New analysis shows over 15,000 university job cuts as UCU launches UK wide strike ballot

The alarming figure is from research carried out by the union and comes as UCU approaches a UK-wide strike ballot over the growing crisis in higher education. The new data reveals a worrying escalation since March, when UCU reported around 5,000 proposed job cuts.

UCU is balloting over its demands that UCEA, the employer body, commits to:

• a national agreement to halt redundancies at all universities
• protection of existing national agreements over terms and conditions
• a fair pay offer following UCEA's derisory pay award of 1.4%.

The ballot comes after all university unions rejected the pay offer.  

One in five academic staff at Lancaster University face redundancy, Nottingham has axed around 500 jobs, and the University of Edinburgh is attempting to force through up to 1,800 job cuts.  Meanwhile, according to Times Higher, almost 4,000 courses have been shuttered. UCU members at the universities of Leicester and Nottingham are currently on strike fighting against local job cuts.

UCU is also calling on UCEA to join it in lobbying the UK government to step in and support the sector. This would include demanding the Labour government ends attacks on international students, scraps the proposed international student levy, and resists Reform's right-wing anti-immigration agenda.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'This analysis exposes a UK wide crisis in higher education. These job losses are not minor, and government must stop treating them as localised incidents. Overpaid vice-chancellors are carrying out brutal cuts and have caused an existential moment for the UK higher education sector; our members do not want to strike, but they have been left with no choice but to ballot to defend it.

'University bosses must protect jobs, come forward with a fair pay offer and safeguard our hard-won national agreements. Staff cannot be made to pay the price for management failures.

'The Labour government must also stop looking the other way. Earlier this year it rightly introduced emergency powers, recalled parliament and provided the funding necessary to save 2,700 blast furnace jobs and British Steel.  Yet universities, which make up our country's last world-leading sector and serve as economic lynchpin in post-industrial communities, are losing five times as many staff. Ministers cannot claim to be serious about national renewal while watching the crisis from the sidelines. We need intervention now.'