This is a damning expose, and suggests that the only people losing their jobs should be the Vice-Chancellor and his management team; an excerpt:
Published accounts show that at least £35 million of free cash flow has been spent on the acquisition and refurbishment of new buildings since 2016, when the EU referendum signalled forthcoming volatility in the sector. Birkbeck was likely to be disproportionately exposed due to its diverse student make-up and its London location. This was clear signal that the college needed to exploit its agility as a smaller HE institution and develop a new base of applicants. Birkbeck has a record of innovation in this area, once running thousands of successful certificate courses that helped to introduce people to university study, and to begin a degree. (These were later priced out of existence by the college’s leadership.) Instead of changing quickly, drawing on the experience and knowledge of its staff, Birkbeck’s Senior Management Team began a costly programme of investment in physical infrastructure.
Historically, Birkbeck has hired large amounts of Bloomsbury teaching space in the evenings. In a period of expansion this constituted an uncontrolled expenditure, subject to rising rents by the owners. But in a period of uncertainty, where student numbers might fall, this became a competitive advantage. Strategic withdrawal was simple and quick; substantial ongoing overheads could be avoided.
However, in the face of uncertainty, this advantage was squandered by the college’s Senior Management Team. First they bought and refurbished a building on Euston Rd at a cost of £51 million, made greater by ongoing upkeep costs. This strategy was challenged by staff, but in 2019 academic representatives were removed from the estates committee so that no further dissent could be voiced. Following this a further building was purchased—the former University of London Student Union—without internal accountability. When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, Birkbeck’s management had not only run down the college’s reserves, but committed to new estates at the moment nobody needed them. This transformed a structural advantage in an uncertain sector into vulnerability....
In 2022 Birkbeck is crippled by this same group of managers. They are headed by a Vice Chancellor, David Latchman, who continues to draw an annual salary equivalent to nine jobs of the median Birkbeck employee, and who refuses to address the issue of salary sacrifice. He and his team have overseen a process where academic staff have been harangued into ever-quicker processing of applications, while simultaneously pursuing an internal austerity policy that has stripped back administrative services so that the college’s Registry currently have only 2.5 FTE staff covering the college’s admissions. During the past year suitable students have withdrawn their applications or been unable to enrol because there is insufficient staff capacity to process their paperwork effectively. Reduced recruitment is now cited as a reason for cuts to academic and administrative staff.
