University of East Anglia vice-chancellor says situation worthy of public outcry

The University of East Anglia’s vice-chancellor has said around 10,000 jobs in UK higher education will be lost during the current academic year as a result of financial pressures facing institutions.

Speaking at a Westminster Higher Education Forum on 22 November, David Maguire—whose own institution is making redundancies to cut costs—said a “back of the napkin calculation”, based on the announcements universities have made, shows that around 10,000 jobs will go across the UK.

“That’s an enormous number, and if this was at one point in time and at one place in the country, it would be considered a national disaster and there’d be a huge outcry,” Maguire said.

UEA troubles

Last week, Maguire announced a fresh wave of job losses at UEA, which has seen several waves of redundancies after the university estimated a financial deficit of £30 million for 2023-24.

“When I arrived [at UEA in spring 2023], we’d had a number of years of financial sustainability challenges and [were] running a deficit,” Maguire told the forum, adding that since he took over, about £30m had been cut from the university’s expenditure.

“We do have, I think, a credible plan to reach financial sustainability in terms of deficit surplus position within three years,” he said. “But last year—due to higher-than-expected inflation rates and lower international recruitment, which we, like many other providers in the sector, faced—we’re having to go around again looking at our expenditure.” 

“Earlier this week, I unfortunately announced that we’d be looking for a further £11m in savings.”

Falling dominoes

Maguire said no UK institutions were immune to the risks, since all providers are “severely bound by the success of the sector”.

“The UK higher education sector is a system, an integrated system, when it comes to both public and banking confidence, and if one of the universities falls, if one of the dominoes falls over, there’s a very real risk…that others will follow.”

Any loss of domestic and international confidence in UK universities “could have very dire consequences for the system”, he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Maguire said all universities were looking at cost savings, with some discussions relating to takeovers taking place in private.

“There have been some mergers in the sector over the course of the last few years, and there are quite a few universities which are actively talking about that as a possibility—although I think none are in the public domain just yet,” he said.