Dear students,
The Interim Principal, Nigel Seaton, announced last Thursday that the University will be conducting another round of Voluntary Severance (VS). VS is a way of the university reducing costs by cutting staff and not replacing the roles.
We are writing to ensure you are informed about what this means, to outline the Students’ Association’s position, and to explain how we are working to protect your interests during this period.
As your Students’ Association Executive, we want to be clear: we are opposed to the launch of this new Voluntary Severance scheme and we encourage you to add your name to our petition against the cuts.
The University has been managing significant financial challenges since November 2024. Since then, staffing numbers have already reduced by around 20% compared with pre-crisis levels. This new VS scheme is expected to see up to 180 full-time equivalent core-funded staff leave. Taken together, this would mean that roughly one third of all jobs at the University will have been lost since the crisis began.
We recognise that this news will be concerning. Staff are central to your experience – from lectures, tutorials and dissertation supervision to wellbeing, disability support, academic skills, libraries, labs and professional services. This will lead to reduced capacity and with the exam season coming up this will create uncertainty about capability and continuity.
We do not believe that continued large-scale staff reductions are a sustainable solution, and we are concerned about the cumulative impact this will have on staff wellbeing and on the quality of your student experience. Further VS will lead to further workload pressures on our staff: Staff working conditions are directly connected to student learning conditions. Our immediate priority is to ensure that disruption to your education and degree progression is limited as much as possible.
Our commitment remains the same: to represent you, to do our best to safeguard your education, and to ensure we provide ample opportunities for you to have your voice heard. We strongly encourage you to use your voice. The more of us that raise our voice collectively, the stronger we are as a student body. We have set up a petition to go to the senior management and governors of the university.
You can also attend the Student Representative Council tomorrow, Tuesday, at 5.30pm at Dalhousie 1F06. Both the Chair of Court, the governing body of the university, and the Principal will be taking questions on the VS scheme.
In solidarity,
Dundee University Student Association Executive
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