened, supporting branches in their local campaigns.”
UNISON’s higher education service group has launched a national campaign, Fund Our Future. The campaign is calling for fundamental change in the way HE is funded and will be supporting branches in local campaigns fighting cuts through several resources for branches, including a guide for fighting HE cuts, a guide to lobbying MPs and guidance on bargaining over collective redundancy.
