On Wednesday 30th September, your President Exeter, Toby, sat down to answer your questions on the SU's Instagram. Topics ranged from the recent voluntary redundancies and restructure at the University of Exeter, the ongoing financial situation for higher education in the UK, and how he has been representing students' interests through it all. If you missed the event, watch the video and read the transcript here: 

Q&A with your President Exeter

Transcript

1. What has the SU been doing this summer in response to the redundancies?

• A few different things. I put together a report on the impacts of redundancies on our Cornwall Campus community and submitted alongside it a set of 8 measures to protect your student experience as much as possible. From this report, I’ve secured and delivered £4,000 for societies to run activities throughout our Welcome period to help build student belonging after a really difficult and uncertain summer. I’ve also secured £1,000 for academic societies to be rolled out soon to help build academic community and am in the process of setting them up with new links to Exeter Alumni and Careers to run additional employability and extra-curricular opportunities. Plans are still being worked out for new ways to more thoroughly embed student feedback in the university’s response and to anchor the university’s presence here in Cornwall more strongly. I’ve been pushing for more frequent and transparent student comms and have been holding the university accountable for changes to modules and class sizes.

1. What is the SU doing to advocate for staff with redundancies?

• The basis for the report I submitted to the university over the summer was in part to outline how damaging compulsory academic redundancies could be for our Campus and the wider region. However, The SU and I are here to represent students and are led by what students want us to do. If you would like us to be advocating more strongly, or have ideas about what else we could be doing, get in touch with us or submit a Make A Change on our website.

1. Why haven’t you spoken to UCU?

• I have. Within 3 hours of starting my role, I contacted campus UCU reps and met with one of them within 24 hours. A second meeting took place ahead of graduations and plans are being worked out now for a third meeting

1. Did you sign off on this?

• No. Categorically no, I never signed off or gave any approval to this consultation and plan going ahead. I actually found out about this proposal on the same day staff did.

1. When did you find out about this?

• So I found out about this on day 2 of my handover, before I’d actually started in post. It’s been a full on summer.

1. Why didn’t you put out a statement? Will you support strike action?

• I thought about putting out a statement and did several drafts of what it could look like. However, where I landed and what I’d put back to you all is what would this have practically delivered? I couldn’t see how a statement would fundamentally change anything so instead I produced a report on the potential impacts of compulsory redundancies, why they shouldn’t go ahead and alongside that a practical plan of 8 measures that would protect your student experience that I’ve been working through with senior university leaders. 
• On the supporting strike action, I have a responsibility to all Exeter students. Therefore, I’m not yet willing to come out in support of any industrial action before it’s been officially announced or without knowing what impacts it would have on your student experience, especially for our most vulnerable students.

1. Is the Cornwall campus safe?

• Yes, I’ve been getting confirmation of this throughout the summer. We’re also going to be going further on pushing for stronger ties between the university and stakeholders across Cornwall. One of the things in the plan I put to the university was creating a public commitment to the long-term value and viability of the Cornwall Campus and plans are being worked out as to what this could look like for early 2027. 

1. Where are the university’s reserves going?

• The University’s reserves aren’t readily or easily spendable and they’re not a long-term solution to the financial problems that universities are facing because once they’re gone, they’re gone. I also know from my experience as a trustee of different boards that a degree of reserves are needed to show the organisation is financially secure and in case of needing to wind the organisation down. 

1. Why is there a campus in Egypt being built?

• I’ve questioned this before myself and have sought some answers. The university isn’t investing capital into campuses overseas. Because of the problems the current way universities are financed is causing, universities have to look for where they can pick up additional income. I’d rather more focus was on developing our Cornwall Campuses and will keep calling for that, but I accept the reality of the world universities operate in.

1. Why has higher education turned into a commodity/corporate enterprise?

• I actually wrote about this in an essay last year before I graduated. I do share some concerns around the commercialisation of higher education, however the issue is fundamentally the structure of university financing that isn’t working. Universities across the country are in financial difficulty and have to look at other ways of getting investment, which does mean signing up to businesses and government forums. I want higher education to be fully funded and financially sustainable so we don’t have to go through things like painful restructures. If we want this to happen though, we need central government to fully reform how it funds universities.

1. Why is there an erosion of academic freedom for students and staff?

• I’m not 100% sure what’s meant by this question, whether that means module choice, freedom of speech or the openness of the restructuring process. If you submitted this question, come have a chat with me and we can talk it through.

1. Why were students not explicitly told in their emails regarding module changes and about the redundancy of their professors?

• At the start of the consultation, there wasn’t enough transparency with students about what was happening, and I did hold the university to account for that and worked with them to make their communications clearer. The other thing is that in a lot of cases, decisions around modules and voluntary redundancies weren’t known until very recently. If you think their communication with you could be better though, tell me how and I can feed that back directly to university leaders. 

1. Why did students have zero say in this?

• Think it’s a fair frustration for students to feel like they’ve been left out of the conversation over the summer. The reasoning was that as this was a formal consultation, it had to follow set formal HR processes. From our end, I made sure to meet with every student who contacted me over the summer about the consultation and fed back concerns to university leaders. We can always do more though and I am actively working with the people in the university around what forums could be set up for students to express their sentiments so keep an eye out for updates from me. 

1. What’s been like working with the university during this difficult time?

• So from my personal perspective, since starting I’ve had a really productive relationship with university leaders - I’ve found them to be engaged and really listening to the feedback that I'm giving them. There is still always more to be done in that space, but where I have raised challenges around communications and student experience, and put forward a plan and measures they could take to protect all-student experience, they have been really receptive to that, and we are working very productively and closely together on what we can do to support all of you.

1. Why did this occur during the summer when students were not actively present?

• I guess there would never have been a good time for a consultation like this to happen and certainly for staff I know that for a lot of them, the summer has been really brutal. My understanding is that had the consultation taken place during term time, it would have had a massive impact on teaching, learning, assessments while that’s all meant to be happening, but I understand that as a result it might not feel like you were given the opportunity to feel heard.

1. What can I do about these redundancies?

• Get in touch with me. Come talk to me about the challenges you’re facing and the ideas you have. I not gonna claim I can overturn what’s happened, but there are things we can do to protect your student experience even further.

1. What has happened to my professors?

• I understand the concern and worry that you will have for academics that have left the university, and will in some case be angry that that’s happened. Trust me, I share that. However, it wouldn’t be appropriate to discuss specific people because and of the need to respect confidentiality around individual choices, circumstances and processes, and also because I don’t know all the details on specific cases, so it wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate.

1. The university is clearly breaching the Student Protection Plan. Over half of the lecturers in my department have taken voluntary redundancy, leaving my course with a very small range of lecturers. This means there are whole areas of the course that no longer have any specialist researchers so module choices and dissertation topics etc. are extremely limited. Is there anything that is being/ can be done about this?

• In terms of what you can do, best thing is if you have concerns, frustrations, questions or challenges as a result of the redundancies, get in touch with me. I can’t promise to fix everything, but I’ll try. I’ve been working a lot on things like module choice but we can always do more to give you the student experience you were promised and expected.

1. What’s happened to languages?

• At one point over the summer, it looked as if languages might be going from Cornwall completely. There was significant challenge against this from myself and a whole range of university staff. Consequently, some language programmes have been protected and will still be in place for this year, particularly for students who are in the process of completing their WPI. It’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing, which was on the cards at one point.

        20. Round-up from Toby

• Firstly thank you to all of you who sent questions – it's really helpful and good insight from us to see your concerns frustrations feelingss and to get some feedback from you. A summary of what’s happened so far this summer:

• I’ve submitted a report to the university setting out exactly why redundancies and cuts will be damaging on campus, but alongside that, putting together a plan for what could be done to protect all-student experience and growth.
• As a result of this plan £4000 has been approved – signed, delivered for you. It has already gone out to students.
• £1000 has also been secured for academic societies specifically, to support building community and securing academic opportunities. That money is going to be rolled out soon.

                 That’s a lot of progress this summer. It’s very rare for support like this to be put in place before the start of term when an officer starts this year. If there is more                    you want to see though, please do get in touch. We can try and fix problems. We can try and get more support put in place. So if you've got ideas on how to                       support students during this time, just get in touch.