In July, Taylor Jeoffroy posted on the SGSAH blog about financial precarity among Scottish universities from the perspective of the University of Dundee’s funding crisis. Since then, much has changed and much has stayed the same.
When I first spoke with Taylor, we talked about the particular situation at Dundee and how this compared to the situation at the University of Edinburgh, which is currently my home university. When I first moved to the UK and began working in the higher education sector, I was shocked by any notion of ‘deficit’ in the context of a university. In the United States (and, some would argue, this is what the UK is quickly becoming), universities avoid any utterance of the word ‘deficit’ quite handily, with the average yearly cost of attendance as $41,000 (£30,000). In the United Kingdom – and Scotland, especially – the picture is vastly different. All Scottish universities offer Scottish students 100% free tuition. All of this is to say that the frequent deficits – and threats of deficits – are the price we pay for free or heavily subsidised tuition.
The University of Edinburgh: A Funding Crisis, or a Fabrication?
The University of Edinburgh’s situation is quite unique: From the beginning of my time as a PhD student, I was told the university was experiencing financial difficulty. This was not alarming to me: At the time, I recently left my job at the University of East London, which famously came back from the brink of insolvency and was considering compulsory redundancies at the point of my departure. This was a university that was transparent about their financial situation every step of the way. For this reason, the University of Edinburgh’s situation is particularly puzzling to me: Are we in a deficit? No, but we could be by the 2026/2027 school year. Is it an issue in student recruitment? No, our student numbers are up across the whole of the university, and, anecdotally, some programmes (i.e., Edinburgh Futures Institute Master’s) have doubled in size.
Popping into an all staff meeting in December 2024, I was eager to learn precisely what kind of financial situation ‘one of the wealthiest universities in the UK’ was facing. What staff have been told is that ‘operational costs are quickly outpacing income streams’. Although this is more specific, until recently, ‘operational costs’ has been conveniently vague. This is the line that senior management have been feeding staff time and time again. What’s more, the communication between SMT and university staff and students has been nothing short of appalling. Following up on the December 2024 meeting, a communication was sent out on 11 February 2025 by President and Vice Chancellor Peter Mathieson responding to staff members’ concerns over the voluntary redundancy scheme announced the previous December. Referring to the possibility of restructuring, potential closures and mergers – all of which would inevitably lead to compulsory redundancies – Mathieson (now famously) wrote, ‘nothing is on the table’.1
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All of this has now led to numerous ballots to strike from Edinburgh UCU. So far, this has resulted in strike action on 20 June 2025 and the entirety of w/c 8 September 2025, which cleverly coincided with the university’s ‘Welcome Week’. Additionally, some staff have been taking ‘action short of strike’ continuously since 20 June.
Since the last strike action, on 24 September 2025, the Edinburgh UCU announced that they are once again holding a ballot for additional industrial action.2 This ballot will run until Tuesday, 28 October amidst continued rhetoric by senior management that the university is seeking to make £140 million in cuts.
What Does it All Mean for PhD Researchers?
As Taylor mentioned in the summer, as PhD students, we are situated in a very liminal space in relation to these funding crises: As students, we are perhaps concerned about the quality of service across the university. If our supervisors are impacted, so are we. If support staff are impacted, we will also feel the strain within administrative positions and other vital support services. As postgraduate researchers, we might take on teaching and tutoring positions of our own, becoming de facto contract workers for the university– the same exact positions that are most threatened by these decisions. Do we participate in strike action as well, even if it means foregoing essential supplementary income? If not, how can we show solidarity?
Earlier this year, I was informed about the Edinburgh Staff Student Solidarity Network (ESSN), which seeks to facilitate these kinds of conversations. If your university is facing a similar situation, I would encourage you to ask around and seek out networks like this, which provide knowledge and resources for students who feel inclined to show their support but may not know how to do this. Through this network, I have written letters to senior management, to my MPs, and found other ways to raise awareness over what is, in my opinion, an unusually unfair situation.
If you are interested in learning more about the University of Edinburgh’s ‘funding crisis’, I recommend reading this series from Edinburgh UCU in full. In my opinion, it does a better job at explaining the context than any all staff meeting or communication I’ve been privy to.
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