In an exclusive interview with The Courier, Vice Chancellor and Chair of Russell Group, Chris Day and Chief Financial Officer Nick Collins what the deficit will mean for students and staff.
With lower international enrolment, Newcastle University has £35M less in the annual budget for this academic year than forecasted. However, the message to the students is ‘we want to protect the student experience and then work out what we can limit spending on for this year’.
In an interview with The Courier, Chris Day clarified ‘35 million is roughly around 5% of our turnover’. He explained that even though it is a significant number, ‘but relative to our overall income and expenditure, it is relatively small’.
In communication between the Executive Board and academic staff which was leaked to ITV, the University are aiming to make ‘reductions in our controllable expenditure’ by putting in a recruitment freeze for both staff and students, and limit travel expenses to ‘business critical’ journeys.
As defined by Nick Collins, ‘we haven’t got a perfect definition of it […] so there is a bit of judgement that needs to be applied at a local level’ but the main message shared by him and the VC is they are looking where to make expenditure cuts whilst ‘protecting the student experience, because that’s our jobs, isn’t it’.
Academic staff have voiced frustrations over the ambiguous definition of ‘business critical’, one lecturer saying, ‘how can we deem something ‘business critical, if we still haven’t been allocated a budget?’
The Executive Board have made clear that there will be changes within each faculty and discipline. For Humanities and Social Sciences, is has been confirmed there will be a reduction in external speakers, travel and expenses to support teaching, student recruitment and research’.
One issue raised in discussions amongst staff and students is ‘if £35M is a significantly small number, why are there so many changes on local levels?’
The response from the executive board is that the University are ‘trying to make cuts effectively quickly’.
A question raised by a spokesperson of the UCU Newcastle University branch is ‘the university have not shared what cuts or delays there are in big project funding and plans. That makes us [the staff] feel like we are being targeted specifically to make all these big changes and sacrifices.’
Newcastle is not the only university in the UK to see a reduction in international students. According to the Home Office, there was a fall in 17% of study visa applications this year’.
Vice Chancellor Chris Day explained reasons why international student enrolment decreased at Newcastle. He said, ‘obviously the riots didn’t help across the country […] we had students ringing us up and asking is it safe to come back to the UK’ and ‘and are we going to get attacked?’
Nick Collins explained on a national level, ‘the change in our QS world ranking which for Chinese students in particular is a key driver of their decision-making.’
International financial crises is another possible contributor with Nick Collins adding ‘cost of living crisis [for example] in some countries like Nigeria where we know that the currency was devalued and therefore our standard fee became much more relatively expensive to them.’
One home student said ‘The more expensive university becomes; the less accessible education is becoming. For both home and international students this is going to make qualifications more competitive and make higher profile jobs go to those of elite classes.’
Another home student said ‘with financial pressure on universities, they are having to behave more like a business in where we are the clients paying for services- not prioritising education’.
A UCU representative said ‘I think for a big part it, is also the way they've responded to things like the encampment, to things like the way the university positions itself in relation to international crises and events is not going to be attractive to many students’.
On a similar topic, a lecturer said ‘if we are selling and buying degrees, then I don’t know what I’m doing then? Why am I marking stuff?’
From minutes at a UCU meeting on October 3, union members expressed concerns that ‘cuts here damage the most poorly paid, and equality impacts are directly visible. […] Like the events around the student encampment, this whole situation speaks to the need for greater staff input into university governance’.
The argument made was that lecturers, seminar leaders and academics have more contact and involvement with students and that they would express important viewpoints that should be considered in Executive Board decisions.
The University have also reduced internal paid opportunities for students including; internships, placements that offer students flexible paid work and experience. ‘We hope there will still be plenty of opportunities albeit they may not be the full range of opportunities that have been in the past’.
Students are upset about their being less internal opportunities. One international student said ‘my degree is so expensive that I need to find internships that give me experience, that are considerate of my Uni timetable and money to cover living expenses. The less opportunities the university provide the more competitive internships will be, especially when nowhere in Newcastle is hiring students for part-time work’.
According to the 2024 Student Money Survey, 58% of students have a part time job to get by at University and 8% are self-employed. Both of these figures have risen since the 2023 survey.
Chris Day said ‘in our new education strategy and some of the meetings I'm having nationally, we are very aware of this issue and are trying to plan things like timetables and support much more flexibly.
When questioned about talking to students about their opinions on the decline in international pupils, Chris Day explained ‘we tend to go through the Sabbatical Offers and Societies when we want the student view’.
In response, an employee of the Student’s Union said the Sabbatical Officers are critical in communicating student views, ‘there are many groups they can speak to like academics who have direct communication with students, degree reps, peer mentors, The Courier who are ‘The Voice of Newcastle Students’, and all the feedback data degree programmes collect and share. The execs should utilise these tools more.’
Newcastle University is not alone in struggling with financial pressure and budget cuts. At Sunderland University it has been reported that they are cutting 10% of academic staff.
The University of East Anglia are cutting a further 3% from its budget and ‘cannot rule out compulsory redundancies’.
In his role as Chair of Russell group, Chris Day said ‘we've been lobbying the government to look at the support, particularly that we get for home students. It’s most striking how little the government actually give us in terms of teaching grants for students.’
When asked for a message to give to the students, VC Day said:
‘This university has good cash reserves to fall back on and compared to many in the sector we have very little debt.
So as a student at Newcastle you're in a university that's as well set up as most to be able to deal with this bump.
We've got time to take the right decisions for how we manage this great university going forward to protect the student experience to protect the research that we want to do.’