OUTRAGEOUS AS UCLAN WRITES OFF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE’S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER
Monday 25 Movember 2013 •
CARNAGE CANCELLED
Jess Millington looks at the failure of the popular student event NEWS, Page 5
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UNIVERSITY PLANS TO CUT 75 LECTURERS
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£3.2M THAI CAMPUS, 75 LECTURERS LOSE THEIR JOBS HERE IN PRESTON
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MICROSOFT OR SONY?
Q&A
THE University and College Union (UCU) has announced its opposition to planned job cuts at UCLan. At a meeting on Wednesday 13 November, the UCU were told that the university plans to ‘rebalance’ the mix of its academic staff by slashing 75 jobs. In response, UCU has said that it will fight plans to make redundancies. The union said the university had failed to make the case for redundancies and it was enjoying a healthy surplus. It also said that the this latest round of major academic redundancies could result in a 'salami slicing' exercise of senior academic staff to be replaced by cheaper options - something the union said would do nothing for UCLan's aspiration to be a world class institution in teaching and research. The proposal from the university means that around 420 jobs are at risk, leaving the threat of losing their job hanging over staff in the run up to Christmas. The announcement is the thirds of its kind since July when UCLan cut 100 non-academic jobs in an effort to remove £15million from its budget. At the Course Rep Conference on 13 November, the question was posed to Rod Dubrow Marshall, the Pro Vice
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Chancellor that these job cuts were happening whilst UCLan is spending millions of pounds on campuses overseas, including Cyprus, Thailand and Sri Lanka. In response, he said: “I can give everyone in this room a categorical assurance that the investment that has been made in Cyprus has been done through a joint venture company set up in the country. “There is no relationship whatsoever between that and the process that we’ve just recently started here at UCLan Preston.” On the subject of the job cuts, he went on to say: “There are certain schools in the university that over the last couple of years that have seen a drop in recruitment in certain courses and we need to make sure as we look ahead - because this is about the future sustainability of the university - that we have the right people. “The right staff teaching in the right places and we have to make balances between areas that are growing and areas that have grown and areas that are contracting a bit. “Now we’re trying to do that in a way that minimizes, where at all possible, any posts put at risk but we have, regrettably, started a consultation with the trade union where a number of posts have been put at risk. “Some universities, someone mentioned Salford already, regrettably removed their languages provision. READ MORE ON PAGE 2
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THAILAND CAMPUS SCRAPPED
UCLAN spent £3.2million on a campus in Thailand before closing down the project due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’. The announcement came in the same week when 420 lecturer’s jobs at UCLan Preston came under threat with UCLan Preston planning to cut 75 jobs to ‘rebalance’ the mix of academic staff. A UCLan spokesperson said: “In order to develop our proposed campus in Thailand, UCLan Overseas Limited established a Joint Venture Company with a Thai national. This was preceded by UOL commissioning a comprehensive due diligence process. “However, due to unforeseen
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circumstances, the project was unable to proceed and the parties are engaged in closing down the project. “As a consequence of closing down the project, at the end of the financial year 2012/3 the Group Accounts show a write down of £3.2million. It is important to make clear that no public money was used in any of the funding. We are now considering what further steps can be taken to mitigate this loss. “While this particular project has not borne fruit, we remain committed to pursuing the original strategy through alternative options. We continue to see huge appetite for British higher education in this market.” READ MORE ON PAGE 4
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