University of Dundee

3 September 2025

Last month, the campus trade unions were invited to comment on a draft recovery plan which the University of Dundee submitted to the Scottish Funding Council.

We did so on the basis of confidentiality and have remained silent ever since for this reason – despite our clear misgivings about the plan.

However, we are led to believe that key members of the University hierarchy continue to promote the plan – which would lead to hundreds more job cuts including compulsory redundancies.

Worse, we understand from reliable sources that elements within the University management are claiming to external contacts that we are satisfied with the plan – nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, we are calling on a fully and properly constituted University Court to do the following:

1 –  Appoint a credible, permanent leadership team capable of taking long term decisions;

2 – Deliver a comprehensive university strategy which utilises the collective wisdom of staff and students;

3 – Understand that the university can only prosper by harnessing the energy and ideas of talented, enthusiastic and experienced staff- not by getting rid of them.

By the end of this month, the University will already have lost a tenth of its staff in just 12 months. We cannot support a plan which proposes to continue with the same approach while at the same time demanding more and more money from the Scottish Government.

The University Court must now take bold action to secure a bright future for the University of Dundee.

Dundee UCU, UNISON and Unite branches

You can read DUCU’s Position Paper rejecting the University Recovery Plan here.