State of the University- September 2026

Many of us are left bewildered by the Vice Chancellor’s all-staff email (Welcome to the new academic year: Our challenges and opportunities, 22/09/26, login required), where he outlined the future trajectory of the University, and are worried about what this means for the future.

When you strip away the corporate language about ‘alignment’ and ‘resilience’, the message he sent to all of us was brutally clear: the restructures, job cuts and increasing workloads are not a temporary crisis – they are the new normal.

It is absolutely vital that every single employee at the University of Sheffield understands exactly what the Vice Chancellor has just committed to in writing.

The money is there, but they are choosing not to spend it on our jobs

The VC explicitly confirmed that the University is in a ‘good financial position, with healthy cash reserves’. The decision to cut jobs and shrink schools and faculties is not a financial necessity. It is a political choice to prioritise capital works and league table positioning over the livelihoods of the staff who continue to deliver the University’s core functions. These are the same staff who have had to deal with the chaos and disruption caused by University Executive Board (UEB) decisions over the last three years.

No area of the University is safe

The VC stated that costs will be reduced in areas where student numbers decline, in order to build capacity elsewhere. This confirms that restructures will be permanent. No school can go on growing forever; today’s growers are tomorrow’s fallers. If your School has survived this year’s cuts, the VC’s email is the clearest indication he has given that they will be back the moment student demand shifts. Everyone at the University is now permanently at risk.

We are expected to do more with less

Despite some areas shedding 20-40% of staff, management expects the remaining staff to maintain the exact same academic standards and entry tariffs. Many colleagues have already absorbed the workloads of departed colleagues, but they expect us to continue this, increasing contact hours and somehow shielding our students from the resulting chaos. The true damage of this will be seen in the National Student Survey (NSS) results in three years’ time, long after many of us have been pushed to burnout.

‘Engagement’ is an illusion

The VC failed to mention the recent vote, in which 84% of voting staff expressed no confidence in his leadership and called on him and the University Council to resign. He refuses to meet with campus trade unions and instead directs us to ‘staff surveys’ and ‘strategy engagement’ sessions. Every staff member knows from their own areas that these are not genuine opportunities to shape the University. We know survey results are ignored or spun to suit management’s narrative; and we know that ‘engagement’ sessions are where managers impose centrally decided policies that are ill-thought out and cause us weeks and months of chaos trying to work out the implications of. They are tick-box exercises that UEB know give them the legal and political cover to say ‘staff were consulted’ before moving on to the next round of redundancies.

They will not stop until we make them, but what happens next is up to us.

The Vice Chancellor’s email makes one thing perfectly clear: simply being angry is no longer an option. Koen Lamberts understands his greatest weapon against us is our resignation and acceptance that things cannot change. UEB regularly boasts in their expensive marketing strategies that the University was founded in 1904 by the penny donations of Sheffield’s industrial workers. It is staggering hypocrisy that whilst being so eager to market our civic, democratic roots they run this institution like an unaccountable autocracy. We cannot let them trample over the very values they pretend to uphold. So, to every single member of our branch we have one simple message:

Enough is enough. We have to fight back and force them to listen.

Our collective response is the only defence standing between us and the next restructure, but we are only as strong as our members. This is why now more than ever we need as many members engaging in our local branch by attending meetings and making your voices heard.

Now is the time to take a stand – please join us.