Robbing Peter to pay Paul seems to be Dundee University’s preferred proposal to solve their £30 million deficit which threatens to cut swathes of jobs at the institution.
As a former rector, I’m watching in deep dismay as university management, who’ve dug a financial hole deeper than the Mariana Trench, seek a bail out by bank loan to fund redundancies.
Ordinary staff members are left looking on powerlessly as their bungling bosses – incapable of running a great institution competently – try to renegotiate the terms of a multi-million-pound drawdown facility.
Due to cash-flow issues, these bosses will now find themselves over a barrel in any negotiations with their eventual lender.
Those running the banks will be far sharper in financial negotiations than university bosses who desperately need to secure funds to lay-off staff and make the savings they need to deal with this self-inflicted deficit disaster.
One senior source told the Courier: “If they don’t secure the loan they need then a recovery just won’t be possible without the government stepping in.”
University of Dundee redundancies
I suggested here last week that hoping the government would step in might well be the main hope of a university management so inept that they wouldn’t be trusted to run a raffle, let alone organise a complex financial rescue plan for a cack-handed cash cock-up of their own making.
Meanwhile, those staff worried sick for their own futures are forced to watch from the sidelines as a plan – which will put the university into even deeper debt – is hatched to punt them out of the door by way of redundancies.
Short of some hugely wealthy alumni (that’s me counted out) riding to the rescue with a miraculous massive bequest – and this is the real world not a Disney movie – then big job cuts appear to be the only way the Scottish Government are likely to help with any plans to solve this crisis.
Higher education minister Graeme Dey has said: “The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) would want to satisfy itself that the plan is robust and that it gets the university to a sustainable position.
“Part of sustainability is ensuring that it is a vibrant, viable concern going forward, there may be short-term pain but it is still a thriving university.”
Relying on those who’ve created this financial Armageddon to produce a viable plan is like relying on an honest burglar to have a conversion on the road to Damascus and then return your stolen goods.
Where is explanation from bosses?
Staff have been left high and dry as their management go with the begging bowl, like Oliver asking for more.
It seems real pain lies ahead, but any hurt will be felt by lecturers, researchers, and administrative staff who are pawns in these ongoing high-finance machinations.
Those workers still await the courtesy of an explanation as to how senior management got them into this cash crisis which threatens lasting damage to the morale and reputation of the university.
With sources at the university describing the success of these discussions as “critical” to any financial recovery, it’s little wonder staff fear for their futures.
They now find themselves at the mercy of a myopic management which failed to see a financial black hole staring them in their smug self-satisfied faces.
Conversation