It's really important to emphasize this: the reason that conservatives are arguing for increased teaching loads is that they want to END mainstream humanities research

That includes so-called “non-research” or “teaching-intensive“ institution. Time for research and knowledge creation is important for everyone.

On the teaching load thing: professors actually teach far too much; universities should be hiring more faculty so that nobody has to teach more than a 2/2.

Cutting courses is the easy choice. The difficult choice is saying “we don’t have the money right now, but the future is important. Somehow, we’ll find a way to prioritise a long term vision of governing a country (and its people) over the short term expediency of running an economy.”

QMU staff strike during graduation days amid jobs cuts dispute #StopTheCuts #SaveHE www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/qmu-sta...

So many departments right now dealing with this exact thing: the massive extra push of work to launch a new curriculum, mandated from above, while under threat of redundancy

Our fantastic pickets this morning and afternoon 💗✊🏻💗 The number of students and parents thanking staff on the pickets for their dedicated hard work as lecturers and support staff AND for fighting against the cuts made us a bit teary. Thank you for all your support #StopTheCuts

We're being treated to a pipe band on the picket line this morning! Out of sashes but plenty of stickers left. Loving the student solidarity: "What do you mean? That's wild - this is what QMU is all about - the support is better than anywhere else" #StopTheCuts

Academics fear they are being “set up to fail” after several institutions finished the academic year by announcing fresh job cuts, casting doubt over who will return after the summer break, and what courses they will be teaching #highered #jobcuts #edusky https://ow.ly/VJVG50ZkBOr

One thing that I suspect is now going to happen is that universities will realise how many academics have been self-funding research when less of it starts to appear.

Back on the picket line this morning to #StopTheCuts, 9-11 and 1-3 outside Usher Hall, see you there! Managed to reclaim most of the sashes from our amazing students and our armbands will be replenished! ✊🏻

I can tell you already how universities are going to adjust: firing more people, increasing the student to teacher ratios, reducing degrees offer and increasing any other charges they can find. Why is the UK so determined to destroy Higher Education?

Strike at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh over job cuts #StopTheCuts #SaveHE news.stv.tv/east-central...

Staff at QMU strike during uni student graduation ceremonies #StopTheCuts #SaveHE www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinbur...

QMU @ucuqmu.bsky.social on strike today & tomorrow to defend jobs, opposing possible compulsory redundancies and cuts to research & scholarship time. At graduations today and tomorrow at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh congratulating the students they've taught ✊️ #StopTheCuts #SaveHE

We're celebrating students' success on the first day of graduation ceremonies and calling for QMU management to stop the cuts and changes to working conditions that will damage the student experience, staff wellbeing and quality of the university #StopTheCuts #UCU

Would be nice if our leaders would challenge this situation in any way, rather than enthusiastically line up to put us through an experimental mini-merger by sharing with ENU and SRUC as many professional services and academic programmes as they can manage 😶

Morning folks, it's our first strike day against compulsory redundancies and reduction in research and scholarship time. Members, check your email for picket details, see you there ✊🏻

"[Universities]were here long before the locusts [(aka management consultants)] started eating the harvest: they will be with us long after the plague has passed." I sincerely hope so. The locusts are amongst us, and too few see their evil ways. www.ft.com/content/5032...

"Wildly optimistic management may dream that the remaining staff can be stretched further, but in the real world that will just lead to further staff losses as the burden and stress on remaining staff increases."

I like this idea: mandatory arts and humanities classes for university leaders. No cutting / devastating / de-staffing disciplines without at least a basic understanding of what they do & and how they can enrich our approach to questions like what education is for…

Lobby of court by @ucuqmu.bsky.social defending jobs and opposing cuts. Calling for management to rule out compulsory redundancies & stop proposed reduction in research time #SaveHE #StopTheCuts

This. I don't see a long-term future for UK universities unless: a) we de-professionalise upper management; and b) we ban the use of external consultants

"The neoliberalization and managerialization of UK universities, where we are expected to rubber stamp top-down initiatives, have led to our infantilisation...& the erosion of the universities’ academic community and intellectual life" @isrfoundation.bsky.social isrf.org/blog/dispatc...

no point in playing an evidence-based game with people who expressly disavow it

what i love ("love") about data like this is you could show it to decisionmakers all day long; they will then proceed to cancel humanities programs as they intended all along

Every university should have broad subject coverage; that's what a university is

Academic departments deserve to be saved, supported, resourced, allowed to grow even if they're not "best in the country," "first in the REF," "top-ranked," "at a Russell Group uni," or whatever other austerity-brained nonsense senior managers have been using to flimflam you out of solidarity

Two factors dominate UK higher education right now: 1) mass redundancies, especially in subjects that emphasise critical thinking. 2) the growing pervasiveness of AI. This is what we call 'technopolitics'.

This isn't what I argued, but also, can someone *please* write up some good stuff on the way universities/consulting firms change metrics over time to find the one that justifies closing departments?

Was in a meeting earlier today trying to explain to the provost the value of the humanities & history. Completely uninterested & dismissive. I guess this is to be expected but nevertheless it's depressing how impervious university administration can be to all of our evidence and arguments.

I like to tell the story of how, as my first postdoc ended, I asked a dean about an ongoing job. "We don't hire traditional scholars any more," he said, "we hire people who can bring in external grants around which we can build [cash-cow] master's programs." Proud, then, to be a traditional scholar.

Yes, you see, what he meant to say is that he is driven by curiosity about what it would be like to have more money.

I think I'd say ... Don't run universities like a business; run them like universities. Not everything is assimilable to some other market-based category. Universities have their origins, and in many ways find their deepest purposes, in a medieval world very different from our own.

My university has just described the closure of a department & cutting of courses as 'an exciting opportunity', creating 'new possibilities for growth'. The only growth here is in senior management using marketing bullshit to describe the sector-wide destruction of the arts & humanities.

Please everyone sign and support my east side comrades. Sociology in the post-1992 sector is being gutted and sociology itself is being made into a subject for elite universities.

speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/protect-jobs... Last week the Sociology Team & other colleagues were told we're at risk of redundancy amid sweeping harmful changes at QMU. Please sign this @ucuqmu.bsky.social @ucuscotland.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk petition to support protecting our jobs, courses & students.

twenty years ago people attacked universities by deriding “Mickey Mouse degrees” like media studies in favour of “proper” subjects like history, and now universities are skipping that step and simply abolishing everything that isn’t economics

The Sociology Team at QMU are at risk of redundancy (alongside other colleagues) as a result of significant organisational changes. Please sign this petition to protect jobs and courses: speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/protect-jobs... @ucuqmu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk @ucuscotland.bsky.social

Impeccably timed, as ever

The problem with this assetization of academic content through platforms and AI repackaging is not just about IP rights, but erosions of academic freedom as our work in HE becomes governed for its value-generating potential more than its educational value. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Once academics were told to upload teaching materials to digital learning platforms, universities and tech firms alike were always going to monetize it. Now AI is being used to amplify the assetization of those digital archives of academic content. codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2026/04/29/a...

👀 It's what the Schools Sustainability Proposals are all about; 70% teaching time, increased use of grade 7 (assistant lecturer) posts - hollowing out the university

Right. Almost as if decades of declaring THE MARKET WILL RULE about universities makes universities behave like businesses and thus not, you know, collaboratively? Almost as if this entire model doesn't work for #UKHE?

Incidentally, the idea that a major shift to 'vocational learning' is a good thing when the whole nature of work is undergoing a seismic shift is, well, not exactly logical.

“The coming redundancies will officially be called ‘voluntary’ but this is the equivalent of giving a condemned man a pistol in his cell prior to being led to the gallows and classifying him shooting himself as suicide.” Grim and stark. The human faces of the UK university omni-crisis. 1/3

Ballot papers have started to arrive through the post. Vote YES to supporting strike action and action short of a strike - this gives us strength in negotiations and telling management we won't accept worse working conditions or compulsory redundancies

Our thoughts are with every member of staff being notified they are at risk of redundancy today, the first round of compulsory redundancies this time round

This is the untold story of higher education. Everything only works because staff do more work than they can really be expected to do.

It’s not about providing knowledge, it’s not about learning skills, it’s about learning how to learn, how to think, how to apply logic, how to research and how to question. Again, this is what a good university education should provide.