Statement by the President and Past Presidents of the British Sociological Association

Recent reports have indicated that around 40% of higher education institutions are in serious financial difficulties, in some cases leading to voluntary and/or compulsory redundancies. The situation has been brought about by factors including high inflation without a corresponding increase in student fees, and immigration policies which have impacted on the number of overseas students applying to UK Universities. These are exacerbated by the lifting of the numbers cap on the recruitment of home undergraduate students (albeit the situation is different, with different pressures in Scotland). The incoming government may introduce a review of student finance, but it will be some time before the current crisis can be resolved.

The argument that student fees are used to subsidise research is commonplace. Now we find that student recruitment – and institutional plans to second-guess it – is determining the shape of research in the social sciences. This is best illustrated in the situation of Sociology at Goldsmiths where 17 members of staff have recently been put at risk of compulsory redundancy. In REF2021, a complement of 45 FTEs was submitted. Since then, voluntary severance schemes, retirements, and departures following a previous re-structure have seen the size of the department shrink by a third to around 30 colleagues. The 17 colleagues identified for compulsory redundancy come from a pool of 24 who were in scope – over two thirds of the department.

This is a subject that was ranked 13th by the REF2021 panel of peers and so represents a serious loss of research capacity in Sociology. Not only could the swingeing cuts obliterate teaching and research capacity across a number of areas – including race and ethnicity, human rights, gender, urban studies, childhood, and creative ecologies – but in the process this could leave the department with no Black colleagues and no Black or Brown British ethnic minority colleagues. In the context of the work having been done across the sector to address long-standing and stubborn racial inequalities this is quite worrying.

These issues are of significance for us all across the sector even as we recognise the particularly deleterious consequences for those individuals made redundant at Goldsmiths and elsewhere. The Office for Students has declared that individual institutions need to put in mitigations against the risk of bankruptcy and the consequent impact on students. Bridget Phillipson, the new Minister for Education, said, prior to the election, “I would want to avoid any disruption happening to young people’s education where, if an institution were to run into trouble, that would be the outcome.” However, the mitigations – here, compulsory redundancies – are already having an impact on students and their courses of study. The OfS needs to more seriously consider its duty toward students and act to maintain research capacity and teaching activities across the sector.

This goes beyond Sociology at Goldsmiths. If universities are, once again, to be recognised as “a public good, not a political battleground,” as Phillipson states, urgent action is needed to protect UK research capacity across the social sciences and humanities. This should include: an audit of the aggregate consequences of decisions by individual HEIs undermining high quality research areas; a call for a voluntary cap on student numbers to stabilise the system pending the outcome of a review; the creation of a stabilisation fund at Universities UK to provide bridging income until a new funding regime is in place for those institutions in precarious financial situations. The fund could be created, temporarily, by those institutions that have benefited from the lifting of the numbers cap and are reporting surpluses.

It is not too late to rethink the cuts at Goldsmiths, Kent, Huddersfield, Lincoln, Hull and many other institutions. There will likely be some stabilising measures introduced by the new government in the short term, to which the wider sector can contribute. The OfS calls on universities to pay attention to the financial environment and plan accordingly – that environment has just changed dramatically, and universities need to pause and take the measure of that change for the good of the sector.

  • Rachel Brooks, President of the British Sociological Association (2024-) and Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey
  • Gurminder K Bhambra, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2022-2024) and Professor of Historical Sociology, University of Sussex
  • Susan Halford, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2018-2022) and Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol
  • Lynn Jamieson, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2014-2018) and Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh
  • John Holmwood, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2012-2014) and Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham
  • John Brewer, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2009-2012) and Professor Emeritus, Queen’s University Belfast
  • Sue Scott, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2007-2009) and Visiting Professor, Newcastle University and University of Helsinki
  • Joan Busfield, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2003-2005) and Professor of Sociology, University of Essex
  • John Scott, Past President of the British Sociological Association (2001-2003) and Emeritus Professor, University of Plymouth
  • Michèle Barrett, Past President of the British Sociological Association (1993-1995) and Professor Emerita, Queen Mary University of London