On May 5 this year, the Vice-Chancellor (VC) sent this reassuring email to staff: “I want to give you all a commitment that, here at Sheffield, I will be doing my utmost to protect jobs, and avoid redundancies.”
Sadly, for the students and employees of the University of Sheffield, it wasn’t the last email the VC sent on the subject.
Professor Keith Burnett sent another altogether more miserable email, three months later: “I am writing to let you know the outcome of the University’s recent Voluntary Severance Scheme.”
In it, he revealed that 320 staff will be leaving the University, five per cent of the entire staff. That might not sound like a lot, but it will directly affect your education. A five per cent cut in staff means a reduction in the quality of service and teaching.
As a result your lectures and seminars could get slightly more populated, computers might take longer to get fixed and the University’s under-stocked libraries may become disorganised. In other words, your education has been made that little bit worse.
Those who defend the staffing cuts may point out that only 67 of those leaving are “academic/teaching”, which is just two per cent of the total number of doctors, professors and teachers at the University.
They will argue the students’ education is no worse. They are, however, completely wrong – because lecturers can’t lecture without an array of support staff.
I remember a lecture in first year that was ruined because the lecturer (a clever bloke, but one who couldn’t change a light bulb) could not get PowerPoint working and no one was available to come and fix it.
With fewer support staff, events like this are only likely to become more frequent. Quite simply, with fewer staff the University will be worse. Fewer staff also means fewer quality contact hours. What needs to be stated again and again and again is that students are paying more and getting less.
While the University may dismiss criticisms that students are getting a worse deal, the fact of the matter is that there are more students and fewer lecturers.
This is hardly a formula which will increase standards. If anything, the University of Sheffield could now spend years treading water as a result of this drastic redundancy measure.
But my moralising and whining does not solve the £25m hole in the University’s budget that must be plugged.
In total, the Voluntary Severance Scheme has managed to cut £13m from the University’s staffing budget (which is almost enough for an Arts Tower refurbishment).
But the University still needs to find £2m more if it is to reach its target of reducing the staff budget by £15m.
And if the University continues on its current strategy of handing out huge payoffs, there could be more and more staff snapping at their hands.
Such a strategy shows a real dearth of ambition from the University’s leaders.
Let’s make no mistake, the University had to act to fix the short-term problem of a budget shortfall during a recession.
But, by taking this action, they look set to create a more serious and long-term problem by dragging down the University’s standards.
Offering redundancies is not the only possible solution. Oxford and Cambridge rose hundreds of millions of pounds through well-publicised fundraising drives.
Meanwhile, without Oxbridge glamour, the University of Alberta in Canada raised around £300m in five years. Yet sorry old Sheffield has put together 320 generous redundancy packages to raise a paltry £15m.
Rather than ushering more staff towards the door, the University needs to set up an effective, well publicised fundraising scheme and put all of our educations first.