Protest at University of the Arts London over plans to axe jobs and courses

Staff and students will join forces for a special lobby outside the institution's Chelsea School of Art and Design campus on Millbank from 4.30pm. UCU, leading the protests, says the planned closures and job cuts have been announced without any proper consultation. The protestors will lobby the university's governors as they arrive to discuss the cuts.
 
Under the current proposals 16 courses from the School of Creative Enterprise will be slashed with 40 staff losing their jobs. The threatened department runs hugely successful and profitable courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in marketing, public relations and advertising.
 
The union warned that the university's reputation as a centre of excellence for the arts was being put at serious risk after many final year students were left without dissertation supervisors. UCU added that it had serious fears about the disproportionate impact the cuts would have on students from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
 
Kulbir Basra, a UCU rep who teaches at the London College of Communication, said: 'I am a principal lecturer at LCC and work on profitable, successful courses that generate a lot of money for the university, so in basic financial terms there is no logic to the cuts. I am particularly worried about the impact the cuts will have on non-traditional students. Compared to the university as a whole, the courses I run attract a large number of students from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.'
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'The university needs to reverse these course closures immediately. They are not in the interest of staff or students and have been announced without any kind of proper consultation. If management pushes ahead with these plans they will be putting the university's reputation as a centre of excellence for the arts severely at risk.'