To Sir Paul Grice, Senior Leadership Team and members of the University Court at Queen Margaret University
The Scottish higher education funding model is failing, destabilising staff and students. The ongoing financial struggles for universities puts immense pressure on both employees and learners, leading to uncertainty and a decline in educational quality.
As a result, Queen Margaret University is entering a period of significant organisational change, with restructuring, redundancies and changes to working conditions threatening the livelihoods and wellbeing of members of our university community. Many of these proposed changes are contradictory to the professed priorities and values of the institution, undermining the principles of social justice, intellectual curiosity and academic excellence.
Staff and students should not suffer the consequences for the failures of university management and previous government policies. We demand in the strongest possible terms that compulsory redundancies and course closures be ruled out now and in future phases of organisational change, that senior leadership improve pay and working conditions for staff, and that organisational change prioritises staff wellbeing as well as the student experience.
Instead of accepting the narrative that squeezing more work out of fewer staff is the only option for financial sustainability, we want to see action from the institution’s governance mechanisms that calls to account the systemic and pervasive underfunding of the higher education sector.