Academics must protect their jobs from cuts

Medical academics are being advised to have proper job plans and regular appraisal in order to protect their jobs from funding cuts.  

“We are anticipating a very tough time ahead for many medical schools and academics because of the current economic crisis,” warned the BMA’s medical academic staff committee co-chair Professor Michael Rees.

At the beginning of January Imperial College London made 21 medical academics redundant as part of a restructuring to tackle a £28m deficit. 

Another 14 academics are currently facing redundancy at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, which has a £5m hole in its budget.

“There is certainly an increase in the generalised threat to academic employment. I can’t quantify the level of that threat but there certainly is a threat,” said Rees.

A three-pronged funding squeeze is putting a strain on medical school budgets. All university budgets will be affected by a £400m funding cut in 2010-11, announced by business, innovation and skills secretary Lord Mandelson in December. Some medical schools will also lose money because of a redistribution of funds following the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and a review of the Multi Professional Education and Training (MPET) levy currently being conducted by the Department of Health.

The MPET review is looking to more fairly distribute funds for clinical training. The MPET levy is likely to be replaced with a tariff-based system where the funding follows the student or the trainee.

The BMA fears that this will not equate to posts following the students and could result in academic jobs being axed. Traditional medical schools, particularly those in London, which employ more staff than the newer medical schools, are likely to suffer most from any reallocation of funds.

“The threatened redundancies at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s are particularly unfortunate because it’s a high flying department, was shown to be a very productive department in the RAE and is an important site for academic training,” said Rees.

He added that the chances of academics finding work by either moving to other universities or NHS jobs were very slim in the current economic climate.

The BMA is publishing new job planning guidance for academics, which will advise them to ensure they have a job plan which clarifies the work they do. They should undergo regular appraisals and ensure they know exactly where the funding for their joint contracts between universities and the NHS is coming from. They are also being advised to avoid any dubious fixed term contracts and to carefully check terms and conditions before accepting any job.

A spokeswoman for Imperial College said they had now agreed a new structure for their Faculty of Medicine that would safeguard their internationally leading research and education activities, and address a significant projected deficit of 28.7m by 2013/14. The deficit was caused by rising salary costs, a cut in central funding and “the difficult economic climate that universities are now operating in”.

“Staff identified as holding posts that were at risk were fully consulted during the process, and every effort was made to avoid compulsory redundancies. In total, 21 academic members of staff and 27 support staff have regretfully been made redundant,” she said.

Read a blog on the future of medical research sector.

Tags: Academic posts, Research, Workforce