Why should I care?
The University has stated that Goldsmiths faces a serious financial challenge and that significant savings are required to secure its future. Few people would dispute that there are genuine financial pressures facing universities. The question is who is being asked to solve it. This is about who bears the (majority of) consequences of decisions that have been made about the future of Goldsmiths.
In communications about Future Goldsmiths, there is often an emphasis on collective responsibility. Existing University positions communicate that:
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Goldsmiths faces a serious financial crisis and must make significant savings to remain financially sustainable.
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The Future Goldsmiths programme is necessary to address these challenges.
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Industrial action (uniquely) harms students and damages the University's reputation.
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The University has shared financial information with trade unions and believes unions have not sufficiently engaged with the scale of the financial challenge.
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The University remains willing to work with unions and has continued to discuss options such as voluntary severance, which has either already taken place (for academic staff) or is currently underway (for professional services staff).
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While management and unions disagree on how to respond to the crisis, the University communicates that everyone ultimately shares a common interest in protecting Goldsmiths' future.
This presents the situation as a disagreement about how to respond to difficult financial realities and argues that not carrying out the Future Goldsmiths plan is not an option. This use of collective responsibility here, however, risks creating a false equivalence of power and capacity as the proposals effectively hold everyone except management responsible for the deficit and financial pressures, as staff pay the heavy price with their livelihoods.
Students, lecturers, admin staff, cleaners, technicians, librarians, security staff and professional services staff did not collectively decide the University's financial strategy. We did not collectively oversee budgets, approve institutional plans, make investment decisions, commission restructures, or determine the direction of the institution. Yet we are the groups now being asked to bear the consequences.
If we are being told that this is an institutional problem, then there should be institutional accountability.
Goldsmiths has already been through the Recovery Programme and the Transformation Programme. Both were justified on the basis of financial necessity. Both involved significant organisational change. Both resulted in staffing reductions, service changes and major disruption. Both were presented as necessary interventions to put the institution on a more sustainable footing. Yet only a short time later, Goldsmiths finds itself facing another substantial deficit and another major restructuring programme. Hundreds of staff are currently facing uncertainty about their jobs, their futures and their livelihoods. Students are facing uncertainty about courses, departments, support services, accommodation support, wellbeing provision, academic skills support and the wider student experience. Yet there appears to be very little discussion about accountability among those who had the greatest oversight of the University's financial and operational position throughout this period.
The people with the most complete access to financial data, forecasts, risks and strategic decision-making are not the people being asked to justify their continued place within the institution. Instead, the burden is falling overwhelmingly on those lower down the institutional hierarchy.
The University's argument is often presented as a matter of financial reality versus denial. Student campaigners, staff and unions are accused of not engaging meaningfully with the scale of the financial challenge. However, it could be argued that the reverse holds more truth, as it can be evidenced from the direction of previous restructures. Management has not meaningfully engaged with or considered the value created by students or by staff, the legitimate concerns raised by students and staff, or the possibility that there are factors which cannot be measured on a balance sheet.
The discussion is dominated by figures, deficits, savings targets, staffing ratios and financial projections. These things matter, but data is not neutral. The figures being presented are primarily about protecting the institution's financial sustainability. What is much harder to measure is the value of a lecturer who changes a student's life, a disability adviser who supports a student who might otherwise drop out, student support staff who solve a crisis for students before it escalates, or someone who helps students through the most difficult period of their degree and personal life. The reality is that a great risk is being overlooked where vulnerable members of our community are pushed further into precarity. We know because our data will tell you differently. Even one at risk is one too many.
Students know, and as the SU, we know, from experience that universities are not just organisations and are indeed not businesses. They are communities. The institution’s infrastructure does not inherently hold worth without the people, students and staff past and present, who create and uphold it, its fabric and stories.
The impact of the Recovery and Transformation Programmes was not felt through spreadsheets (alone). It was felt through delays to enrolment, progression, appeals, graduation, funding, complaints, real world financial and personal wellbeing impact, and student support. It was felt through centralised systems that were difficult to navigate and increasingly stretched staff trying to support students while dealing with the consequences of repeated change before the previous change had time to settle. And as the SU, we have seen all the interconnected ways students become impacted by changes, but are left to navigate them through official processes which do nothing to allay the pressures caused by real world issues such as cost-of-living, personal life and urgent timelines and conditions. Students who have been through the last two restructures have already experienced what happens when savings are pursued without sufficient regard for the people delivering and receiving services.
The issue at hand is about who bears the consequences of a financial crisis and what kind of university Goldsmiths will become in the future. Indeed a common theme woven into University communications, is that "there is more which unites us than divides us". While this may sound reasonable, it is valid to question whether this framing accurately reflects the reality of the situation.
Students and staff did not decide the University's financial strategy, oversee budgets, approve organisational changes, or determine the direction of previous restructuring programmes. Those decisions were made by senior leadership and governing bodies. It is therefore reasonable to ask why previous savings have not produced long-term financial stability and who should be accountable for that outcome.
If staff are treated as replaceable costs and students are treated as temporary customers, then it is reasonable to ask whether the same principle should apply throughout the institution. When an institution repeatedly finds itself facing the same crisis, questions about leadership, accountability and decision-making are the conversation we should be having.
What if I just want my degree?
University communications focus on industrial action as a threat to students. However, the proposed cuts themselves have threatened the student experience first, and that’s what they haven’t shared the full picture of. The current restructure proposals include changes to Academic Schools, Student Support, Accommodation Services, CALL, the Library, IT Services, admin and other areas that students rely upon every day. Industrial action did not create the problem. Rather, industrial action has emerged in response to the problem. This distinction is important because it directly affects the things most students care about: the quality of teaching, access to support, the availability of modules and courses, the speed at which problems are resolved, the quality of grades and feedback, the availability of staff to supervise projects and dissertations, and ultimately the value of the education you are paying for.
Most students come to university to study, gain a qualification, develop their skills, and move on to the next stage of their lives. Or perhaps you’ve come to university to learn a different skill, specialise in something you care about, and learn from the people you’ve read articles and books by. The ability to do that depends on far more than lectures and assessments. It depends on the capacity, type and quality of the teaching, supervision, support, advice and experience that we have accepted a significant level of student debt for. And we all rely on the staff who administer, maintain and run the University for support when things get tough, because student life is not mutually exclusive from our personal lives outside the university - everything is intertwined.
The impact of restructures, as historically observed, is rarely felt through organisational charts, business cases or savings targets alone. It is felt when a student cannot access support quickly enough, when an issue takes weeks rather than days to resolve and you are left without access to your modules, when you are unable to submit assignments you’ve worked hard for, and unable to pay fees with bailiffs knocking on your door; when a staff member with years of experience leaves, when fewer module choices are available, when academic or wellbeing support becomes harder to access, or when there are simply fewer people available to help when something goes wrong.
Many students have already experienced the effects of previous restructures through delays to administrative processes, uncertainty about who to contact, difficulties accessing support, and disruption to aspects of their studies. Future Goldsmiths proposes further changes which will only worsen the conditions across many of the same areas.
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Ultimately, we are not observers of (Future) Goldsmiths. We are the people who will live with its direct and indirect consequences. We are also the people who make Goldsmiths what it is and what it could be. The decisions being made now will determine what support is available, which courses survive, who remains to teach them and to support students, how accessible services are, how quickly problems are resolved, and what kind of institution Goldsmiths becomes in the years ahead. The real question should be, whose interests are being protected when these kinds of decisions are being made?
How will students be impacted by strikes?
During a MAB, participating staff may withhold marking and assessment-related work. This can lead to delays in the release of marks and feedback, progression decisions, degree classifications and graduation outcomes. Some students may also experience delays in receiving references or official documentation where these depend on confirmed results. Where strike action takes place, participating staff withdraw labour entirely. This may result in cancelled lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops or meetings, reduced access to academic support, and delays in communication. Not all staff take part in industrial action.
It would be overly simplistic and not accurate to attribute disruption solely to industrial action. Future Goldsmiths itself involves significant organisational change across academic departments, student support services, professional services and other areas of the University, in a quick timeframe, with Professional Services staff currently in scope of redundancy due to ‘exit’ Goldsmiths (to use management’s terminology) by the end of August 2026. Even in the absence of industrial action, major restructures of this scale are likely to have immediate consequences for staff capacity, workloads, continuity of support, institutional knowledge and service delivery. Students are likely therefore to experience changes to services, delays in progression and completion, reduced capacity, or the loss of experienced staff at some level regardless of whether industrial action takes place.