Bangor University announces plans to cut 200 jobs to help save £15 million

Bangor University has announced plans to cut 200 jobs to help save £15m.

Professor Edmund Burke, the vice-chancellor of Bangor University has announced in an email to staff that the university aims to cut 200 jobs in an attempt to raise £15 million.

The university has also announced plans to extend its voluntary severance scheme currently in place in order to meet savings goals, due to the falling number of international students, rising costs, and the effects of the Labour Party’s changes to national insurance.

According to the BBC, the scheme will also be extended to include those employed in non-academic posts too, but while this is in place Professor Burke has warned “compulsory redundancies might be needed.”

This comes at a time when universities across Wales have said they are in “financial crisis”, with Cardiff University planning to cut courses and 400 jobs.

Bangor is made up of 10,000 students, with 650 academic staff currently employed at the institution.

Staff members at the university were also invited to attend a consultation on the proposals, so that the bosses at Bangor could hear their concerns and explain the need for the cuts to keep the university financially afloat.

Prof. Burke said: “In autumn 2024, our student intakes were smaller than in 2023, falling short of our budget target. Our home undergraduate intake was seven per cent smaller and, without medicine, was down 11 per cent.

“Our international intake was also smaller, with our September international postgraduate intake around half the size of the 2023 intake.”

He added in his email to staff that despite the second increase in Welsh tuition fees in two years, “there is no agreement for future inflation adjustment to the amount of money we receive per student”.

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The university has also started implementing cost-cutting measures by removing staff from a number of buildings across the estate and is planning to sell these to generate some income.

Universities across the UK have become increasingly reliant on international students to bridge this funding gap, but due to “the UK government’s action[s] to reduce the level of immigration” there has been a fall in international students coming to study in the Wales.

This has led to what Professor Burke calls “some difficult decisions… [to] restore the university to a stable and sustainable position”.

This is not the first time that we have seen proposed cuts to staffing at Bangor University in recent years, as in October 2020 plans were announced that put a further 200 jobs at risk of redundancy, focusing mainly on support staff.

Speaking with BBC News, Sion, a music student at Bangor said that the announcement scared him, after hearing the cuts Cardiff University plans on making to their School of Music.

He added: “I hope we will stay open but it will be touch and go. I think the arts will suffer more than STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] subjects.”

Another student, Beth, who studies primary education, said: “I think its very sad, it will have a big impact on us as students” and that fewer staff meant less support.

Speaking in the Senedd, Vikki Howells said, that much like Cardiff University, the news of the job cuts at Bangor had been “leaked to the media”.

She added that she would meet with vice-chancellors of both universities but continued by saying, “that doesn’t mean that work isn’t already ongoing.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We understand the concerns surrounding the higher education sector and the effect this will have on the staff and learners at these institutions.”

They added that work was already underway, which includes new legislation, the creation of Medr, the body that funds and regulates universities in Wales, and the allocation of additional funding to help universities.

We contacted Bangor University for a comment but received no reply.