University of Sheffield staff are now officially locked out! Please consider a small donation to help us continue our fight to save the university from the greed of corporate power! Please also share the link! @ucu.org.uk @sheffielducu.bsky.social www.gofundme.com/f/heubvb-sup...

While hundreds of staff have left University of Edinburgh amid £140m of budget cuts, senior managers spent £111,736 on travel and accommodation over the same period. These are not abstract numbers. They represent real jobs, real students, and real priorities.

How does it feel when your employer doesn't seem to be bothered about the risks to staff morale and retention caused by plans to steal pay and pensions? @northumbriauni.bsky.social @timeshighered.bsky.social @moneyontheleft.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

“You can’t cut one in ten staff without damaging students and teaching.” 85% of University of Essex staff have voted for strike action over plans to cut 400 jobs and close the Southend campus. Show your support and solidarity as they prepare to fight back. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1432...

Dreadful stuff from the Uni of Sheffield. Please do support the @sheffielducu.bsky.social crowdfunder if you can afford to do so.

Leicester UCU is back on the pickets on Thursday, 11-2pm: Join us at 1.30 near the library for a stellar teach-out on solidarity!

There must be a handbook that senior management work from on this, because it’s exactly the same as the UEA experience & now colleagues at Essex. Solidarity with everyone going through this absolute avoidable horror

The average salary among Russell Group leaders increased above £350,000 last year, despite these universities losing almost 7,000 staff members due to cost-cutting. Patrick Jack crunches the numbers #highered #academicsky https://ow.ly/gJK850XU77K

I'd also like to see figures on money spaffed on management consultants whilst universities slash budgets that support staff to actually deliver research and teaching.

Sir Nishan? Many of our members are shocked our VC is to be knighted during a grueling redundancy programme, with more consultations announced today! Only two months ago, 1,022 university members participated in a confidence vote and overwhelmingly voted ‘no confidence’ in him.

'More universities have severed ties with fossil fuel companies, banning them from recruitment fairs and refusing to advertise roles in the industry, according to the latest higher education league table.'

British Library staff asked for a decent pay. Instead they got ‘a few money-saving present ideas’, such as ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’. They are on strike this week. I wrote about it for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

Latest monthly visa application figures are out. Skilled workers? Still dropping. Health & care workers? Still dropping. Slow clap.

A Senate inquiry in Australia has found that corporatised universities have 'betrayed' students and staff. Good stuff. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

Chief exec of OfS 'said the OfS believes there are 24 institutions at risk of exiting the market in the next 12 months, seven of which are large providers with more than 3,000 students. There are another 25 or so institutions of various sizes at risk over a two- to three-year period, she added.'

Some petitions to sign to protest Nottingham’s cuts! #AcademicSky Save Modern Languages - c.org/D5v6qstzyW Save Agriculture - c.org/bgxhcKVHYk

Although I am inevitably caught up in the likely dire implications for my department (Music), it isn’t just us in the Faculty of Arts or in the university under threat. Do consider signing this petition in support of colleagues teaching Theology! c.org/6kntRm2JVh

Save Nursing - c.org/HVr7Rfrhsz

'While stating that a crackdown on the higher education sector could have a negative impact for the country at large, Centre for Cities said the impact would be more heavily felt in cities including Leicester, Plymouth, Hull and Stoke-on-Trent.' 1/2

Once again, the prestigious universities have pillaged the market, to their own destruction as a brand and the detriment to the students they are recruiting but can't teach properly. All the while laying financial waste to the post-1992s that can. When is government going to step in and fix this?

Not tue students and not the universities that have spent decades building a particular brand. Meanwhile, the post-1992s *specialise* in taking often disadvantaged students and coverting them into high class graduates. That is the model. The funding regime has destroyed this to the detriment of all

To be fair, UKHEIs have made some truly terrible decisions, but ultimately the fault lies with the last government and this one for not fixing a broken funding model. The result will be more job losses at post-1992s, destroyed working conditions elsewhere and poor student outcomes.

Hello UK friends - please, please could you sign this petition against the job cuts at my place of work - 1 in 4 us will be out of a job by August next year if we don't stop the cuts. And once you've signed it, please share. We need your help! www.change.org/p/stop-mass-...

Great support from @staffsucu.bsky.social Aidan at our @ucu.org.uk lobby of the @mybcu.bsky.social governors today. Thank you Staffs for your ongoing support including your donation to our fighting fund! #SaveBCU

Inaccuracies ✅ Missing data ✅ This sounds so very, very familiar…

If you're as concerned as me about the pace and scale of proposed staff cuts and department closures at UK universities, this piece arguing for a new regulatory framework is worth a read 👇 isrf.org/blog/a-new-r...

Oh, here's a shock: Higher Education has a management problem because its culture is saturated with bullying and bad practice. Dundee's Gillespie is just the particular person acting as a lightning rod here.

The report on failures at Dundee University is devastating. All sorts of financial, leadership and governance failures. And this ol’ indicator: ‘Female members of staff in particular, reported being spoken over, side-lined or discussed in public as being obstructive’ www.sfc.ac.uk?news=dundee-...

'The university has informed staff of plans to cut 400 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by July 2026, with academics the first to go.' Professor Andy Schofield, VC at Lancaster University since 2020, will take up position of Principal & VC at Glasgow University on 1 October 2025.

Our sector is being failed by poor leaders who make us, the university workers, pay for their failings. Their answer is to cut our services to the bone and impose insulting pay offers that fall far below inflation. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I was Chair of my union branch when my university made 10% cuts in staffing and it was extremely tough. I don't have any special insight into how the sector is faring, but what I keep thinking is: in c. 10 years the press/business/civil service are going to ask for an expert in x or y... 1/2

...and universities will say: we don't have an expert in x or y because the postdoc who was going to be that expert was let go 10 years ago. Other countries don't have the structures to foster hugely diverse homegrown academic expertise. We are squandering our inheritance. 2/2

*not all other countries. Plenty do.

Prey do tell, how is all that slashing of Professional Service colleagues going, @durham-university.bsky.social? This is why 'efficiency' never is effective in the real world. If you cut your staffing to well below the bone, there's no flex to catch mistakes on time. #SaveHE

'“Serious investment” is needed in UK universities to help them adapt for lifelong learning, as new research shows half of employers plan to increase training budgets in the coming years – but universities are “not the first choice” for provision.' 1/2

With respect, some of us (the great majority of academics I work with and all the learned societies I've every worked with) never gave up on collegiality as a core value and practice. Link to UUK report: www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/what-we-do/c...

30% living at home, more than 50% of the most disadvantaged. When 'regional universities' start to shutter, or now, when they reduce the range of courses, it will exclude those students from higher education. The government knows this, and still they do nothing

The United Kingdom simply does not possess the governance capacity to allow universities to fail - it is unimaginable. Yet here we are.

Now emancipated from its paywall. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

Here's the headline university job losses this year so far - they add up to 3,111 jobs. In reality there have been far more, because a lot of posts are closed with no fanfare at all. they are just the jobs that are being most brutally culled. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-univ...

This is what the redundancy wave in British Higher Education currently looks like on the map: ‘British University Redundancy Map’ maps.app.goo.gl/yUteDm2MCXUi...

Very true. And it's a sector with high economic benefits. Universities UK report an economic impact of £158bn, or £265bn including the impact of international students. Every £1 of public money invested into UK universities generates £14 of economic benefit. www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/latest/news/...

The UK government is proposing to finally finish off its universities by further tightening the terms of the graduate visa route. The stupid fools. Playing with dangers they don't even understand. www.ft.com/content/f441...

Three entirely cost-free interventions that would save time and resources that HEIs currently can't afford: 1. Reinstate number controls 2. Cancel REF 3. Loosen visa restrictions Can't see the RG supporting 1 and 2 as core sources of their current dominance. And yes, we need a major rethink.

The government acts like universities are a financial burden on taxpayers, when the reality is that they are a massive boost to the economy (every £1 spent generates £5). That’s quite aside from the huge benefit to the nation‘s cultural and civic life & of scientific research.

If you're being approached by SOAS to do marking, be aware that the SOAS tutors are on a marking boycott & you're being asked to scab mark (managers don't feel they should be transparent about it) hardship fund: gofund.me/71598ef7&sa=... template motion: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Just signed this and would encourage everyone to do so, whether staff, students, alumni, or just concerned citizens H/t Bristol UCU, tho I think they aren’t here yet. docs.google.com/document/d/e...

Spending my Friday night analysing Cardiff University’s EDI data in relation to which categories of staff have been placed “at risk of redundancy”, because the HR department seems to have forgotten to do so. #LivingTheDream #BasicDueDilligence #RStats #11pm #UnpaidOvertime

We’ve just added a further tranche of @ucu.org.uk branches to our UCU branches and regions starter pack - see here 👇