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#universityfunding — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #universityfunding, aggregated by home.social.

  1. @dyckron

    It's no coincidence that, by and large most sources of protest and dissidence around the world have been university humanities faculties AND that governments have attacked and made substantial funding cuts to said faculties. This is part of a wholesale attempt to suppress protest and govt accountability.

    Just a few years ago here in Australia, our right-wing federal government doubled the cost of arts degrees (for local students).

    This assumption that the humanities only teaches critical thinking is reductive and seems strategically designed to hollow out institutions essential to a free and functioning democracy.

    #USPol #AusPol #UniversityFunding

  2. Petition: Restauration et protection de la mission universitaire au Québec - assnat.qc.ca/fr/exprimez-votre

    Rallumons le phare (Bluesky) : Sans un financement public adéquat, nos universités cessent d’être un levier collectif pour devenir celui des plus fortuné·es. sauvonsnosuniversites.ca/finan

    Universities need public funding to serve the collective good! sauvonsnosuniversites.ca/en/un

    #Rallumerlephare #Financementdesuniversités #RelightTheBeacon #UniversityFunding

  3. 📉 The University of Arizona has lost $60 million in federal research funding.
    64 grants were suspended or terminated — affecting students, staff, and vital research across disciplines.
    This is one of the biggest education funding losses in recent years.
    🎓 What caused it and what happens next?
    🔗 allnewtrending.com/uofa-federa

  4. The Freunde der TUM, our #Alumni and Friends Association, has already supported numerous exciting projects. Do you have an #innovative idea for #research as well? Apply now for funding by May 2: go.tum.de/909871

    #community #UniversityFunding

  5. The Cuts in UK Higher Education

    Today friend of mine send me a message pointing out that in order to save money the University of Sussex is planning to make about 300 staff redundant; you can see an article about it in the Times Higher here. For the time being it seems the plan to make these savings via a voluntary severance scheme. I don’t know whether academic and administrative staff will be treated equally, either.

    This is grim news. I worked at Sussex from 2013 until 2016 when I resigned my post as Head of School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. I took that decision largely for personal reasons but there were professional reasons too. From 2013 the University had embarked on an ambitious growth plan based on buoyant student numbers and the fee income generated thereby. Staff numbers grew too, to cope with the increased demand for teaching. Unfortunately the management was unable to match this with real improvements in infrastructure, largely due to the disastrous outsourcing of campus estates and services. Many promises made to me as Head of School by Senior Management were broken. I wasn’t the only Head of School to compain of this, either. Although things were still going relatively well when I left in 2016, and I was optimistic for the future of the School then, there were severe risks to its financial stability if student recruitment dived. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened. Falling student numbers – especially from overseas – left the institution very vulnerable, especially since the fee per student did not change. That problem was exacerbated by a burst of inflation. AlthoughIt has clearly been a very difficult time for the University of Sussex, largely due to national and international forces beyond its control, but exacerbated by ineffective, and at times incompetent, institutional management.

    It worries me that Maynooth University is also trying to grow very quickly, without adequate investment in infrastructure especially teaching. It isn’t increasing the number of academic staff much either, preferring to hire more and more managers; yet another such position was advertised this week. I don’t know whether Maynooth’s financial trajectory will follow that of Sussex. The funding environment is very different in Ireland compared to the UK, so it may not. It is clear that the enviroment for education and research here is being steadily degraded by the current leadership.

    Anyway, when I saw the announcement about Sussex, I checked other Universities I’ve worked in over the years. There’s a list here. It seems that while there are particular factors at play at Sussex, there are similar difficulties across the Board. Cardiff University has a deficit of £35 million and the VC has refused to rule out compulsory redundancies there. I’m not sure how this is all affecting the School of Physics & Astronomy. Nottingham University, where I worked from 1999 to 2007, has deficit of £30 million, in response to which it has opened a voluntary severance scheme, introduced hiring freezes, cut non-pay budgets, and refused to renew 500 fixed-term contracts.

    There certainly are cold winds blowing across the University landscape in the United Kingdom, and there is no sign of any respite. This is just the start.

    #CardiffUniversity #HigherEducation #Sussex #universityFunding #UniversityOfSussex

  6. Read the interview with our President Thomas F. Hofmann, who talks about the new round of the #ExcellenceInitiative, which clusters have entered the competition, and what lies ahead: go.tum.de/266614

    #universityfunding #highereducation

    📷A. Eckert

  7. “Universities are independent organisations”.

    Except when they’re not, apparently.

    #universities #UniversityFunding

  8. "Labour to begin consulting on new ways to fund university education"

    I suggest general taxation. It works well in countries like Denmark, where state-funded education is a lifelong thing, with opportunities also for vocational retraining that reflect real-world economic changes. This is how you should run a dynamic market economy.

    #UniversityFunding #education #ContinuingEducation

    theguardian.com/politics/2023/