Why should you care?
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You might not be a student, or a parent of a student, or an academic, or a university graduate. It would be a reasonable question for you to ask: why should I give a shit about any of this?
The reality is that whoever you are: this affects you.
Universities in the UK are in the midst of transitioning from bastions for forward-thinking research to degree factories where students pay extortionate sums of money for qualifications delivered by academics with little or no top-level research experience.
Our universities are the places that train our teachers, doctors, engineers, nurses, artists, and scientists.
The University of Leicester claims to be “one of the world's leading research-intensive universities” [https://le.ac.uk/research/areas] and its management are obsessed with league table positions. However it sits at a shameful 326th in the 2026 QS World University Rankings. The QS World University Rankings is arguably the most respected system to rank Universities worldwide.
There is nothing “world leading” about being 326th.
Disturbingly the University of Leicester is now embarking on a series of job cuts aimed squarely at the few remaining top-notch researchers in six departments. This is against a backdrop where management salaries and bonuses (six figures plus - far more than any academic makes) are at an all time high.
The reason for these cuts is to plug a £11 million hole in the University’s finances due to wasteful spending (£500m on buildings that nobody needed or asked for), the inability to follow simple economic trends ('nobody' could have predicted inflation after COVID - except all the economists in the world, or could have predicted that tuition fees, having been frozen for years, would not rise by thousands of pounds at once), and vanity projects that yielded losses rather than profits.
The breadcrumb trail of incompetence leads right to the top of management, however it is the research and teaching staff at the coalface who are having their, and their families, livelihoods sacrificed.
This wanton destruction of top-performing departments at the University of Leicester is devaluing the degrees our students receive, and it's not just happening at Leicester.
The University of Leicester is the canary in the coalmine.
Across the UK, academics are under constant pressure to award more and more degrees with lower and lower standards. Our students are just a herd of government-funded cash cows to be milked to pay for executive vanity projects and an ever-growing blancmange of mediocre managers of nothing.
A degree should be more than just a piece of paper. The world is not getting simpler. We need educated people, and we can provide that if the priorities are right.
What kind of future do you want for our country?
Do you want your children to be taught by people who have proper, rigorous, qualifications? Do you want your doctors and nurses to be trained to the highest possible standard?
Whoever you are, this affects you. Help us fight back.
