Hi all,
Its been a long time since Iv joined, so I must thank you all for your stories and support for each other.

Today I heard that 24 faculty staff were being made redundant next year in our School of Life Sciences. Thankfully I doubt my supervisor will be affected as she is one of those people with a finger in every pie and does very well at her work and getting large grants. However this has made me wonder what is happening at other universities throughout the UK. Apparently our university has been making a financial loss every year for a while and this has lead to the redundancies. But I was wondering how much of this could be due to the recession? I am an ecologist and I fully realise that this discipline is usually the first to suffer when money is tight. Also does anyone know if any other ecological / environmental science research groups are suffering from financial difficulties.

Thanks for any replies on the matter. x

Hi Starlight,

It's several factors combined I think from what I've heard. It sounds like there is a problem across the sciences in that grant money has become scarcer and so where a lot of people are employed on soft money as is usual in the sciences, then if grants don't come in then redundancies follow. Then some universities are shutting research groups / subjects who disappointed in RAE2008. Finally, some universities are in financial trouble and all are planning for cuts regardless of who wins the next election. I've heard people say that 10% budget cuts across the board would be a good outcome! So tbh I think it's not great anywhere but where a few of those factors combine, it's really bad. I'd have thought your subject area might be safer than most to be honest given the political salience of climate change. But most cuts tend to turn up on the Times Higher Education website (particularly interesting at times are the comments under the articles...).