‘UCU and Unison staff will resist all cuts to courses, jobs and provision at London Met by whatever means, including industrial action.’
University and College Union London Metropolitan University branch secretary Cliff Snaith added yesterday that ‘management must reverse direction.’
He was responding to London Met plans to cut hundreds of courses, in a bid to attain financial sustainability in a ‘much more competitive environment’ when fees are increased in England next year up to £9,000 a year.
The university is to ‘consolidate its portfolio’ by reducing 557 courses to about 160, it said in a statement.
London Met also confirmed that it will charge tuition fees ranging from £4,500 to £9,000 from 2012, an average fee of about £6,850.
Its statement said it was announcing a ‘radical overhaul of undergraduate education’.
London Met claimed that as the university reduced the range of subjects it would increase average timetabled teaching time by six weeks each year.
With some courses set to close in autumn 2011, and others in subsequent years, no list has so far been published of the courses to be cut.
Vice-Chancellor Malcolm Gillies said that there would be redundancies and the total number of staff would be reduced, although there may also be new appointments made to teach new courses.
Gillies said the university was seeking to ensure it could meet future demand in ‘very difficult economic times’.
He said universities were ‘being forced to think of themselves in a business-like way’.
Gillies added: ‘You ultimately have to offer courses that will break even or do better. I think there are many courses here that would not break even.’
He said: ‘The year 2012 is a very insecure one for all universities and we have many private providers entering the market right here in London, particularly in professional subject areas.’
Condemning the cuts, London Met UCU branch secretary Snaith said that the university had chosen a ‘bargain basement’ approach to its fees and courses.
He said: ‘This is a shrinkage of university provision that’s unprecedented and unjustified.’
Snaith warned: ‘The specific intention is to deprive essentially working class, ethnic minority students of the opportunity to study any non-vocational course.
‘We think this is an elitist agenda to cut working class higher education.’
He added that London Met students were seen as high risk for repaying loans, alleging: ‘The government does not want to bankroll our type of students.’
