UK HE News
@ukhenews.bsky.social
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Watching the slow-motion suicide of UK universities evolve into its next phase: fast-motion suicide.
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ukhenews.bsky.social
Universities exist to produce scholarship that commercial interests would never create. That context made studying under those scholars valuable.

In the UK, universities have become proudly motivated entirely by commercial interests.

That was always going to be unsustainable.
ukhenews.bsky.social
Well at least India will still have some British universities when this is all sorted.
eicathomefinn.bsky.social
'prime minister Keir Starmer...confirmed that the University of Lancaster and the University of Surrey had been given approval to open new campuses in India while on a trade mission to Mumbai, joining six more institutions already in the country.' (Lancaster is mooting 20% academic redundancy) 1/3
resprofnews.bsky.social
Expansion of UK universities in India ‘like California gold rush’.

University leaders embrace transnational education but warn it will not be a “replacement income stream”.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...
ukhenews.bsky.social
Unless you are born into family wealth, students now judge courses are by whether the title 'sounds like' a job (to them and their parents).

Those courses are also the ones that are worst for social mobility in the long run, but uni marketing units aren't worried about that.
iandunt.bsky.social
Calling English a 'rip-off degree' is one of the most blatant exhibitions of personal barbarism I've ever seen. You've demonstrated nothing but the poverty of your own mind.
ukhenews.bsky.social
This wave of redundancies was about emergency efforts to satisfy creditors.

The real restructuring of UK HE around the current (lack of) priorities for research and perceived value to students has barely begun.
eicathomefinn.bsky.social
'Universities have collectively announced more than 12,000 job cuts in the last year, new analysis from the University and College Union (UCU) suggests.'
Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens
University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.
www.bbc.co.uk
ukhenews.bsky.social
Today's VCs have no connection to the universities they serve. For them, it makes no difference if their uni exists or not.

It's nothing more than the place that they successfully duped into making them multimillionaires.
Reposted by UK HE News
ukhenews.bsky.social
What will the wind down of UK HE look like?

First, senior management, composed of the least savvy holdovers from the UUK's 'take the money and run' era, will conclude that research is a 'luxury' for unis and argue that teaching is the main source of 'real income'...
ukhenews.bsky.social
Is it dystopian science fiction or UK HE? Always hard to tell.
qmucu.bsky.social
As our students have been told by security trying to intimidate them that “we know who you are & your socials”, and management volunteered to spy to the Met in 2024, relieved (suspicious?) there isn’t more of QMUL in this latest shocking reveal.

2024: libertyinvestigates.org.uk/articles/rev...
Email from qmul to the met offering to pass on info about students
ukhenews.bsky.social
Imagine what unis could do with the last 15 years of senior management salaries and the consultancy payments they authorised.
ukhenews.bsky.social
A full investigation is needed of every uni financial decision made in the last 15 years.
21group.bsky.social
Swansea University staff have voted no confidence in Vice Chancellor after announcement of £30m in cuts, £25m from staffing

400 staff have already left through voluntary severance & 200 vacancies frozen

The destruction of Welsh universities accelerates

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Vote of no confidence in Swansea University vice chancellor over job cuts
UCU members at Swansea University pass a vote of no confidence in its vice chancellor due to job cuts.
www.bbc.co.uk
ukhenews.bsky.social
Does anyone remember when the anti-student, anti-academic culture of the UK HE management cabal was held up as a form of realist business savvy?

Lol, good times.
ukhenews.bsky.social
Er... Learn to prompt?
ukhenews.bsky.social
The mergers are being overseen by the same corrupt and incompetent managers that bankrupted the unis.

They believe people get degrees automatically and, if they don't, the government should force them.

These are the business wizards that are winding down UK HE.
timeshighered.bsky.social
Without oversight of university mergers, the UK risks “sleepwalking” into a homogenised and “disconnected” higher education sector, it has been warned. Helen Packer reports
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/universities-risk-creeping-death-unsupervised-mergers
ukhenews.bsky.social
Btw not enough people talk about how Cardiff VC is the ultimate example of failing upwards.
ukhenews.bsky.social
In reality, they will get honours
ukhenews.bsky.social
Permanent exile for all UK HE senior management would be warranted.
21group.bsky.social
Cardiff University's globalist ambitions under fire

Please send VC Wendy Larner, the Board of Trustees & Council members to Astana, Kazakhstan ... permanently

Also add Prof Patrick Minford, the right-wing economist who backed the poll tax & Brexit

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Cardiff University defends Kazakhstan campus amid concerns
Hundreds of students have started lectures at the new campus, which is 3,712 miles from Cardiff.
www.bbc.co.uk
ukhenews.bsky.social
And, finally, with a lag, the international 'recruitment markets' will recognise the diminished value to a 'British education', especially with limited visa benefits, and shift to ample competing alternatives, undoing the financial foundation of even UK's 'elite' universities.
ukhenews.bsky.social
Third, the onslaught of media and political messaging about degrees being no longer 'worth it' will be reinforced by the total disregard for research reputation and prestige in senior management strategy, killing what is left of the signalling value of degrees.
ukhenews.bsky.social
Next, the focus will be on efficiency at all costs (to reputation), and mass redundancies will be followed by fixed-term and outsourced labour. Credible links to scholarship will be severed.
ukhenews.bsky.social
What will the wind down of UK HE look like?

First, senior management, composed of the least savvy holdovers from the UUK's 'take the money and run' era, will conclude that research is a 'luxury' for unis and argue that teaching is the main source of 'real income'...
ukhenews.bsky.social
The current Government is allowing this to happen, but it is poised to be replaced by a Government that will accelerate the collapse to ensure it happens virtually overnight.

That is the range of HE debate in the UK: a slow collapse vs a quick collapse.
ukhenews.bsky.social
There seem to be academics and other staff who are still not fully acknowledging what is happening:

There is a catastrophic collapse for UK HE coming.

Every uni is doubling down on death spiral strategies (selling reputation for short term solvency).

Prepare accordingly.
ukhenews.bsky.social
Just remember the first rule of modern universities: the customer is always right!