Staff at the University of Dundee have begun five weeks of strike action as universities across Scotland face growing pressure over funding, job losses and course cuts.
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) walked out today (Monday 21 September) at the start of the new academic term in the latest escalation of a dispute over further job cuts and the potential use of compulsory redundancies.
Staff are due to strike for 25 days, covering every weekday until Friday 23 October. Union members will also take action short of a strike, including refusing to cover for absent colleagues and withdrawing from voluntary duties.
The action comes almost two years after the scale of Dundee’s financial problems first emerged.
The university revealed an unexpected deficit of around £30 million in November 2024, triggering one of the most serious financial crises to hit a Scottish university in recent history.
Hundreds of posts have since disappeared as the institution attempts to stabilise its finances.
The university said earlier this year that its staff headcount had fallen by 675 between August 2024 and May 2026. UCU puts the number of jobs lost since the crisis began at more than 800 when other departures are taken into account.
Further restructuring announced this summer originally proposed around 190 additional staffing reductions.
Following consultation, the university reduced that figure to 154 full-time equivalent posts, split broadly between academic and professional services staff. It has also created 38 new roles which could provide redeployment opportunities.
The university says its priority is to minimise compulsory redundancies through voluntary redundancy and redeployment, although its governing court has been asked to allow compulsory redundancies where necessary. UCU wants the threat of compulsory redundancies removed altogether.
Dundee UCU co-president Ian Ellis said ahead of the action that no-one wanted to strike and acknowledged the disruption it would cause students.
He said further reductions in staffing would have a greater long-term impact on the university and the education it provides.
The University of Dundee has previously said it expects most teaching and student contact to continue as normal.
It said: “This remains a profoundly difficult time for members of our community. While we recognise the right to strike, this action will do nothing to help build a sustainable future for the University.”
The university says significant recurring savings are still required to secure its long-term future and that Scottish Government support helped prevent the institution becoming insolvent.
Up to £40 million of exceptional Scottish Government support has been made available to Dundee through the Scottish Funding Council, on top of an earlier £22 million package of liquidity support. The additional funding comes with conditions aimed at improving financial sustainability, governance and leadership.
The crisis at Dundee has exposed more fundamental questions about the way Scotland’s universities are funded.
A major review published by the Scottish Government and Universities Scotland in August found an underlying funding gap of around £200 million across Scotland’s universities in 2023/24.
It calculated that public funding covered only around 82% of the cost of teaching Scottish students, leaving a gap of approximately £288 million.
Research income covered an estimated 72% of the full cost of university research, leaving another gap of around £580 million, while universities were carrying an estates maintenance backlog of more than £1.1 billion.
The report warned that this was not the result of one unusually difficult year. Scottish universities have collectively operated below full economic cost for almost the entire period since 2016/17.
For years, universities have been able to partially fill those gaps using income generated elsewhere, particularly fees from international students.
That model is becoming increasingly difficult as universities face rising costs and greater uncertainty over international recruitment.
The Scottish Government increased university resource funding for 2026/27, while the Scottish Funding Council increased teaching funding by 3.3% and research and innovation funding by 8.1%.
Universities Scotland has nevertheless warned that the settlement does not resolve the longer-term structural problems facing institutions.
The consequences are now being felt well beyond Dundee. Staff at Aberdeen, Dundee, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde universities all took strike action earlier this year amid separate disputes over savings and job reductions.
At the University of Edinburgh, UCU members are preparing to begin another 25 days of strike action from Monday 28 September.
The dispute there centres on plans to reduce expenditure by £140 million and concerns over job losses and compulsory redundancies.
Edinburgh is also withdrawing around 90 degree programmes from future recruitment as it reshapes its academic offering, although existing students on affected programmes will be allowed to complete their studies.
The University of Glasgow has also warned staff that the financial environment is becoming increasingly challenging and that further savings are likely to have implications for the size of its workforce.
The growing number of disputes means the new university year begins with Scotland’s higher education sector facing questions that stretch far beyond individual campuses.
The immediate battle in Dundee is over 154 posts and whether compulsory redundancies will be required.
The wider challenge is how Scotland maintains free undergraduate tuition for Scottish students, internationally competitive research and a network of universities employing thousands of people when the cost of delivering those activities is increasingly higher than the income universities receive.