Even in hard times, teaching staff are vital assets, not costs to be shed

Every student success story begins with an educator. However, the UK’s academic teaching staff have been disproportionately targeted for staff cuts during these challenging financial times. This underlines the precarity and under-appreciation from which they still suffer.

It is often overlooked that teaching is the primary revenue stream for almost all UK higher education institutions. Sector-wide, teaching-related income represents 52 per cent of income, compared with 25 per cent for research.

At post-92 institutions specifically, teaching accounts for 73 per cent of income, and research only 13 per cent. In 270 of the 308 providers (87 per cent) included in the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) income data for 2023-24, teaching-related income exceeds that of research. For 183 providers, teaching brings in at least five times more income than research. 

This income is dependent on the staff who are doing the core business of educating, assessing, designing curricula and supporting students through their programme. Every applicant they inspire at an open day represents another £28,605 in tuition fees. Every dissertation supervisor who motivates a keen student to stay on for a master’s brings in at least another £15,000. For every first-year student who was considering leaving but changed their minds after meeting with a tutor who believed in them, the institution gets to keep £19,000.

These figures quickly add up. Just 18 full-time, three-year undergraduates bring in as much income as a £500,000 research grant. While research-active staff play their part in generating income, teaching staff disproportionately recruit and retain students, particularly at undergraduate level.

It is true that in the past 20 years significant progress has been made in terms of valuing teaching and learning at institutional and sector level, moving away from a culture where only research was given recognition and prestige. Most institutions have introduced promotion pathways for teaching-focused staff, creating greater parity of career progression for those in permanent roles. And the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework has put student experience and outcomes back at the centre of higher education regulation; many post-92 institutions rightly take significant pride in their TEF Gold status and market themselves on that basis.

But that pride is hollow if the teaching staff delivering that status are systematically devalued. And casualisation of teaching contracts remains widespread, with many highly qualified academic educators enduring zero-hour contracts, employment through subsidiary companies or other precarious employment conditions.

The separation of “teaching staff” and “research staff” also obscures the richness of activities that teaching staff undertake. Assessment, curriculum design and student support is the central activity of an education provider. Other teaching staff are as heavily engaged in scholarly activity as their research peers, even as workload hours for scholarly work have been reduced across the sector. They undertake rigorous scholarship of teaching and learning, presenting at conferences, creating internationally recognised teaching resources, publishing peer-reviewed papers, contributing to national working groups and influencing at sector level through their disciplines, professional bodies and higher education organisations.

Not all academic disciplines accept education-related papers into the Research Excellence Framework, and nor does disciplinary education research always meet the criteria for the education unit of assessment either. Yet an institution that claims to value teaching should offer support for the breadth of this impactful activity on a par with its support for REF-able research. It should ensure that working conditions support this work, both in contractual stipulations and workload models. 

There are also equity issues to consider in the systematic undervaluing of teaching staff. As underlined in Fadime Sahin’s recent analysis of Hesa data, teaching-focused academics are more likely to be female and be employed on part-time and/or fixed-term contracts.

In 2024-25, 64 per cent of teaching-only staff were part-time, compared with only 17 per cent of teaching and research staff. The data also shows that 52 per cent of full-time teaching-only academics were women, compared with 42 per cent of full-time teaching and research academics. Undervaluing teaching staff means systematically undervaluing female staff and part-time staff – who already face the impacts of the gender pay gap and precarity.

Evidence indicates that a prevalence of teaching-only contracts increases student satisfaction but the effect is diminished when these roles are poorly paid and casualised. Indeed, the anxiety and stress among educators caused by insecure employment could ultimately lead to a level of burnout and staff turnover that compromises quality and student experience.

An institution demonstrates its ethics through spending decisions, not hollow value statements in glossy documents. Balancing budgets is challenging and staff costs are significant and increasing. However, when teaching staff are casualised and cut while delivering the core business of universities, something is fundamentally broken.

We call on the sector to recognise teaching-focused staff as the essential assets they are, not as costs to be cut.

Katharine Hubbard is director of learning enhancement and academic practice; Damien Page is vice-chancellor and chief executive officer of Buckinghamshire New University.