Here at Newcastle, staff members are taking industrial action to protest the university’s approx £20m salary reduction, a move which will comprise of approximately 300 redundancies across academic departments andsupport staff. The university has already suspended recruitment and promotions, attributing these cuts to a £35m budget deficit. In actuality, this number represents a shortfall of income and not a deficit, with the university’s expected profits suffering from a decline in international student numbers. Whilst Newcastle is currently on the front lines when it comes to job cuts, its reliance on funding from international students’ higher tuition fees is a model shared across the higher education sector.
This 'marketisation' of higher education has left it vulnerable to external changes, with universities struggling to increase international student numbers following their decline after Brexit and Covid.
This funding model can be traced back to the introduction of tuition fees for domestic students in 1998 under Blair’s Labour Government. Initially at £1,000 per year, fees have been raised several times under both Labour and Conservative Governments, most recently to £9,535 from September. Tuition fees for foreign students have consistently been higher, with some Master’s degrees charging as high as £48,000, with universities orientating their spending and expansion around expectations of growth driven by international student fees. This 'marketisation' of higher education has left it vulnerable to external changes, with universities struggling to increase international student numbers following their decline after Brexit and Covid.
Whilst external factors have certainly contributed to the crisis of higher education, they do not tell the complete story. Whilst universities are experiencing profit shortfalls, the institutions are far from bankruptcy – in the previous academic year (2023/24), Newcastle University experienced a record year for capital investments, most of which was directed towards property expansion and development. In January of this year, Vice-Chancellor Chris Day took an expenses-paid trip to India to investigate the possibility for opening a branch campus of Newcastle University in the South Asian country. This follows existing branch campuses in Malaysia and Singapore.
The prioritisation of property investment is contrasted with the university’s significant salary reduction, suspension of cost-of-living assistance such as the former '£1 meal on campus' programmes
This investment is contrasted with the university’s significant salary reduction, suspension of cost-of-living assistance such as the former '£1 meal on campus' programmes. These austerity measures reveal the consequences of higher education’s marketisation, where growth in Newcastle’s property portfolio and managers on six-figure salaries is pursued at the expense of providing for its commodified students or its clearly expendable academics and staff members.
Responsibility falls on our universities’ boards and vice-chancellors for their financial mismanagement and dependence on international student growth, and on successive central governments for facilitating a higher education model built on the exploitation of its staff and students, both domestic and international. Newcastle University is on the front lines, but its model is shared across a country that will be watching the outcome of our strikes closely.