State of the University 2024-25
A series of articles looking closely at the University's current finances, and the management decisions that have led to this point.
On this page:
Background
In early summer, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield, Koen Lamberts, announced to all staff that we needed to prepare ourselves for a large reduction in income due to an expected fall in international students.
While we had known that there would likely be some impact from last summer’s slide out of the QS World University Top 100 rankings, the scale of the damage he revealed was eye-watering: income would be hit by £39m a year or more. By October it had become clear that the University had also had a fall in undergraduate recruitment, and the figures had crystallised into a £50m drop in income in the coming academic year, rising further in subsequent years.
Early communications sought to blame the fall on sector-wide or geopolitical trends, yet as more becomes known it seems that the University of Sheffield may be a significant outlier. How much of this has the University brought upon itself through management actions (and inactions)? Should more have been done to mitigate against the risks of sliding down the pecking order for international students? Does the fall in Undergraduate recruitment mean that we are also paying the price for some significant reputational damage caused by some deeply unpopular decisions at the top?
Where did things go wrong?
Over the next few weeks and months, we will be publishing a series of articles looking closely at the University’s finances, the decisions taken at the top, and just how we’ve ended up where we have.
We will shine a light on major failures that have dogged this institution, including:
- large IT projects costing tens of millions that delivered next to nothing;
- buildings that went up, down and back up again;
- threats to fire and rehire during a pandemic that were subsequently withdrawn;
- pay rises and bonuses at the top;
- exasperating decisions on the structure of the University that have left many questioning how many values are shared between those at the top and the university community as a whole.
We will be looking at the huge numbers of staff restructures that have been undertaken in recent years, particularly one that targeted over 200 key staff involved in recruitment and marketing, and how the pace will increase with the plan to merge large numbers of departments into “schools”.
We will be asking whether the poorly implemented restructure of the staff specialising in student recruitment, marketing and admissions fed into our current predicament.
We will be asking to what extent these restructures stretched parts of the university to breaking point in advance of the budgetary challenges facing us, and whether they were even sensible when viewed on their own terms..
We will be investigating the level of accountability at the University, or lack of it, and how changes to our governance structures over the past decade have contributed to less and less challenge and scrutiny of decisions taken at the top.
We will be looking at how marketisation has led to a hollowed-out university, and world- renowned but ‘unprofitable’ subjects being closed.
We will look at how student concerns are sidelined or shut down, and promised ‘listening exercises’ quietly dropped.
We will be doing this because staff, students, and the community of Sheffield at large need to know what’s happening to one of the City of Sheffield’s major community assets, representing one of its biggest employers, and a significant contributor to its culture. The impact that the drastic reduction in international student numbers will have on the city will ripple throughout its economy, and the people of Sheffield have every right to know how this came about.
This series of articles will be an initiative led by staff at the University of Sheffield, and we will welcome contributions from anyone who feels they can shed any light on any relevant topic.