85 Jobs Are To Go At The UEA Who Are Faced With Cuts In Grants Of Nearly 4.5 Million Pounds

Campus scenes and interview with Vice Chancellor.

Over scenes of students coming and going around the walkways and buildings of the Lasdun Wall teaching block at the University of East Anglia, reporter Chris Young provides the background to the news story. Following a reduction in government grant, the University of East Anglia will lose 85 teaching and non-teaching jobs through early retirement and voluntary severance, but also potentially through redundancies. A 17% budget cut must be made over 3 years. Plans have been dropped to close three departments to undergraduates – the School of Development Studies, Physics and Music, and instead the cuts will be spread across the entire university. The week before, students occupied part of the campus for two days in protest against the cuts. Speaking outside the Registry building, Vice Chancellor Professor Derek Burke says he thinks that noise and sit ins are counterproductive. He does not think people outside UEA see such action as being part of the university, and it has not influenced the new decision. The Vice Chancellor will ask to take a group of people to meet the Chairman of the University Grants Committee. His aim is to make it clear that the level of cuts imposed on UEA has caused severe damage, and that the university is required to make the changes over a very short period of three years. Asked whether he thinks the government attitude to higher education is short sighted, the Vice Chancellor says he feels they are wasting the future and throwing away the seed corn of the next 10 – 15 years. A few seconds of audio have been edited out at the end of this report. This video was made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.

Keywords

Higher education; Funding; Universities; University Grants Committee; Job cuts