The University of Derby is threatening to make up to 35 professors and associate professors redundant. We are asking people to sign an open letter to the University calling for a halt to these redundancies.

The targeting of these colleagues fails to appreciate their wide-ranging contributions to research, learning, teaching and senior leadership, at great risk of reputational damage to the university, its capacity to offer excellent supervision to doctoral students – many of whom could lose their entire supervision team under these proposals – and its ability to attract top talents in the future.

A formal 30-day consultation has been launched, in which university management have failed to provide a figure of intended saving from these cuts, failed to issue documents until hours before meetings, or engage in meaningful discussions with UCU and representatives toward alternative options to prevent job losses. 

The university’s own strategic framework offers one of its key pillars as ‘Valuing People’.  Its value for its most senior and influential staff members has been derisory, causing those in the professorial group weeks of stress and fear, with more to come.  Removing academics with invaluable research experience, knowledge and leadership roles will leave an untenable gap that cannot be filled by colleagues already straining with increased workloads as a result of recent enhanced resignation and voluntary redundancy schemes and multiple freezes on recruitment over the last three years. The burden of this increased workload will necessarily impact on the quality of the teaching and learning that students experience, as well as on the wellbeing and ability to do their jobs of remaining academics.

The University of Derby has long enjoyed a solid financial status, and is very mindful of its civic role as the only HE institution in Derbyshire, and has invested heavily in this. The impact of redundancies will be keenly felt in the local economy. The current losses have been caused solely by poor managerial choices (such as the construction of a £75 million Business School, the Cavendish Building in Friar Gate, or the miscalculation of student recruitment), not by academic staff.   

There are clear indications that this will only be the first round of a concerted attack against academics at the university, we are in no doubt that this will be the beginning if this initial scheme goes ahead. All of this comes against the well documented backdrop of thousands of potential job losses across the Higher Education sector in the UK. 

We therefore call on the University of Derby to halt this attack against our colleagues and our broader academic community with immediate effect, reverse the redundancies process and open a dialogue with the recognised trade unions and professorial representatives and interested parties to meaningfully and transparently consult with over its financial sustainability and work toward a sustainable solution for the university.

Sign the open letter