Vice-Chancellor Sir Peter Mathieson announced on Monday, 18 November, that the university will enact a series of redundancies in response to the “severe financial challenges” in the sector.
The plan to combat these challenges will involve “selective voluntary and, if unavoidable, compulsory redundancies”, Mathieson said in an all-staff email.
This comes after Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced a National Insurance hike, which will see a decrease in the income required for employees to receive national insurance.
The rate of national insurance will rise from 15 to 17.2 per cent in April of next year. Universities will also be required to pay into insurance contributions on staff earnings from £5,000, rather than the previous £9,100.
Universities Scotland has told The Herald that this could add £45 million to the wage bills of Scottish higher education institutions.
Mathieson’s all-staff email attributed the cost-cutting measures to this hike as well as wider challenges, including stagnating international student numbers, rising staff costs, and “unsustainable levels of funding” for domestic students.
A Scotland official for the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) told the BBC that the announcement came at a “deeply worrying” time, adding that:
“UCU will fight to defend every job”.
Similar justifications were given for the introduction of 2.5 per cent spending cuts “in all areas” and strict restrictions on new hires and announced by Mathieson in July.
UCU Edinburgh President Sophia Woodman previously expressed her frustration with July’s spending cuts to The Student, noting that they were implemented after budgets and plans for the academic year were already in place.
“As a consequence, some low paid staff have less work than they expected (and will thus be finding it hard to get by), while others have had their workloads increased, sometimes threefold, at very short notice,” she added.
Other universities across the UK have recently implemented a similar policy of voluntary severance.
Earlier this month, the University of Dundee said job losses were “inevitable” in the face of a £30 million deficit, while up to 135 at-risk staff at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University will be offered voluntary redundancy.
The Student spoke to a senior figure at one UK university which implemented a similar voluntary severance scheme.
While not commenting on the situation at the University of Edinburgh, the senior figure said:
“For the cost savings to be sustained, staffing reductions have to go hand-in-hand with changing the way we work.”
Meanwhile, Theo, a first year student at the University of Edinburgh, told The Student that he university “seems intent on taxing students and staff as much as possible”, instead of taking other internal measures to sort their financial issues.
Theo called staff cuts a “get out of jail free card” for the university’s finances.
In January 2024, the Vice-Chancellor received a five per cent pay rise in line with an increase given to all staff.
It remains to be seen whether the Remuneration Committee will award Mathieson the 2.5 per cent increase negotiated for university staff earlier this year.
In his all-staff email, the Vice-Chancellor said the university will continue to work with unions and managers as well as offering online and in-person meetings to help staff learn more about the measures.
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