Around 300 jobs set to go in ‘very difficult’ Sussex redundancies

Vice-chancellor says university has ‘done everything’ it can to reduce costs before cutting jobs

November 26, 2024
Stockholm, Sweden Sept 14, 2024 A person walks among trees past the blade of a sharp metal ax firmly planted in a tree stump.
Source: iStock/Alexander Farnsworth

The University of Sussex has opened a voluntary redundancy scheme and told staff it is looking to cut its headcount by about 300 staff members.

The university informed staff in a meeting on 25 November that it was opening the voluntary redundancy scheme for academics and professional services staff. 

Sasha Roseneil, Sussex’s vice-chancellor, said it was having to make “very difficult decisions” following “the long-term underfunding” of higher education, ongoing inflationary pressures, and falling international student recruitment.

“We have done everything we can to make savings over the past year. We have significantly reduced non-pay expenditure, and made cuts to our planned programme of investment in our estate and infrastructure,” Professor Roseneil said.

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“Unfortunately, it is now necessary to reduce our costs further in the interests of the long-term financial sustainability of the university. We are, therefore, opening a voluntary leavers scheme, to give people the opportunity to leave the university voluntarily with a good leavers’ package.”

In total roughly 300 jobs are expected to go at Sussex.

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The announcement makes it the 80th known university to announce cuts in recent years, according to an influential list compiled by the University and College Union branch at Queen Mary University of London

The milestone comes as Times Higher Education recently reported that university leaders anticipate job losses to hit 10,000 by the end of the year, as major cuts become commonplace in the sector.

Tom Cowin, vice-president of Sussex’s UCU branch, lamented the milestone, and said the priority for the union now was “to ensure that Sussex does not move to a situation where it is making compulsory redundancies”.

“We are scrutinising the university’s financial claims, working to safeguard workloads for staff who remain, and have increased our casework support to members at this incredibly difficult and disappointing time,” he told Times Higher Education

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“We urgently need to undo the disastrous marketisation of the sector under the coalition and Conservative governments, and call on the Labour government to conduct root and branch reform of the sector's funding, before this crisis damages UK higher education beyond repair.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (8)

new
No accountability, presumably, for the management team who put Sussex in this position, or for Adam Tickell, former VC, who has (as so many do) departed for another institution, trailing disaster in his wake.
new
How do you work to 'safeguard staff workloads' that are already high? Does it mean maintaining the punishing and unsustainable work loads? Many colleagues are off on long term illness because of the workloads, and those who have to cover for them, increase their own risk of illness. The great staff burnout continues.
new
From what I observe management at Sussex has been poor for a few years now. Peripheral activities that are the personal hobby-horse of the VC and others have been prioritized over nuts and bolts of good quality programme delivery, and prospective students are voting with their feet. Like so many UK universities - a proud history, but managed into decline.
new
Fundamentally this. The present VC makes you actually pine for Adam Tickell. Terrible and out of her depth, and not a single idea to turn us around despite having been warned, advised, having data on issues. She actually believes her strategy of “progressive futures” is “needed now, more than ever”. The university will be bankrupt in two years.
new
Sussex has long been the most centralised of UK universities, since Lockwood was registrar in the 80s. We have 2,000 faculty and 1,500 admin staff! Central timetabling and examining holds the entire uni to ransom every year. Fundamental change requires devolution of support to Faculties and thus no longer needing this huge central admin capacity.
new
Sussex has long been the most centralised of UK universities, since Lockwood was registrar in the 80s. We have 2,000 faculty and 1,500 admin staff! Central timetabling and examining holds the entire uni to ransom every year. Fundamental change requires devolution of support to Faculties and thus no longer needing this huge central admin capacity.
new
The VC blames higher ranked universities for Sussex demise. When times are tight all organizations punch downwards. It is indeed true that Oxford can take students from Nottingham, Nottingham can take from Leicester, Leicester can take from Sussex. The really telling question is why Sussex has proven unable to take from e.g. Brunel, or Brighton. Especially given the recent relaxation of entry requirements. The answer in my opinion lies with the foolhardy direction in which Sussex has been taken in the past 5 or so years. Students are not willing to take on 60 - 120k in debt to support the hobby-horse activism of the VC. That was obvious in advance, and now a venerable institution with an admirable history of achievement and contribution to social progress is being managed into irrelevance. The whole sector is weaker for its loss.
new
We actually lose students to those universities. According to the VC though we had a very successful campaign but didn’t win the competition. This delusion in which we in effect lose an election but win the argument is at the core of our management teams thinking. Even framing all our research under the present heading of progressive futures risks politicising everything we do and given present trends, in a toxic way. But it will enable her to get the next role, much like the last two.

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