Walsall lecturers to call for resignation

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Walsall lecturers to call for resignation
The YamYam 4 Nov 09
Lecturers at Wolverhampton University, including those at the Walsall Campus, are to organise a ballot calling for the resignation of Vice Chancellor Professor Caroline Gipps over her handling of a growing financial crisis.

At meetings in Walsall and Wolverhampton, branch members of the University and College Union also called for an enquiry into the financial management of the university. The move follows the announcement in July that up to 250 jobs are to go either by voluntary or compulsory redundancy in a process described by the Vice Chancellor as “a repositioning exercise”.

Blaming rising pay costs, funding changes and stricter saving rules by the Government, the university is facing a debt of £8 million. Only one other university, London Met, has announced plans for compulsory redundancies. Wolverhampton has to pay back £3.5 million to the Higher Education Funding Council for England after understating the number of students who did not complete their courses last year. In July, the Vice Chancellor claimed that the drop-out rate was 10% but an audit by the EFCE discovered that the true rate was 15%. It is estimated that the proposed job cuts will cost £5 million in redundancy pay outs.

Lecturers are angry that following a job freeze in May, a Director of Corporate Services was appointed in June at executive level on an undisclosed salary. The university has consistently stated that it is committed to regional regeneration and business enterprise and staff are asking how this can be reconciled with 250 redundancies following alleged financial mismanagement. UCU General Secretary, Sally Hunt, has said: “Government rhetoric suggests that education will not be victim of the recession and it will play a key role in our recovery. Sadly, individual universities’ actions, coupled with pruning of the education budget, means that what is actually happening is that we are making it much harder for people to get a high quality education when they need it most. We will be fighting the redundancies at Wolverhampton because we know education can, and must be allowed to, play a full role in helping the UK recover.”

Announcing a major overhaul of the higher education system, business secretary Lord Mandelson said: “Universities are not islands, they are not ivory towers, they have to respond to the world around them.”

Staff at the University of Wolverhampton, frustrated at what they see as a lack of engagement from the Vice Chancellor, the executive and the governing body, are considering future action.

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