UK Universities Warn of More Course Closures and Job Cuts

According to higher education leaders, UK universities will be forced to step up course closures and job cuts unless the Government addresses a looming structural funding crisis in the sector.

The warning follows a series of redundancies at more than 50 universities this year, citing financial pressures, including voluntary redundancy announcements by Portsmouth and Sheffield Hallam in recent weeks.

UK universities, which expanded rapidly over the past ten years, are struggling with a funding crunch caused by a decade-long freeze in tuition fees for domestic students. This will remain in place for at least another two years. Rising operating costs and, most recently, a drop-off in higher-paying international students have also been to blame.

Rachel Hewitt, the head of MillionPlus, which represents the former polytechnic “post-1992” universities said that the sector faced inevitable further erosion, with cuts landing hardest on institutions more likely to serve disadvantaged students.

“Already the sector has seen redundancies and course closures and without action this trend will worsen. As financial pressure continues to bite, there are further risks to student choice, services and opportunity,” she added.

The plea for more government assistance puts university bosses at odds with the former ruling Conservative party. One senior Tory minister blamed the sector for pursuing several years of “unsustainable expansion” by exploiting demand from overseas students, in particular those from China. 

Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of the Universities UK lobby group, said that the sector faced fundamental challenges even after the latest round of aggressive cost-cutting.

“While this provides some mitigation, the scale of the challenge being faced means that even these best efforts will not be sufficient to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the sector and the 385,000 jobs that directly sit within it,” she added.

The freezing of tuition fees means universities are losing £2,500 a year on average per student and that will rise to £5,000 by the end of the decade, according to analysis by the Russell Group of research universities.

Stern added that unless government grants increased and fees were allowed to rise in line with inflation, students would suffer. “This will impact the education that students will receive. Urgent action by government is needed,” she said.

The post ‘92 universities are being hit hardest by the latest round of cost-cutting, according to a list compiled by Liesbeth Corens, the social media manager for the University and College Union at Queen Mary University, London.

Potential domestic students have been lost to higher-tariff universities as a result of grade inflation during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, there have been steep falls in applications from countries such as India and Nigeria, which had previously been targeted as part of their expansion of international student recruitment.

Universities said the government’s tighter immigration policy was partly to blame after former ministers removed the right for most graduate students to bring family members.

It was announced that the number of dependants accompanying students to the UK had fallen by almost 80%, with more than 26,000 fewer overseas student visa applications made from January to March 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

Some universities have responded to mounting cost pressures by cutting courses, or in some cases closing entire departments. Others have begun voluntary redundancy programmes. Analysis by the Times Higher Education supplement put university redundancy payouts at over £100mn in the 2022-23 academic year.

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