Collective Consultation Failures

The Faculty of Life Sciences business case may worsen rather than improve the University’s net financial position. The business case identifies gross staffing reductions as savings without demonstrating their net financial effect once associated  income and replacement costs are taken into account. It has not demonstrated its central proposition that the proposed redundancies produce a net recurrent financial benefit to the University. In the absence of that analysis, there is a material risk that removing income-generating academic capacity will worsen rather than improve the University’s financial position.  

The business case’s suggestions regarding areas of growth and future financial stabilisation appear to rely on optimistic assumptions that are not substantiated by sufficiently transparent evidence or accompanied by a credible assessment of risk. In particular, the case does not subject its projected areas of growth to meaningful downside or sensitivity analysis, including scenarios in which research income, external funding or commercial income fall below expectations. 

 This weakness is particularly significant given the University’s funding conditions, which require an appropriate and robust model for the costing of research activity. The business case does not demonstrate that such a model has been applied to FLS or to the proposed workforce change. It therefore does not establish the net financial effect of the proposals once research income, cost recovery, University subsidy, future funding commitments and other associated costs and liabilities are taken into account. 

Independent scrutiny is therefore particularly important in relation to the treatment of the MRC PPU, MRC-funded posts, successor activities and associated external funding, all of which may create significant future financial commitments or liabilities for the University, including the recently announced $18m ASAP/MJFF-partnered awards. The full economic cost to the University, overhead and indirect-cost recovery, any required University contribution or continuing liability, the approval route, and the VP’s role in those decisions should be transparently established. 

In the last EIS drop-in session of 24 July the issue of UKVI compliance was brought up (UoD is at the amber level).  At least one UK institution has lost its sponsorship license and others have been put on UKVI action plans. Compliance is becoming more stringent, e.g. The student completion rate has been increased to 90%.  EIS works throughout the year supporting  international students in their disciplines.  The number of partnerships coming to Dundee is increasing and these students need support so they can progress.  If the University loses its sponsorship license, these students will not be able to come to Dundee.  Apparently, the three tutors being redeployed will be able to do everything.  It didn’t seem like this was something they were really aware of.  To quote them ‘ We fully agree and have mitigation plans in place to ensure we do all we can to safeguard our UKVI sponsor license’.

The Student Services team prepared a detailed report in February 2026 identifying the strategic and financial value of the services to the University. This report should have informed the Strategy to Recovery submitted by the University Executive Group. There is little evidence in the Strategy to Recovery or the subsequent Business Cases presented to staff that the report was meaningfully considered.

The team has prepared a detailed report highlighting the legal risks to the University arising from the implementation of the Strategy to Recovey and associated Business Plans.

Financial and strategic risks 

1. Loss of tuition-fee income. Reducing academic capacity in a comparatively income-generating part of the University may constrain recruitment, programme delivery and growth. Any assessment of salary savings should therefore also model the income that could be lost. 

2. A false economy. Net recurring savings may be materially lower than headline salary savings once potential losses in tuition income, recruitment and retention, programme closures, and additional teaching costs are taken into account. 

3. Unsustainable student–staff ratios. An increase towards approximately 30–33 students per academic in relevant areas could adversely affect teaching quality, assessment turnaround, dissertation supervision, student support, research output and staff wellbeing. 

4. Teaching beyond disciplinary expertise. Remaining academics may be required to teach additional modules outside, or at the margins of, their expertise, creating risks for academic quality, programme coherence and the student experience. 

5. Accreditation. The proposed reductions may create risks for AACSB re-accreditation and weaken the prospects of securing EQUIS accreditation. Any adverse accreditation outcome could affect reputation and international recruitment. 

6. Reputation and rankings. Reduced faculty capacity and higher student–staff ratios may negatively affect student satisfaction, research performance, perceptions of educational quality, and relevant league-table or ranking indicators. 

7. Failure to address admissions problems. If recent recruitment outcomes partly reflect correctable problems in admissions processing, applicant communication or conversion, reducing academic capacity in response could compound rather than alleviate the University’s financial difficulties. 

8. An insufficiently tested no-growth assumption. A business case based on limited or no growth should test the validity of that assumption and assess plausible alternative recruitment and income scenarios. 

9. Reduced capacity for recovery. If recruitment improves, the proposed reductions may leave the Business School unable to accommodate additional students or develop new programmes, executive education, transnational education and other sources of income. 

10. Wider institutional effects. The Business School contributes to interdisciplinary provision, international recruitment and the University’s broader financial position. A substantial reduction in its capacity could therefore have consequences beyond the Faculty. 

Legal and employment risks 

The following points identify areas that may warrant careful legal and procedural review; they are not presented as conclusions that the University has breached any legal duty. 

1. Adequacy of collective consultation. If the scale or distribution of reductions has effectively been determined in advance, or credible alternatives are not genuinely considered, questions may arise about whether consultation has been undertaken meaningfully and with a view to reaching agreement. 

2. Sufficiency of information. Staff and recognised unions require sufficient information to understand proposals and formulate alternatives. Inadequate disclosure of the underlying financial, workload and capacity evidence may limit their ability to participate effectively. 

3. Fairness of selection arrangements. Selection pools, criteria and processes should be objectively justified, transparent and consistently applied. Any material disconnect between the business case, disciplinary requirements and the selection process may create legal and employee-relations risks. 

4. Workload, health and safety. A substantial increase in workload without a credible capacity assessment may create risks relating to stress, staff wellbeing, sickness absence and the University’s duty of care. 

5. Equality impacts. The University should be able to demonstrate that it has assessed whether the proposed reductions, selection arrangements and resulting workloads could disproportionately affect employees with protected characteristics or particular caring or health-related circumstances. 

We have been informed that research leave will be reduced to 20%. We question whether it is legal, per the terms of Teaching and Research contracts, for the University to make this move.  

• These sessions were called drop-in sessions, making it sound like they were not critical.  It was highlighted that many of our team were teaching in the morning, so unable to come.  The response was to have special EIS sessions, which meant information from GEFS sessions were not available to all staff in EIS. 

• While EIS is said to be part of GEFS, EIS was not included in the GEFS Equality Impact Assessment, but included in the Library business case.  Request for the Library Business Case was denied to EIS staff (in at least one documented case).  The Equality Impact Assessment for EIS, while highlighting the fact that the current proposals for EIS disproportionately affect women, does not offer any proposed mitigation for these inequitable impacts. It is noted that the Academic Skills team, despite having a shared skillset with the EIS team (at least according to current proposals for redundancy and redeployment), have no need of an EIA because they have not been put in the ‘proposed-to-be-potentially-at-risk’ (PTBPAR) pool. This majority-male team were, in contrast to EIS, re-allocated to a different line management structure immediately prior to the announcement of the PTBPAR pools and none of them were put through the intense stress and anxiety experienced by the majority-female EIS team. 

• These concerns were brushed off in the meeting on 24^th July with representatives from the University Executive Group (UEG) because representatives from UEG were confident that all decisions made were appropriate and unproblematic while adequate evidence was not given to staff to support these claims. 

• When EIS was shown budget numbers, they were not the current numbers, but either historical or projected.  In any case, we were told that using the current numbers wouldn’t make a difference to the proposal to disband the team and lose two-thirds of the staff. 

• A document of questions created by the EIS team (which had been cc-ed to everyone in the team as clarity in writing was desired) was sent to UEG.  Their response was to ask for individual meeting with two of the team who had raised these questions.  

• The lack of clarity and UEG’s seeming ignorance of what EIS does, particularly in relation to their extensive in-sessional teaching commitments across many UG and TPG programmes, has been frustrating.  All of it feels like a box ticking exercise.   

• It is also clear to us that the decision to close EIS had been made long before any of the consultations started.  (for example, while it is expected that 11 Perth Road, where EIS is located, will be sold, no one has ever discussed where EIS would go.  Other teams located in nearby Airlie Place, also to be sold, have heard where they will be moving.) 

• Again, when we highlighted that International College Dundee were getting more students because students were unable to enrol for our Autumn PSE because it was not showing up on the University’s website, it was also ignored.  It is clear to us that the College, which is external to the University of Dundee, is being promoted by UEG at the cost of core staffing in EIS. When we mention this, UEG unilaterally state that the work of EIS duplicates that of the College or other services in the University, despite EIS staff repeatedly pointing out that this is not at all the case.

• UEG have consistently misrepresented the pre-sessional English courses (PSE) as constituting the whole workload of the EIS team and attributed the staff costs of the whole team to the PSE programme (both in the business case and in representations to external stakeholders). This ignores the extensive in-sessional provision delivered by the EIS team in collaboration with colleagues in the Business School, School of science and Engineering, Nursing, Law and many more. It also ignores our community outreach ESOL classes and support for the flagship Human Rights Defender Fellowship programme funded by the Scottish Government. 

We have been told that no separate Business Case exists for closing entry to the Applied Languages programmes, apart from what is in the overall Faculty Business case, which is just one short paragraph on Languages.

The Faculty has informed UCAS that the Languages pathways would be suspended in 2027-28, while the collective consultation was ongoing, and before responding to our alternative proposal. 

We have not received a response to our alternative proposal despite the Collective Consultation being closed.

• On 14th July 2026, Philosophy wrote to the consultation@dundee.ac.uk address requesting clarity on the composition of the unspecified 45% contribution allocated to staff costs. No clarification, justification or explanation has been offered to date. We have been left to guess that the 45% figure is a top-down UoD indirect cost attribution. 

• On 23rd July 2026, Philosophy wrote to the consultation@dundee.ac.uk address with a summary response to a ‘Philosophy summary and data’ document shared with us on 7th July 2026 by the Faculty Executive Group. No response to our summary or acknowledgement of this email has been received to date. 

• Philosophy have not received a written response to the detailed 4-page risk assessment that its team has sent to the Faculty Executive Group pointing out the acute financial risks of the proposed closure of the Philosophy programme.  

• Philosophy submitted a ‘Case for the Retention and Growth of Philosophy’ on 30th July (45 days after the putative beginning of the Consultation process). Philosophy have, to date, received no written response. Philosophy are particularly concerned that there has been no response to section 3.1: Risk Assessment.   

• The VP for FASS was absent on annual eave for a substantial part of the Consultation period.   

• We have had no clarification on how pools are constituted. We do not know whether our pool is ‘Humanities’ or ‘Philosophy’.   

• History (like other programmes) has not been given a business case, which means it is difficult to scrutinise the data and assumptions that are being made about the programme, despite the headline figures saying we actually contribute significantly to the centre.  

• At the start of the process in June, a History member of staff had emailed FASS’s Finance officer to ask for data on financial returns within FASS which had been presented at a school board and they have had no reply to date to the request.  

We asked (more than once) to see a detailed business case for the proposed reductions (4 FTE) in our Division. On 8 July we were sent information on recruitment to UG and TPG programmes, but no financial detail about this, nor what the envisioned savings would be from the redundancies.

At the beginning of the consultation period no data or business case was provided to us. 

There was a delay of 15 days before we received any data at all. The data we received on 1 July is not specific to our programme, despite all of our programme being designated as at-risk for redundancies. 

After an initial meeting on 16 June outlining the plans for cuts within the Division of Humanities, in which we are a programme, our individual programme meeting with the VP of our Faculty was not scheduled until 23 June and was then postponed due to the VP’s ‘diary commitments’ until 28 June. 

In the first briefing on ‘Organisational Change’ given to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences on 16 June, it was clearly stated that ‘This is the start of a genuine consultation process, and your views matter.’ But since there has been no mechanism offered for staff teams to make counterproposals, this is ‘consultation’ only in the narrowest possible sense, just enough to satisfy a legal requirement. 

At a later meeting on 26 June, in response to concerns that the proposals lacked adequate financial, academic, and strategic justification, staff received two words—‘concerns acknowledged.’ This represents a serious failure to address these concerns in substance and detail. 

Discipline-specific data or evidence rationalising the need for a reduction of 3 FTE in our team has not been provided. On 19 August, two days before the abrupt closure of the consultation period, we received a message from our Faculty VP telling us that programme-level financial data ‘doesn’t exist’ and was not part of the consideration in proposing a staff reduction of 3FTE, a position we find severely damaging to the credibility of the consultation. We find this omission particularly problematic because it masks the fact that our own programme data shows numbers of matriculating students on our programme have grown since 2018 (the earliest this data is available), contradicting an un-evidenced narrative of student decline. 

On 22 July we provided a detailed document containing our response to the proposals and providing data-based evidence for why we believe our team is being disproportionately targeted for cuts to the consultationsupport email address, but have received no response other than an acknowledgement of receipt. This document included specific queries and urgent requests for information that have not been addressed. 

Our Faculty VP has been on leave for multiple, significant periods of time during the consultation process but there has not been a deputy empowered to act on his behalf. Emails from us (on 17 July and 17 August) asking for further information about procedure during his absence have gone unanswered. 

As a result of the lack of meaningful engagement from the university during the consultation period we believe that our future sustainability as a discipline is being put at risk despite our strong performance in teaching and research terms, and positive recruitment data for the coming academic year.

The whole process has caused extreme stress for a large number of staff. The uncertainty has made it very difficult to plan for the future both personally and professionally and the communication of the financial case for cuts has been opaque. 

All of this doesn’t address the damage that has been done by the unwanted restructuring. We are now led by a group of people with no experience in art or practical design. Although the FASS research AVP is from an art background, there is no one from the Division Head upwards who has responsibility for teaching and learning who has any experience of teaching art. It has made every decision more difficult and remote from the reality of our work. The decimation of admin staff has meant that we are now acting as overpaid administrators instead of spending our time doing the student facing work that we are skilled to do.  

No clear rationale was given for ignoring the massive national and international support for Cooper Gallery. We were just told it’s too expensive. No indication that they understand the value of the Gallery to the student learning experience and professional practice. In one meeting, VP FASS explicitly stated the figure that removing the staff cost of two members of staff would save. Singling out two easily identifiable individuals and stating the costs of their salaries was both invasive of their privacy and misleading because he didn’t specify that the figure included on costs at the meeting. 

At the same meeting, when VP FASS was asked how we could possibly maintain the excellent education for students with so few staff left. Staff asked him how we were supposed to maintain a sense of pride in our work if we are expected to be mediocre. His answer was that we should not think of it as mediocre but just ‘less excellent’. 

At all of the so called consultation meetings, it has been very clear that the Vice Principal does not understand or value Art & Design, the way in which we teach or the huge toll that the cuts are taking on staff wellbeing. 

Staff acknowledge that opportunities have been provided to submit comments and questions. However, concerns remain about whether the process has enabled sufficiently informed and meaningful collective engagement. 

1. Consultation has taken place predominantly by email rather than through structured, face-to-face collective discussion of the proposed reductions and their underlying business case. 

2. Initial School-level face-to-face and hybrid meetings were suspended, removing an important forum in which staff could collectively question the proposals, examine the evidence and discuss alternatives. 

3. Staff were offered limited opportunities to meet selected members of the Faculty Executive at specified weekly times. While potentially useful, these sessions were not regarded as an adequate substitute for proactive and properly structured collective consultation. 

4. There has been no sustained forum in which management has presented the relevant evidence, enabled staff to scrutinise and challenge it, and provided reasoned responses to the questions and alternatives submitted. 

5. Staff have not been provided with sufficiently detailed capacity, workload, financial, income, programme-level and student-number modelling to assess fully the necessity and proportionality of the proposed reductions. 

6. The Faculty Executive has declined to discuss important questions about the distribution of reductions across the Faculty and University. No clear process has been identified through which these concerns can be considered by the University Executive Group. 

7. Responses to evidence-based objections have frequently restated the original assumptions without fully addressing the evidence submitted or explaining why alternative interpretations and proposals were not accepted. 

8. It remains unclear whether staff submissions and alternative proposals have been formally recorded, assessed against transparent criteria, and conveyed to those responsible for the final decisions. 

9. Staff have not received an adequate explanation of which elements of the proposals remain genuinely open to change through consultation. 

10. Taken together, the limited disclosure of evidence, the absence of sustained collective discussion, and the lack of fully reasoned responses have created concern among staff that key aspects of the proposals may have been settled before consultation has concluded. 

Providing opportunities to communicate concerns is important, but it is not by itself sufficient to demonstrate meaningful consultation. A credible process requires adequate information, genuine engagement with objections and alternatives, and a demonstrable willingness to reconsider proposals before final decisions are made. 

Staff request: 

1. a transparent financial sensitivity analysis that accounts for potential effects on income as well as salary savings; 

2. a credible workload and capacity assessment at School, discipline, programme and module levels; 

3. modelling of the resulting student–staff ratios and their implications; 

4. an assessment of the potential effects on AACSB and EQUIS accreditation; 

5. evidence supporting assumptions about current excess capacity and future student growth; 

6. an assessment of the effect of admissions and applicant-conversion problems on recent recruitment outcomes; 

7. the criteria and analysis used to distribute reductions across the Faculty and University; and 

8. a fully reasoned response to the questions, evidence and alternatives submitted by Business School staff. 

Providing this information before final decisions are made would enable staff and their representatives to assess the proposals properly, develop informed alternatives and participate more meaningfully in the consultation process. 

We feel there has been a lack of meaningful consultation: 

• FSEB executive data analysis was not presented until 8 weeks after their initial business case was presented, despite being requested in the first weeks of the consultation process; 

o This was <72 hours before the final collective consultation meeting; 

o If we had seen this 2 months ago, our approach would have been very different. 

• There has been no agreed risk assessment carried out by the FSEB executive examining the risk to accreditation of the Civil Engineering programmes. 

There remain significant concerns as to whether the redundancy pools have been defined fairly, consistently and by reference to the University’s stated financial objectives. The proposals concentrate reductions at Grade 8 T&S and Grade 9 T&R, while largely protecting more senior grades on the basis of (additional) leadership responsibilities. This risks weakening the future leadership pipeline by removing staff at the grades from which future academic and educational leaders would ordinarily be expected to develop. 

More fundamentally, the proposed pooling appears to preserve a comparatively expensive and recently expanded senior management structure while removing lower-cost staff whose roles contribute directly to income generation through teaching, research and related activity. That raises a substantive question as to whether the selected pools represent the most financially efficient and sustainable means of achieving the required savings, or whether alternative pooling arrangements could have delivered equivalent savings with less damage to income-generating capacity, succession planning and the long-term resilience of the Faculty. 

We also have significant concerns about the governance process through which the business case was developed, scrutinised and approved. We understand that Heads of Divisions/Departments were not substantively involved in its development and that the case was produced principally through the Faculty Vice-Principal and Faculty Executive Group. If correct, this raises questions about the breadth and independence of the scrutiny applied to proposals with major consequences for staffing, research and teaching across the Faculty and to the university as a whole. 

Those concerns are heightened by the Vice-Principal’s central role both in developing the business case and in determining the composition and operation of the Faculty Executive Group. The consultation material does not explain the governance and approval route followed, what independent challenge was applied, or how actual, potential and perceived conflicts of interest were identified, declared and managed. This is particularly important where individuals involved in determining the distribution of reductions across FLS may also have professional, research or other interests in particular units or activities affected differently by those decisions. 

A specific potential/perceived conflict arises because the Faculty VP, as owner of the Faculty-wide restructuring case, is involved in allocating reductions and University support across FLS while retaining significant professional links to the MRC PPU and LITE. If those activities receive continued or preferential support while staffing and resources are reduced elsewhere, this engages the University policy’s express example of a conflict where a staff member favours “one part of the University over another”. 

It should also be established whether any other relevant interests, including close family or personal relationships connected with the MRC PPU, LITE, MJFF-related activity or associated funding, were formally declared and managed under the University’s conflict-of-interest procedures, and what independent arrangements were put in place where necessary. 

Given the lack of transparent management-account information underlying the business case, we consider these governance and financial assurances essential. 

Scrutiny of the business case has been further undermined by the conduct and scheduling of the consultation meetings. At the first meeting on 20 July, basic processes—including the timely circulation of agendas and supporting papers—were not in place. This was acknowledged by the Faculty VP during the meeting and resulted in delay and avoidable loss of consultation time. A further meeting was then called unilaterally for 27 July and proceeded without academic union representation, while the 12 August meeting allowed only 30 minutes for substantive scrutiny of a complex Faculty-wide redundancy proposal. Requests for additional consultation on the LS Business Case were rejected.  

Taken together, these shortcomings have materially constrained the opportunity for meaningful challenge and raise serious concerns as to whether effective scrutiny of the business case has been facilitated.  

The team considers that the meeting with the COO and FDO on 20 July 2026 functioned primarily as a fact-finding exercise rather than a meaningful consultation on the proposal. Staff felt that the discussion did not provide any clarification regarding the rationale for identifying specific roles within Disability Services as being at risk. 

It is the team’s view that these fact-finding discussions should have been undertaken prior to the development of the business case and before the commencement of the formal consultation process. The absence of this prior engagement has made it difficult for staff to understand the evidence base and justification underpinning the proposals. This was evident when the COO asked what service delivery would work. 

The team wishes to emphasise that, over the past three years, Disability Services has taken significant steps to improve efficiency and adapt to sector-wide changes and ongoing financial challenges. This has included managing the impact of unfilled adviser and administrative posts while continuing to deliver services and support to students. 

The team also wishes to highlight that Disability Services is operating effectively within an increasingly complex and demanding environment. Staff continue to respond positively to change while managing significant levels of risk, rising complexity of need, and operational pressures. 

Disability Services remains committed to providing high-quality support to students. The team works professionally, diligently, and collaboratively to sustain service provision and address challenges arising from wider organisational and sector circumstances, rather than from the actions of the team or the students it supports. 

• Members anonymously disclosed that they feel their views have not been represented in the process. 

• Colleagues do not disclose the same views when there is no anonymous route for feedback, suggesting there is a culture of fear that prevents critical views from being voiced. 

• Information staff requested on benchmarking of staffing levels in the targeted area and referred to in the Business Case has not been shared. This has hindered any opportunity colleagues have had to produce an alternative proposal. 

• Elements of the Business Case have already been implemented before the consultation has concluded, and before the Business Case returned at the second Collective Consultation meeting. This suggests that consultation has not been meaningful. Staff raised this issue with the VP Research, Chief Operating Officer and Chief People’s Officer and have not yet received a response on why this change has been implemented before the completion of the collective consultation. 

• Overwhelming information and lack of clarity of what is happening outside the faculty, particularly in PS teams.   

• The responses from Faculty executive is to contact the consultation inbox but this feels like a box ticking exercise. 

Business School staff submitted a series of evidence-based questions and objections to the Faculty Executive concerning the proposed scale and distribution of academic staff reductions. In their view, the following questions remain outstanding or have not yet received sufficiently substantive answers: 

1. What is the evidential basis for the proposed scale of reductions in the Business School, including the assumption that approximately one-third of its academic capacity can be removed without materially harming teaching, research, administration, the student experience or income generation? 

2. What workload and capacity analysis demonstrates that the teaching, supervision, assessment, administrative and research responsibilities of staff who leave can be absorbed sustainably by those who remain? 

3. What will be the resulting student–staff ratio across the Business School and within individual disciplines, programmes and modules? Analysis undertaken by staff suggests that it could rise to approximately 30–33 students per academic in relevant areas. 

4. How would such an increase be compatible with teaching quality, research capacity, staff wellbeing, student satisfaction and the University’s international recruitment ambitions? 

5. What is the basis for the assertion that the student–staff ratio is not materially relevant to the restructuring, accreditation or institutional performance? How does this position account for the attention given to faculty resources and student–staff ratios in accreditation, league tables, international rankings and prospective students’ decisions? 

6. What evidence supports the claim that the Business School has significant “excess capacity”? No sufficiently transparent analysis of workloads, programme requirements, module delivery, supervision, research commitments or administrative responsibilities has yet been shared with staff. 

7. How have the profitability and contribution margins of Business School programmes and modules been considered? What assessment has been made of the School’s contribution to the financial position of the Faculty and University? 

8. What modelling has been undertaken of the likely effects of staff reductions on student recruitment and retention, programme viability, tuition-fee income and the University’s wider financial recovery? 

9. Does the business case assume that academic staff reductions will generate savings without adversely affecting income? If so, what sensitivity analysis has been undertaken to test that assumption? 

10. What is the evidential basis for assuming limited or no future growth in Business School student numbers? Have alternative scenarios involving recruitment, applicant conversion, programme development and income growth been modelled? 

11. How have reported problems in the University’s admissions and applicant-conversion systems been taken into account? What evidence demonstrates that recent changes in student numbers principally reflect underlying demand rather than potentially correctable problems in admissions processing and conversion? 

12. What assessment has been made of the implications for AACSB re-accreditation, the pursuit of EQUIS accreditation, and the Business School’s position in national and international markets? 

13. How were proposed staff reductions distributed between the Business School and other parts of the Faculty and University? What objective criteria were used, and how were the relative financial contribution, workload and growth potential of different academic areas considered? 

14. If the overall distribution of reductions lies outside the Faculty Executive’s authority, have the concerns and alternative proposals raised by Faculty members been formally conveyed to the University Executive Group for consideration? 

The Faculty Executive’s responses have largely relied on several general propositions: that the Business School hired too many academics, student numbers have declined, significant growth is not expected, and the School therefore has excess capacity. Staff remain concerned that sufficiently transparent evidence and modelling have not been provided to substantiate these propositions or demonstrate the proposed scale of reductions. 

In particular, responses have not, in the view of the staff concerned, engaged adequately with the evidence submitted on student–staff ratios, financial contribution, accreditation and the potential effects on income. Without clearer evidence and reasoned responses, there is a risk that the process may be perceived as justifying a predetermined level of reductions rather than testing the proposals and credible alternatives on their merits. 

Civil Engineering has prepared a series of business cases for the consultation process using official data. These analyses show it to be a profit-making low-risk asset to the University in terms of a spread of income across Teaching, Research and Commercial activities. 

Results of data analysis supplied by FSEB executive was initially wrong. In particular: staff/student ratio; lack of workload verification and a lack of context in the WLM; research income/overheads all contained significant errors. 

These errors have now been corrected on the insistence of Civil Engineering staff, and with these amendments it has become even less clear why any case for identifying Civil Engineering as a logical source of redundancies has been claimed. 

The original faculty business case identifying Civil Engineering as ‘at risk’ contained very little justification for selecting the discipline other than a statement claiming that student numbers were in a ‘sustained decline’. This is not the case – student numbers are increasing. Nonetheless, this narrative has subsequently been used by the Principle in his responses to concerns raised by local politicians. 

In terms of Civil Engineering’s performance: 

We have a close-to-100% employability rate, with essentially all of our graduates gaining employment in the Civil Engineering sector. Moreover, a large proportion of our graduates are employed in Scotland, and work in fields relating to renewable energy – particularly wind energy – contributing towards fulfilling Scotland’s role in tackling the global climate and pollution crises, as well as the Scottish Government’s Green Skills agenda. 

The majority of our students are Scottish, and the degrees act to provide skills aligned with the Scottish Government’s strategies for continued economic growth and global success. 

We were rated 5th in the UK for Civil Engineering by the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide in 2026, out of a field of 64. 

Our graduates agree with us: in this year’s National Student Survey – which asks graduating higher education students about their satisfaction with their course – Dundee was ranked 1st in Civil Engineering in Scotland and 1st across the UK in terms of the overall satisfaction with the course. This is the 4th year running we have been ranked 1st in Scotland.  

The main points of our letter asked the FSEB executive to

• explain why the mathematics programme was selected for closure, even though this would cost the Faculty money rather than save money,
• explain why the discipline of Mathematics was chosen for cuts, as opposed to other disciplines that were not,
• show the data underlying the business case.
• We also outlined an alternative proposal based on a new UG and TPG Mathematics programme.

In their response, the FSEB Executive:

• gave no specifics on why the discipline of Mathematics was chosen for cuts. It did not state what financial test, if any, Mathematics failed, and which other disciplines passed.
• gave no financial case for cutting the UG mathematics programme or mathematics staff; Instead, the response was that this is not calculated at the discipline level, implying that cuts to the programme and staff are not based on their financial performance.

• The way that the financial income has been factored is non-standard and has not been justified by any explanation. It counts only new income from direct recruitment. The programme has always been financially managed by considering total teaching (and has always been well in surplus, with a return over 50%). 

• While Philosophy student intake has fluctuated over the last 12 years (between 13 and 31, excluding Art and Philosophy, English and Philosophy and History and Philosophy), the overall number of students on all named Philosophy programmes has shown a steady increase, and has almost doubled since 2014 (from average 86 in seven years prior to 2014, to average 160 in the last three years). 

• The data summary underestimates the current year of enrolment as 18 – it now has 23 ‘firm accepts’ as of 17 July 2026. 

• The amount of new income from direct recruitment has not included 1st year Foundation students who indicate they are there to do Art and Philosophy (10 in 2025/6). 

• Financial data has not factored in research grant income. 

• We think the 45% ‘contribution’ added to staff costs is a blanket UoD indirect costs allocation. Do you know if this is the case, and, if so, how it is arrived at/justified (it is certainly not explained in the document)? 

• We do not know where the data used by the ‘Finance Business Partner’ is sourced from. 

• The data appears to be cherry-picked to produce the desired outcome, but with all the income exclusions here it still only manages to show a deficit using two fallacious calculations: 

• New recruitment teaching income – total staff costs (reasons why it is a fallacy: staff are on 30% research contracts. Why is not ALL the teaching they do considered?) 

• Addition of 45% contribution and subtraction of SFC funding (reason it is a fallacy: if the latter is ‘moveable’, then so is the former – and would not be a saving were Philosophy specifically discontinued) 

On 21st August, the following email was sent to consultationsupport@dundee.ac.uk: [We] ask [these questions] now because [we] have only just become aware that there has been and will be no detailed programme level data provided to support proposals for changes. [Our] questions are: 

• If programme level data has been examined only for programmes already proposed for closure, does this not indicate predetermination of decisions prior to carrying out the consultation process? 

• If programme level data has been examined only for programmes proposed for closure, how was the decision regarding which programmes to propose for closure arrived at? 

• If programme level data has been examined only for programmes proposed for closure, how can it be known that these are the right programmes to propose for closure to ensure cost savings and the best financial strategy for the university? While income from numbers of student enrolments might be cited in cases such as Philosophy, costs also need to be taken into account. It might be the case that other programmes, with higher income from student enrolments, also have higher costs, and possibly also lower income from other sources (such as PhD students and grants). Without comparative data, how can the decision of which programmes to propose for closure be justified? 

• The Strategy to Recovery document frequently states that decisions will be based on evidence and data. For example, Guiding Principle no. 3 (StR p. 16) states: ‘Evidence-Led Action. Decisions will be informed by robust data, clear performance measures and demonstrable value for the University.’ [We] submit that this principle has clearly been violated in light of the above. Does University management accept that this principle has been violated or changed since the publication of the StR? If not, how can it be defended in light of the above?  

• What savings is the Faculty aiming to make by closing entry to the Applied Languages programme in 2027-28 (given that Languages staff are not in a pool)? 

• If no savings, why is Languages part of this process? 

• What action will UCAS  take on the basis of the information the Faculty is planning to send it (or perhaps already has) about ‘suspended’ programmes and when? 

The proposed reduction of 2 FTE in Geography is only targeted at Human Geography staff. The argument is that the degree routes would not be sustainable with any loss of Physical Geography staff. Despite us pointing out MANY times that ALL our degree routes involve interconnected teaching in both Human and Physical aspects of the discipline and that the loss of any HG staff will also put the programmes at risk, there does not seem to be any movement on the faculty position there. 

On 21 August, the day the collective consultation was closed, the History programme received a response from VP FASS to our discussion paper relating to the proposed staffing reductions. 

The official response does little to engage with the concerns and suggestions that we made in our programme document. There is no substantive engagement or even consultation in dialogue with staff about the issues or how we might actually collectively overcome the problems. For example, there is no acknowledgment of possible growth initiatives through the online distance masters (something which in previous years both Jeff and the broader university management have publicly discussed for the institution as a whole), how our staff numbers and programme offering compares to other Scottish universities (which is evidenced as being the lowest already), or even the fluctuations in student numbers – assumptions are made at an intake of 40/year based off 2 years of data, as the level we’ll be teaching at going forward, and ignoring that we have 55 firm accepts for September which means we’d have more students rather than less.  

The issue of a more expansive humanities or MA provision which are raised in the reply have not been fully discussed with colleagues. It is a centrally devised aspiration which seeks to impose on disciplines rather than fits any subject need or student demand. Moreover, and a theme totally ignored by this, is that maintaining a balance of subject specific offerings at sub-honours (the documents states 2 at L1 and L2 as is the current status quo), on top of interdisciplinary teaching is actually hugely inefficient because you are creating more modules / taking more staff time away from the existing discipline modules. These issues were raised at division meetings and within the MA review, and have been disregarded.  

From the reply it does not indicate there has been meaningful consultation, and it is clear that the faculty leadership has not changed their minds despite the efforts, questions, and proposals from the programmes. 

There is no understanding of how Art and Philosophy fits in the ecology of the school. There seems to be a focus on become generic, rather than anything which might be a unique usp.

The team has prepared a detailed report documenting the procedural and substantive failures of the consultation process for their services.

Information shared with us regarding the Business Case states “There will be an overall reduction in administrative roles through integration because of removing silos (bringing teams together into the Hub), standardising processes, greater automation, and offering a consistent level of service to staff and students.” When asked whether this relates to Careers Service services, duties and functions, we were informed that this will apply across the Hub. However, responses for further information on which members of Careers Service will be responsible for implementing this; how long proposed integration of automation is intended to take;  what services this relates to, remains unanswered. We were informed that the UEG does not have a definitive list of processes and changes. Instead we have been given vague responses about some unspecified changes to be implemented quickly while others will be done over a longer time frame.  

• As the updated financial data now shows an ‘extra’ thousands of pounds for EIS, it seems that an appropriate revision to the business case would be to offer an additional redeployment role based on this finding. This would constitute meaningful evidence that the University’s Redundancy Avoidance Policy is being adhered to. 

• Concerns around the inaccurate financial data used to support the original business case were brushed aside. The figures were updated but no decisions were changed as a result of a significant difference in the financial situation of the team. 

• No explanation was given in response to questions about the auditing of data or where the responsibility lies to investigate what we suspect to be widespread unreliability in the business case data. (It the level of inaccuracy in the EIS business case were replicated across all business cases, it would result in a discrepancy of thousands of pounds between the real and the reported figures.) 

• UEG have said:  ‘The proposals commit to retaining the highly valued skill set in the EIS team around in-sessional English language support and ELTAG input, that shores up BCA metric compliance’  How this is to be done with 3 tutors seconded to the Academic Skills team has not been made clear. 

• Even though UEG held the view that low student numbers on the PSE justified the job cuts to the EIS team, they significantly downplayed the impact of the Oxford International Digital Institute falsely advertising one of their courses as the ‘University of Dundee pre-sessional English course’, with full UoD branding, for at least six months. They asserted, without supplying evidence, that it had a negligible impact and gave no answer to questions about whether financial or legal redress had been sought from Oxford International as a result of the misappropriation of the university’s name and branding to market a competitor programme.   

• There is one sentence on the financial information on the savings of the Business Case. Without disclosing personal details of staff, to increase transparency the Business Case should include more detail in the staff/non-staff savings 

• There is no explanation given for removing two members from the specific section of the wider team. The Business Case owners have been informed of the importance of these roles and a change of job description for one of the members in this team.