University of Leeds set to have highest student to teacher ratios of leading universities

UCU says the cuts are incredibly damaging for university's reputation. Lobby planned for 19 November and strike action on the cards.

The University of Leeds will have the highest ratio of students to staff of the UK's leading universities if it pushes ahead with plans to make £35m worth of cuts and axe 10% of its academic staff, according to new figures released today ny UCU.
 
Analysis of the student:staff ratios (SSRs) at Russell Group universities (the UK's leading research-intensive institutions) has revealed that if Leeds pushed ahead with the staff cuts it would drop to the bottom of a table measuring student:staff ratios with 17.6 students to each member of academic staff.
 
At present the University of Leeds has an SSR of 15.8:1, which is better than local rivals and fellow Russell Group members the University of Manchester (15.9:1), the University of Sheffield (16.4:1) and the University of Newcastle (17.0:1). The University of Liverpool is currently the only northern institution with a better SSR than Leeds. However, axing the staff and consequently raising the SSR would see the university drop to the bottom of the Russell Group table and put the institution's reputation as a leading university at serious risk.
 
The impact on SSRs in departments that have lost staff is already being felt at Leeds. The university expects the SSR in the Faculty of Biological Sciences, for example, to rise from 16:1 to 20:1 after over 30 staff left in the summer.
 
Despite the prospect of the highest SSRs in the Russell Group, the serious damage to the institution's reputation and university accounts for 2007/8 that showed the university had cash assets of £86 million, the university still says it is looking to make £35 million worth of savings and cuts of 10%. All university departments, even those making a surplus, have been told to identify cuts of between 10 to 20%.
 
The University of Leeds looks increasingly likely to be disrupted by strike action in the new year after the union called an official dispute with the university and its members voted overwhelmingly to ballot for strike action. Local UCU members at an emergency general meeting at Leeds this week  also passed a motion which said they have no confidence in the vice-chancellor, Michael Arthur, and the senior management team. The next stage of the campaign will be a lobby of the university's council on Thursday 19 November.
 
University of Leeds UCU branch president, Malcolm Povey, said: 'The cuts will have an enormous impact on students' education here in Leeds. Getting rid of hundreds of posts will leave staff with less time to attend to the individual needs of students, something that students, understandably, will be furious about.'
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'The University of Leeds has a proud reputation and I fail to understand why it would want to risk seriously damaging it. UCU members at the University of Leeds have made it clear that they will fight to save jobs and the institution's reputation, and they have the full support of the national union. The campaign moves on to a lobby of the university's council on Thursday 19 November with the threat of strike action looming large over the institution.'
 
University of Leeds and the Russell Group

In 2007-8, according to HESA data, Leeds was about two-thirds of the way down the Russell Group student:staff ratio table. A 10% cut in academic staff would put Leeds at the bottom of the SSR table, according to UCU calculations.

SSR = student:staff ratio; HESA =  Higher Education Statistics Agency; ##Source: www.guardian.co.uk league table