The five Russell Group unis with the most alarming deficits right now, revealed

Hopefully, you’ve cottoned onto the fact that UK universities are panicking over money at the moment. The Office for Students reckons half of UK unis will report deficits from the 2024-2025 year. Yikes. Even the high and mighty Russell Group unis are struggling with their finances.

UK unis are publishing all their accounts from the 2024-2025 academic year right now. So, we can take a nosy look at exactly how broke they all are.

Hey, it’s not all doom and gloom! The University of Birmingham, the University of Bristol, Imperial College London, King’s College London (KCL), the University of Manchester, the University of Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, the University of Southampton, University College London (UCL), the University of Warwick and the University of York all (just about) achieved a surplus. Some of these unis achieved this by axing loads of jobs. A few Russell Group unis still haven’t published their accounts, so we don’t know for certain if they have a deficit.

Here are all the Russell Group unis that are reporting deficits now (i.e. they spent more money than they made). Use this is a guide as to how stressed you should be about your uni’s bank accounts.

University of Cambridge

Even the ultra-famous University of Cambridge has a deficit. The uni reported an adjusted operating deficit of £8 million. The uni made one per cent less money than the year before. Although Cambridge made more money from tuition fees than last year, fewer people donated money and staff costs rose.

Remember – all the different Cambridge and Oxford colleges deal with their finances separately. Some are sitting on loads and loads of cash.

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University of Leeds

Leeds reported an underlying operating deficit of £8 million. This is a huge change from the year before, when Leeds made a surplus of £60 million. The uni struggled to recruit enough international postgrad students, who generally pay very high fees. Leeds says that all the cuts management made resulted in £64 million of savings.

Newcastle University

The uni ended up with an underlying deficit of £2.8 million. This is an improvement from the £9.5 million deficit the uni ended up with last year. 21 per cent fewer international postgrad students and 11 per cent fewer international undergrads signed up for the uni. This did not help Newcastle’s finances.

The Newcastle campus looking nice and sunny

Queen’s University Belfast

The uni has shared it ended up with a whopping deficit of £22.8 million. This is drastically worse than last year’s deficit of £12.7 million.

The report says the uni has been “facing significant declines in government funding (when adjusted for inflation), volatility in the international student market, rising costs and a number of other financial challenges specific to Northern Ireland institutions.”

Loads of staff left Queen’s this year through a voluntary severance scheme. The uni says this will start saving upwards of £17 million per year.

University of Sheffield

Er, so Sheffield Uni managed to make a surplus of £6.2 million last year. However, in the 2024-2025 year, they wound up with an underlying operating deficit of £11.5 million. Yikes. The uni’s accounts say that they made 22 per cent less money from international students’ tuition fees, and so the uni’s overall income was down £56 million from the year before. Yikes.

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