Aberdeen University facing up to 70 job losses amid £5.5m financial crisis

Up to 70 jobs could be lost at the University of Aberdeen if the institution doesn’t raise enough revenue to reduce its £5.5m financial blackhole.

Five schools at the university have been selected for voluntary severance, and STV News understands that the cuts could impact up to 70 jobs.

Earlier this week, Aberdeen University announced that it would offer staff a voluntary severance and enhanced retirement scheme as well as create “a more student demand-led” range of programmes in an effort to balance its books.

During a university senate meeting this week, the principal professor shared how the institution hopes to raise £2m worth of revenue to prevent job cuts

In that meeting, he said that if only half of the university’s £5.5m revenue goal is achieved, then 35 staff members would need to take either voluntary severance or enhanced retirement

That means that if the university does not raise the desired revenue, then at least 70 roles could be under threat.

The university court, the government body for the university, has until the end of June to plug the financial blackhole.

The University has previously said that it’s a challenging time for higher education, and it is working to address its £5.5m budget gap, which equates to around 2% of its total revenue.

A spokesperson for the institution said the voluntary redundancy scheme would lead to a “small reduction” in the overall size of the total workforce, depending on the take-up of the scheme”.

Elsewhere in the city, EIS members at Robert Gordon University were on strike again over job losses this week.

In efforts to fill a £35m deficit, there could be a reduction of up to 300 roles at the University of Dundee through a voluntary severance programme.

A University of Aberdeen spokesperson said: “We have a huge amount of high-quality work here at Aberdeen, as evidenced by our consistently outstanding levels of student satisfaction, the strong growth in our research awards and our impressive UK league table rankings and these measures will help to ensure our future financial sustainability.”