Conversations about a restructure began with SMT revealing a severe financial deficit against this year’s forecasted budget.
The College has attributed this to a shortfall in student numbers as well as issues affecting the wider Higher Education sector, which Goldsmiths is not immune to. While this is true, it would not be prudent for the College to front this as the main reason for the deficit and its associated ramifications as they have in their student communications sent last term.
The depth of the deficit arose initially from the covenant terms of the loans that the College had taken from banks Lloyds and NatWest due to the pandemic (see hyperlinked article).
Student fees had always been the College’s main source of income. The fall in student numbers meant that the College might struggle to meet its loan repayment terms to the banks.
This means that the College could face financial and regulatory issues. Over the last few months, the College had already taken measures to reduce this immediate risk, such as hiring freezes and getting rid of Associate Lecturers.
Despite the reduction in the deficit since these discussions commenced, the Senior Management Team (SMT) has kept a financial target of £20 million for this restructuring effort in order to "grow" the College.
This is despite the ‘mitigating actions’ - now outlined within the restructure plan - being initially proposed in response to the threat posed by the deficit. As a result, the College has developed a wider restructure called "The Transformation Programme" (TP).
This comes just two years after the last restructure termed the “Recovery Programme” which saw the Student Centre dissolved and Departmental Professional Services staff dismissed to form three School Hubs, among other changes which have since proven to severely impact student experience.
The historical connections and effects between these restructures remain evident today, and the TP will make things worse for students, student experience, and students and staff rights. As can be seen from this article, similarities can be drawn between the narrative framing of the previous restructure with the current one.
The narrative of this restructure uses the same growth and response to reduced student numbers language as was used for the previous one.
The Goldsmiths community has called out the dangers of SMT’s financial-first practices before, and we do so again.
It is also unethical for the College to place blame on staff and students, directly or indirectly, instead of taking personal responsibility for the financial problems it is facing.