All Vice-Chancellors like to leave their mark on the University during their term of office. Professor Bill Wakeham’s legacy will be his ‘vision’ of decentralisation, i.e. the splitting of the faculties into individual schools. This has been probably the biggest financial catastrophe in the University’s history but Professor Wakeham and his team will not be picking up the tab for this shocking financial mismanagement. It will be the ordinary workers who pay for this mistake, and some of them will pay with their jobs. Others will have to absorb the work left over from redundant posts, thus increasing their workloads and ultimately their stress levels. The lack of any decent voluntary redundancy or early retirement offers on the table means that it will be highly unlikely that the university will reach its cutback targets through ‘natural wastage’. I feel for the hundreds of staff who will spend the summer being dragged through another painful review with the knowledge that they might not have a job by the autumn.

The cost of the vice chancellors salary along with the cost of the revamp would pay the salaries of approx 20 admin staff who have to pay to park their own cars out of their salaries

If this was just about rising staff costs, every University in the sector would be undergoing review.

At a recent Wheeler-Higman 'Roadshow' it was divulged that re-branding the University cost £300k and not £160K previously reported.

I have already been told my fixed term contract will not be renewed due to a lack of funding. In my opinion this is of a direct result of the InEx review.

Who needs almost £18,000 per month? And a house - bet it's not in the Flower Roads. As always, it's the lower-level workers who will suffer, and ultimately students, some of whom, no doubt, will be running the country in the future.

A complementary house and car? Are you serious. With a salary like that can he not afford that himself? What a joke.

So in the midst of financial crisis, I wonder who's bright idea it was to do a re-branding project.....could this have not waited until the university was in a better financial state.

Slow hand clap

"Professor Wheeler said it was too early to say whether there would need to be job cuts."

The trouble with the information coming out of the management at the University is it's conflicting. Having attended the Higman & Wheeler road show (Simon Higman Registrar & Chief Operating Officer & Professor Adam Wheeler Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor) we heard that the whole University would be under review but by the very people that have lead the mismanagement of the University in the first place. When will these people be held responsible for their actions...we are told that we should look at & run the University as a business but they are never held to task regarding their actions.

At the 'roadshow' we were told that 12.5% would need to be cut off the salary costs alone to steady the ship how is this going to be achieved without job cuts yet Professor Wheeler has gone on record in the Echo as stating it's too early to say that this will happen. Should we then expect the VC, Simon Higman, Adam Wheeler & the others responsible for this financial mismanagement to take a huge reduction in salary (or resign their posts with immediate effect)...I for one won't be holding my breath.

Huge sums (£15 million) are bring spent on external consultants installing off-the-shelf centralised IT systems that are flakey, hard too use and that don't 'talk' to each other. Properly managed, this software could have been written in house, after all we have some of the brightest IT people in the world here. There is a lack of vision and imagination in this University at this time, born out by the bland re-branding.

There needs to be a lot more sackings of teachers, nurses and other service personnel who without our society would crumble. But the politicians have been racking up 50 grand in expenses and they are more important.

To clarify the above, it is the Management, Specialist and Administrative staff who are under review, specifically levels 1 to 3, the lowest paid. This smacks of the University’s ‘payment holiday’ towards PASNAS pensions from 1993-2003, which are only available to levels 1-3. USS pensions for levels 4 and above, and academics, were unaffected.

The main problem is transparency. I’ve been told in my school that the reviewers haven’t begun to make any decisions yet. However ‘recommendations’ are being given to committee at the beginning of July. Adam Wheeler and Simon Higman in their awful presentations made us feel small and unwanted, and likened us to people who photocopy. I’ve got a degree, and am extremely insulted.

They told us nothing that we didn’t know, and left us wondering if there were to be 1 or 1000 redundancies. It may have helped to be told that they would exhaust every avenue to prevent redundancies, and to protect the University’s valuable members of staff. Not a chance.

Instead Simon Higman said he wanted to get to the point where he could come to work at 10, sign a few documents and go home at 3. Disgusting when talking about us as if we’re for the chop. If he’s going part time, then how much salary cost will that save us? At least they could give him some interpersonal skills training.

They could have apologised, said their main aim was to treat us as valuable people in the running of the University, and keep us up to date on progress so that we would know where we stood. Instead they stood there as if across no mans land, ready to retaliate if we dared usurp (with our livelehoods at stake???)

The review should be for ALL staff, and not just focused the staff review at the poorest and most vulnerable. With salary bills rising 9%, the amount is insignificant on low pay bands when compared with the MAJORITY of staff (academics) being on much higher incomes – especially professorial rates. Imagine 9% increase on £60,000 across hundreds of professors at the University.

Truth be told though, if they made one academic staff member redundant there would be no recruiting any academics, and they’d all be on strike.

There are many costs that the University wastes money on however.
-The heating has just been turned off (May 8), and has been on since October. There are no thermostats, I’ve had the window open most of the winter to stop boiling. How much does this cost? Several hundred in my small flat… Several million here?
-Budgets need to be ‘spent’ to make sure the same budget is available next year ‘just in case’. Money is wasted on things that could be done without if there are money problems.
-It has been admitted that Agresso will not result in any staff savings, and has in fact meant two new full-time members of staff being recruited. Not to mention hundreds of hours of overtime from all levels of staff, and time wasted across the University trying to understand an incredibly complicated system that isn’t user friendly (and I am extremely IT literate). I also hear rumours of consultants being paid (weekly) enormous amounts of money to rectify problems, and yet we can’t send out a simple purchase order where the text wraps properly.
I understand the University needs to address it’s problems, but the ‘scary’ graph started looking scary one or two years ago. Please don’t tell me they ignored it then? What are we paying them for?

I have attended various meetings including the roadshow hosted by Prof Wheeler and his gang, and the trouble is that I don't think that I believe anything they say. These are really worrying times for us all and not having access to the truth makes it worse.

One thing I forgot to mention, it was raised that the estates could be utilised more effectively out of hours. Simon Higman actually said that if it raised a £1 million, it would only be £1 million and the salary bill was due to increase £18 million. It strikes me that this man’s view of one million pounds is a little warped, remind me what his salary is? Taking a level 2b, starting salary £16,500, overheads of maybe £20,000 year to maintain that member of staff, you could employ 27 members of staff with an extra million. Or should I say, not sack 27 level 2b members of staff. But go on Simon, kick us while we’re down and trying to earn enough money to pay the rent (the housing ladder? Can you get one in IKEA?). My degree aside, I think I’m paid too much to photocopy all day. If only I was paid a paltry million.

This whole fiasco has been caused the Vice-Chancellor's total incompetence when he had his "vision" to restructure the University back in 2002. It was totally obvious to anyone who knew anything about the University that the way he has restructured the University was going to be more costly. I also want to know how it's been allowed to get so bad. Why wasn't somethig done earlier? I understand no one noticed the University's research income hasn't been as high as predicted for the last couple of years but no one noticed! I also think it needs to be made clear the 2 million pound shortfall is "per year" as far as I understand. Is the Daily Echo also aware that the University didn't pay its contributions into the University's clerical staff pension scheme for 10 years, without telling anyone, and there is now a 9 million pound deficit, with clerical staff now having to pay higher contributions to make up the shortfall. What the hell have these incompetents been doing with what,let's not forget, is public money. Has anyone contacted the University's funding body (HEFCE) about this fiasco?

This is what you get when you put an academic with no managerial experience, aptitude or consonscience & plain COMMON SENSE in the shoes of a Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor!

No job cuts? How come then at a meeting yesterday I was told that the number of jobs would have to be reduced by 12%? How can uni employees have any faith in the management when there are comflicting statements such as these? The staff in the MSA job family are one of the hardest working groups of staff at the uni and do not deserve to be targeted in such a way. It is these staff who keep the schools running by supporting academics who would be lost without them!

Professor Wheeler said it was too early to say whether there would need to be job cuts

Translation = there will be job cuts, we just haven't decided whose yet, but you can bet it won't be mine!

Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor.

How many prefixes does this guy need?

I work for a small private University in Boston. The president does not make as much as this person in Southampton, does not have chauffeured cars and certainly does not get free housing and this is a very, very good school. The amount that students pay here does not cover the cost of tuition so therefore we use fund raising to build an endowment. I know that this is new to the UK but it is the way forward. With a deficient that this, it is a wonder that the university can keep its accreditation. As for spending nearly $6,000 on re-branding – that is a joke – all ours was done in house utilizing good publications staff and one outside consultant – not much money at all. The administration at this university need to be fired and any government money going into that school needs to be halted until auditors take a look at the waste that has obviously gone on, and oh let’s fire the senior accounting person, they also have responsibility but the buck stops with the Chancellor or President – it is only a title but most are morons!

I haven't been working for the uni for very long but I don't think I'll be sticking around much longer because of all this madness. I hope the uni realises all this will mean that all the good staff will shove off somewhere else where they can make a career for themselves where their experience and degrees are valued.

No jobs losses? they are already doing it - most jobs ads are internal only, and the gaps left by current incumbents are unlikely to be filled. They're just shuffling people round and expecting them to take up the slack

in my option wrote:
I work for a small private University in Boston. The president does not make as much as this person in Southampton, does not have chauffeured cars and certainly does not get free housing and this is a very, very good school. The amount that students pay here does not cover the cost of tuition so therefore we use fund raising to build an endowment. I know that this is new to the UK but it is the way forward. With a deficient that this, it is a wonder that the university can keep its accreditation. As for spending nearly $6,000 on re-branding – that is a joke – all ours was done in house utilizing good publications staff and one outside consultant – not much money at all. The administration at this university need to be fired and any government money going into that school needs to be halted until auditors take a look at the waste that has obviously gone on, and oh let’s fire the senior accounting person, they also have responsibility but the buck stops with the Chancellor or President – it is only a title but most are morons!

Southampton University has first class in-house Corporate & Marketing services and IT departments, both of which could have been utilised for the re-branding exercise. They are also bringing in private management consultants to oversee the MSA review and they will have to be paid too - out of the staff budget probably! If these people had screwed up like this in a private company, they would have been fired or asked to resign immediately. Like you say, the buck stops with them but they won't lose their jobs and their whacking great salaries!

The re-structuring exercise in 2003/04 was a complete fiasco. People were moved all around campus to new jobs, of which many had no previous experience, (at the start of term which is an horrendous time for School Admin staff). On top of this we were forced to use new UNTESTED and INCOMPLETE IT systems resulting in copious data problems and copious regular data cleansing exercises being required in addition to normal business. AT the same time there was a review of pay and the introduction of Job Families with single pay spines resulting in many re-gradings - again this was not handled well and there are still employees doing the same job as colleagues in other parts of the university on lower grades and hence lower salaries! Many MSA staff suffered severe stress as a result of all this; some left some persevered and stayed through loyalty and undoubtedly to retain the usual excellent service we provide to our students, (working very long hours in order to cope I might add). Why? because we care of course. What is our reward? - well you can see for yourself via these blogs! I cannot be the only one of the older employees that are now so sick of the treatment we have recieved and continue to recieve that we would gladly welcome a redundancy package thereby making way for others to be safe. The university will undoubtedly not even consider this route (that would be too obvious and intelligent a route for them to take), they would it seems prefer to scaremonger hoping that people will leave of their own accord and then not replace those posts. It is all very sad.

The Uni is always wasting money THe Managements Wages. Boldrewood it is being pulled down and they still waste on it.
It is time Southampton took back the city and stopped it being over run by these parasites

As someone has previously said, the information that we are getting keeps changing. The paper says £160,000 for rebranding. But in the road show on Friday it was said £300,000? Just a difference, you not agree? I have to admit, the University's worse thing is COMMUNICATION!!!!! A little respect goes a long way. Can we believe the information is true, we keeping hearing so many things, yes everything is going to be ok, no its not! What do we believe? You must understand from our positions that we are worried as we do not know really what is going on and to see that it is published something different to what was said a meeting arranged by Wheeler can we trust you? Why is it that the University is in this mess I do find asking myself many a time? First of all the pension, that was kept quite and we are paying for that, now this? This is what the University is paying the Finance for is it not, to keep track of the University Finances and if there is something wrong then to make this aware. If we were told long before now that our finances were not to great and we needed to advertise the University more, or we would end up where we are today, I am sure that staff would have been more then happy to promote the University and we could of all used different ideas to help, Instead we are in this position now, which I am sure Wheeler is not happy to be in and for it all to come to this. I do have to say though, I have experienced that other side of the coin with someone who has had to be redeployed and they seem to have been treated well, that the University has done there best to place there in a job which is available

The administrative staff are the backbone of Southampton University. If we crumble, the whole body will fall. We are not lead-swinging dead-enders, we are professional people who do an excellent job of work and who should be accorded respect. As Diana Ross said.... 'I'm still waiting......'

The costs of the brand have always been open: Precedent Communications were paid 160k for their brand and visual identity work. The University then spent additional money on implementation totaling 200k the majority of which was spent internally at the Print Centre. AS such the total spent was £360k.

brand info wrote:
The costs of the brand have always been open: Precedent Communications were paid 160k for their brand and visual identity work. The University then spent additional money on implementation totaling 200k the majority of which was spent internally at the Print Centre. AS such the total spent was £360k.

Wow, communication from the University. Give this man a medal.

Would you like to pass this information on the Wheeler-Higman Roadshow? They seem unsure on the figures they are telling us.

I've worked in admin at the University for a very long time and this, as far as I can recall, is the second big re-structure exercise undertaken whilst I've been here. Most "for profit" companies would go through these annually at least, and even civil service type offices are shuffled if elections bring in new "bosses".

The university is now suffering from years' worth of complacency and it's insistence on only sorting one problem at a time... only time will tell what happens here but, having been re-deployed once already and currently on a fixed term contract, I know that staff are treated fairly in these situations (or as fairly as possible)... so think there's still hope that the scarey headlines are an exaggeration!

brand info wrote:
The costs of the brand have always been open: Precedent Communications were paid 160k for their brand and visual identity work. The University then spent additional money on implementation totaling 200k the majority of which was spent internally at the Print Centre. AS such the total spent was £360k.

Utter Rubbish! Do you really believe the rebranding only cost £360k? Wherever you go you can spot the Dolphin logo, on busses, train stations, signs, uniforms, vehicles- so who is going to pay for all these to be changed to the new BLAND, sorry 'Brand'? No doubt some money will come from the salary bill saving from however many MSA staff are made redundant, owing to the gross financial mismanagement of the senior 'managers' (Managers?...I wouldnt follow them out of curiousity!)

I worked at the uni for several years and never had a complaint about my work. Then with the restructuring came a new boss (my old one was 'retired'). She steadily bullied me out of the department, telling me my work was crap, until I left too sick with stress to care. She was the new broom who wanted to sweep clean and the higher ups seem to applaud her for it! This crisis is now happening to the uni because of incompetent management of a similar nature to hers. I just feel sorry for those at the bottom of wages pile who will be the ones to suffer. As I did. You can bet management will get off scott free.

A lot's of you have made a very good point about incompetent managers. They are the ones that cover their incompetence with smoke screen. Very often they don't understand and don't care to understand the job done by their own staff, preferring overloading them with tasks which they were not employed to do, and at the end they still expect staff to fulfill all their core duties. Most of the Southampton managers have a mentality stuck in the 80s, they believe in the myth of multitasking and bullying to get staff to do what they think they should do. Staff morale is low. People who are trained and qualified are often put down by people who don't have a clue on what they are talking about. And why do these managers get away? Because they talk the talk, everything they do is done just to impress the guys at the top. Often they are an obstacle to get the work done properly. They think that by undermining their own staff, that they will look better. And why are they not being reviewed?

Angry Uni Worker wrote:

brand info wrote: The costs of the brand have always been open: Precedent Communications were paid 160k for their brand and visual identity work. The University then spent additional money on implementation totaling 200k the majority of which was spent internally at the Print Centre. AS such the total spent was £360k.

Utter Rubbish! Do you really believe the rebranding only cost £360k? Wherever you go you can spot the Dolphin logo, on busses, train stations, signs, uniforms, vehicles- so who is going to pay for all these to be changed to the new BLAND, sorry 'Brand'? No doubt some money will come from the salary bill saving from however many MSA staff are made redundant, owing to the gross financial mismanagement of the senior 'managers' (Managers?...I wouldnt follow them out of curiousity!)

The point you make is valid, in that it would clearly take a lot of money to replace all of the items you mention. But given, as you so rightly point out, that you can still see them everywhere, I would ask that you recognise that (as was stated at brand launch) these items will be altered according to the replacement cycle already in place.

brand info wrote:

Angry Uni Worker wrote:

brand info wrote: The costs of the brand have always been open: Precedent Communications were paid 160k for their brand and visual identity work. The University then spent additional money on implementation totaling 200k the majority of which was spent internally at the Print Centre. AS such the total spent was £360k.

Utter Rubbish! Do you really believe the rebranding only cost £360k? Wherever you go you can spot the Dolphin logo, on busses, train stations, signs, uniforms, vehicles- so who is going to pay for all these to be changed to the new BLAND, sorry \'Brand\'? No doubt some money will come from the salary bill saving from however many MSA staff are made redundant, owing to the gross financial mismanagement of the senior \'managers\' (Managers?...I wouldnt follow them out of curiousity!)

The point you make is valid, in that it would clearly take a lot of money to replace all of the items you mention. But given, as you so rightly point out, that you can still see them everywhere, I would ask that you recognise that (as was stated at brand launch) these items will be altered according to the replacement cycle already in place.

Sadly "Brand info" is deflecting the attention from the bigger picture. Who cares when the outdated dolphin is gone for good....what we need to focus on is bringing the management to task over their financial mismanagement of the University. Surely the VC, Higson, Wheeler and to some extent Malcolm Ace (Finance Director) should be held responsible. When will they do the decent thing and resign their lofty, well paid posts - they should be hanging their heads in shame - i bet they will not be spending the coming months stressing out over if their jobs are safe.

Further to a point made earlier I too was at Avenue campus for the "road show" where Simon Higman stated his "vision" of his role turning up at 10am leaving at 3pm - he laughed and joked after almost every remark he made. The man has no decency and should be ashamed of himself for making light of such a grave situation. The man can obviously not be trusted - neither can any of his cronies.

If I was trying to choose which university to go to I'd be striking Southampton off my list.

Nice to see Southampton uni rate a stupid sign redesign (which very few people like and was strongly opposed by the students) above the teaching...

The dolphin logo was well recognised throughout the country and also linked in well with the university's maritime and coastal connections.

In my view whoever thought up this redesign of the branding and the people in management who supported it should be sacked for wasting all that money! It's a complete shambles and should have been immediately rejected.

Not to mention the bad image it gives when prospective students see that the Soton uni students' views on the logo were ignored!

seriously??? you have to pay a good salary to a VC because if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys! if you had to spend pretty much 24/7 working, i expect you would want to be paid very well for it too, and if you had to use your house as a venue for business, i expect you would want a residence to do so. by not understanding that you have to pay to get the quality of person to run an institution like southampton, you're just demonstrating your ignorance of the situation. try taking a look at the big picture - no-one likes redundancies but if people aren't doing a job that is adding value it doesn't help the business so things have to change. try working in the private sector, you'd be in for a shock...

Morale at the uni is very low. Sections are moved around at the whim of the 'suits' and new rationale comes out every year to justify this - usually contradicting the idea they'd so believed in the year before! You end up feeling just like a puppet.

There'd be more respect if the suits just admitted that mistakes had been made, talked openly and engaged with us to find solutions, rather than all the propaganda and management speak all the time. When the suits occasionally pay lip service by asking for our opinions, they never listen and just ignore them. All of this is a real shame, as in many ways the uni is a good place to work.

Incidentally the suits have managed to upset the Student Union too by not allowing the SU President to sit on the committee that chooses the next VC...

I refuse to believe that more courses won't be cut. I am a part time student who has been told that her course is being discontinued at Southampton for a variety of reasons which all boil down to one thing: my course is not research based and therefore not money making enough to suit those higher ups. To add to my anger and disappointment about my course being discontinued I am also a member of staff who after being assured by her Manager that her job was safe is now being told that it isn't. I don't trust anything the University say anymore, I used to love this place and now I can't wait to leave. I think it is disgusting that the MSA job family are taking the hit whilst at the same time academics are being promoted left, right and centre. If the Wheeler/Higman clan get their way and they lose a load of MSA staff the University will start to falter and will not stand a cat in hells chance of being 'top ten by 2010'.

I appreciate that the dolphin logo was outdated and that yes, it probably did need updating however I think the timing of it was appalling. It is a slap in the face to those of us living with uncertainty about our jobs that the University spent all that money on rebranding to end up with a logo that could easily have been produced in-house. The University employs many talented and creative people, it's time they were put to use.

I, like many others in my department am job hunting externally - a case of jump before I am pushed!

But I mean, what would I know as according to the higman I am just a mindless photocopying drone! (Just like all other MSA's right?!)

A realist wrote:
seriously??? you have to pay a good salary to a VC because if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys! if you had to spend pretty much 24/7 working, i expect you would want to be paid very well for it too, and if you had to use your house as a venue for business, i expect you would want a residence to do so. by not understanding that you have to pay to get the quality of person to run an institution like southampton, you're just demonstrating your ignorance of the situation. try taking a look at the big picture - no-one likes redundancies but if people aren't doing a job that is adding value it doesn't help the business so things have to change. try working in the private sector, you'd be in for a shock...

So why has the current VC been given a 25% pay increase a year beofre he leaves having dumped us in this mess? If you want to attract a decent VC with a higher wage you attach the new rate to the vacancy, not give it out as a golden handshake to a proven incompetent.

A realist wrote:
seriously??? you have to pay a good salary to a VC because if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys! if you had to spend pretty much 24/7 working, i expect you would want to be paid very well for it too, and if you had to use your house as a venue for business, i expect you would want a residence to do so. by not understanding that you have to pay to get the quality of person to run an institution like southampton, you're just demonstrating your ignorance of the situation. try taking a look at the big picture - no-one likes redundancies but if people aren't doing a job that is adding value it doesn't help the business so things have to change. try working in the private sector, you'd be in for a shock...

You are correct - a fair wage for a fair days pay - works across the board inc the VC - however we are constantly told at the University from the VC down that we must look at & run the Uni as a business so "in the real world" / private sector these people running these reviews would & SHOULD be held accountable for getting the University into this mess in the first place.

However they are the ones who will be safe from redundancy.

For years the University suits have run roughshod over the staff - we have to make a stand against the financial mismanagement in order that jobs can be saved.

Bring thes "suits" (the VC, Higman, Wheeler & the cronies) to task.

I was an MSA worker for 24 years and retired very recently. I had had enough of the University's treatment of MSA workers as a cheap, easily disposable, easily replaceable commodity (sorry Human Resource). The Job Family exercise in 2003 was an attempt to keep pay down to what was the bare minimum required to do the job, rather than take any account of the experience and qualities that an individual employee could contribute to the job and their department. I was downgraded because of this exercise, had my wages frozen for 3 years, although I had previously been classed as making an exceptional contribution to my job. As for Agresso and ReBranding - what a waste of money. Does the University really need expensive plasma screens on every available wall telling you what you could find on any noticeboard? Most of my colleagues were envious that I was lucky to be old enough to retire and get away from the uncaring institution that University of Southampton has become. I just hope they don't try to interfere with the PASNAS pension scheme to solve their financial problems.

As a lecturer I have severe concerns about the possibility of redundancies amongst the administration staff. These members of staff provide an invaluable contribution to the smooth running of the service. Due to job freezes in our school we are at least 10 lecturers short and we have had to loose some temporary administrative staff. The work the temp. administrative staff used to do was passed on to the lecturers, who are already covering the vacancies amongst lecturing staff! The plans will impact on staff at all levels, and will make it very difficult for us to achieve the universities aim of being student centered.

i've worked at the university for about three years now. i had previously managed and ran shops and was tired of the heavy responsiblity for little pay, so decided to take a modest job as a receptionist. to my horror within 7 months i was running the exams during the peak-exam period and was feeling possibly more stressed than i was before. now i've ran away from that to join the temp bank and i maintain it's the only way to go. so i don't get sick pay and few holidays it's the price you pay in this wonderful brave new world for not being prescribed anti-depressants and working from home. go forth - to the temp bank!

maybe the logo has little to do with the job cuts but it sure as hell had bad timing and nobody seems to be denying the connection...

guaranteed that 160k didn't go to the little office junior that probably designed the bloody thing - once again, the already rich get richer.

does anyone else wish the british had more guts? we can't stand up to some management airheads but the french managed to overthow a monachy - the majority of which did not have degrees.

okay, ran over.

'rant' over, rather.

'rant' over, rather.

So what happened to the millions the university gained when they sold the former LSU site to Linden Homes? Have they already spent it?

Wheeler is currently out on the balcony in B37 having another set of press photos done. To me the picture looks identical to the one above.

Shouldn't this highly paid man be doing some work?

Oh and Mr A Realist, don't you have the face to say your name is Higman?

Poor...

I now work for the Uni, but was a student when the lecturers went on strike for better pay, which nearly meant my eaxms wouldn't be marked.

As a result of the strike I am getting a 9% pay rise this year, just for being here, I don't have to do anything else to get that.

Is it any wonder the uni is struggling, bloody trade unions, all short term never thinkning about the affects on the "workers" in the long term. To all those whinging about redundancies, all I can say is you reap what you sow!

former student wrote:
I now work for the Uni, but was a student when the lecturers went on strike for better pay, which nearly meant my eaxms wouldn\'t be marked. As a result of the strike I am getting a 9% pay rise this year, just for being here, I don\'t have to do anything else to get that. Is it any wonder the uni is struggling, bloody trade unions, all short term never thinkning about the affects on the \"workers\" in the long term. To all those whinging about redundancies, all I can say is you reap what you sow!

The pay award last year was 5% but staggered into two slices (to make it cheaper for the Universities). Next year it will be 2.5% or RPI whichever is higher unless an independent investigation of University finances finds that they can afford to pay more.

You might have a point if Southampton's financial woes had anything to do with the fact that they now have to pay a half-decent salary (after 20 years or relative decline). There was more than enough new income to cover the pay settlement, which represented only around 1/3rd of the new income from tuition fees. Look around you at all the new buildings, sports facilities and senior salaries if you want to know where they spent all the loot.

In fact, the financial problems are because the VC implemented a catastrophic restructuring exercise, which broke up academic teams, made it harder to teach and administer the University and so meant nobody had time to apply for research grants. If he had listened to the Trades' Unions - or indeed anybody - then that restructuring would have been far less disastrous.

The result of not listening, and continuing to not listening to the unions is that the University is now far less efficient and less productive than when Professor Wakeham arrived. It is certainly a much unhappier working environment - bullying ahd harrassment are reaching epidemic proportions.

Simon Higman (?) claims (above) that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Unfortunately, we pay fat-cat level salaries for ours.

That is utter rubbish. If you lecturers who have been getting your 10% pay rises every year had actually bothered to make any research income, then my job wouldn't be under threat.

So much for a fair wage, when its the useless academics who are to blaim not us in the MSA

the university is aliensating its staff as well as its students, who will support the staff if they choose to take action

This is the only industry where staff get above two inflation pay awards a year, and an increment every year, for doing no extra work. In the commercial sector work is performance related rather than Passage of Time. Staff are also gratefully accepting a Final Salary Pension. And likewise 27 to 37 days holiday a year. Academics are meant to do 20% admin, yet there are surplus admin staff and some departments even employ full time photocoping staff. So lets get real. If staff are happy to accept the above, then either Income into the Uni needs to increase, or costs reduce. HSBC who make £4bn a year do not simply sit back and employ non-performers. They are lean staffed with resources in the right places, with a poor pension scheme and PRP. Likewise the Employers in London sack the worst 10% of staff a year. You cannot win-win. The University needs to be in a financial stable position to go forward without unnecessary roles being carried.

Had it too good for too long wrote:
This is the only industry where staff get above two inflation pay awards a year, and an increment every year, for doing no extra work. In the commercial sector work is performance related rather than Passage of Time. Staff are also gratefully accepting a Final Salary Pension. And likewise 27 to 37 days holiday a year. Academics are meant to do 20% admin, yet there are surplus admin staff and some departments even employ full time photocoping staff. So lets get real. If staff are happy to accept the above, then either Income into the Uni needs to increase, or costs reduce. HSBC who make £4bn a year do not simply sit back and employ non-performers. They are lean staffed with resources in the right places, with a poor pension scheme and PRP. Likewise the Employers in London sack the worst 10% of staff a year. You cannot win-win. The University needs to be in a financial stable position to go forward without unnecessary roles being carried.

Had it too good for too long? Where's the shame in talking about staff like this? What good do you think will come from it? It's bad enough to be told our jobs are unnecessary. Even Sr'Alan gives his apprentices better sackings than this.

Worried-worker wrote:

A realist wrote: seriously??? you have to pay a good salary to a VC because if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys! if you had to spend pretty much 24/7 working, i expect you would want to be paid very well for it too, and if you had to use your house as a venue for business, i expect you would want a residence to do so. by not understanding that you have to pay to get the quality of person to run an institution like southampton, you\'re just demonstrating your ignorance of the situation. try taking a look at the big picture - no-one likes redundancies but if people aren\'t doing a job that is adding value it doesn\'t help the business so things have to change. try working in the private sector, you\'d be in for a shock...

You are correct - a fair wage for a fair days pay - works across the board inc the VC - however we are constantly told at the University from the VC down that we must look at & run the Uni as a business so \"in the real world\" / private sector these people running these reviews would & SHOULD be held accountable for getting the University into this mess in the first place. However they are the ones who will be safe from redundancy. For years the University suits have run roughshod over the staff - we have to make a stand against the financial mismanagement in order that jobs can be saved. Bring thes \"suits\" (the VC, Higman, Wheeler & the cronies) to task.

I agree with the comment regarding paying peanuts and getting monkeys but we are NOT paying peanuts but have still ended up with monkeys, the VC and Adam Wheeler being the biggest two!

Had it too good for too long wrote:
This is the only industry where staff get above two inflation pay awards a year, and an increment every year, for doing no extra work. In the commercial sector work is performance related rather than Passage of Time. Staff are also gratefully accepting a Final Salary Pension. And likewise 27 to 37 days holiday a year. Academics are meant to do 20% admin, yet there are surplus admin staff and some departments even employ full time photocoping staff. So lets get real. If staff are happy to accept the above, then either Income into the Uni needs to increase, or costs reduce. HSBC who make £4bn a year do not simply sit back and employ non-performers. They are lean staffed with resources in the right places, with a poor pension scheme and PRP. Likewise the Employers in London sack the worst 10% of staff a year. You cannot win-win. The University needs to be in a financial stable position to go forward without unnecessary roles being carried.

The above just show the 80's mentality that dominates the top management at the University. Some people think that putting a suit on is enough to be called a businessman. A few points:

1. The University of Southampton is NOT a business. The University of Southampton is an EDUCATIONAL institution. We should never forget that.
2. Yes, we can learn a bit from business. But do these people saying that we should run as a business know anything about business? Their idea of 'business' is still stuck in the 80s. But let's tackele what we could learn from business: In the business sector, people make use of their resources in full. They don't devalue their own resources and go around bringing consultants just to say exactly what their own staff had said before. That's how business can save money: by making a full use of the resources they have.
3. In a lots of situation for a business to thrive you have to put an injection of capital. So, instead of going through this futile exercise have they thought about employing a good, forward thinking organisational behaviourist to shed some light on how to make use of existing resources? What we need here is an environemnt that it is conducive to team building. Unfortunately the guys in suit have managed to destroy that, by creating unhealthy and destructive competition and sense of job insecurity.Who is going to review them.

Finally, a business is normally run by their founder. Wheeler and Higman did not create this University. Do they really care about the University or about their next career move upwards?

Can we please stop this petty squabbling and keep to the point. The University's finances have obviously been totally mis-managed. They may as well have dipped into the clerical staff pension scheme because that's the effect their 10 year non-contribution has had on the scheme and they have still managed to get us £2 million in the red each year for the last few years. Someone should be held accountable and taken to task over this. That's what would happen in the outside world surely? What auditing procedures does the University have because it's all very suspect to me?

I know the guy isn't very highly thought of and has the inter-personal and presentation skills of a slug, but Simon Higman has not worked at the Uni that long and is obviously the person who's "noticed" the University was in financial difficulty and probably pointed out something should be done about it. That doesn't say much about the other 2 dim wits, Wakeham and Wheeler, does it!

Gazing into my crystal ball, I see facilities mangement company on the horizon. This is the mantra of business, sack all your non core staff and replace them with cheap contract labour.
Only the academic teaching staff will be
University employees, all the rest will be
TUPE'd into the a new facilities management company, to be run by a slime ball fat cat that runs a recruitment agency. The slime ball will offer the Profs the cost cutting reductions for the first few years, then once the University is dependant on the FM company, the services will start to skyrocket in costs, of course the wages will never keep up with industry or other academic institutions.


I was made redundant in March by another group of greedy puss bags, venture capitalists, who told the equally greedy managers to axe 75% of the staff. That's industry for ya!

We really have hardly any employment rights in the UK, it really is a hire and fire work force.

Well if the lectures think they are safe.
I don't think so. Its RAE 2008! At then end of the year, any department that doesn't score 5* with cherries on top will get canned.

Most VC's in Uk universities want more liberal arts and humanties courses to attract students. They are cheaper to teach and don't require labs and technicians. Just right to maximise profits.
There's no place for the physical sciences like chemistry and physics, in this new world order. Just look at the numbers of department closures at other UK universities in the last five years. Exeter, Sussex, Brunel, Kings College. All chemtry departments all gone.

Theres no surprise that the student body has had its vote removed to elect a new VC, surely the first act of a greedy self serving elitest clique of senior managers in the University.

Only a united front of Support staff, academics and students will counter the forces of greed and stupidity that have taken over this learned institution.

The way to save money is to eradicate waste not cut jobs. I work in the Admin building and the following is just the tip of the waste mountain : heating on October to May; lights on all day in the stairwells which have glass roofs; sandwiches for lunchtime 'meetings' frequently uneaten; rooms refurnished every time occupants are moved because the modular furniture - usually 2 or 3 years old - doesn't fit the new layout; metal filing cabinets in the VC, DVCs and RCOO's offices replaced with pricey wooden ones; 2 official cars .... if I lived like that I'd have gone bankrupt years ago! If that kind of waste is repeated University-wide, it's no wonder there's a big black hole in the finances.

**** off University employee wrote: I know the guy isn't very highly thought of and has the inter-personal and presentation skills of a slug, but Simon Higman has not worked at the Uni that long and is obviously the person who's "noticed" the University was in financial difficulty and probably pointed out something should be done about it. That doesn't say much about the other 2 dim wits, Wakeham and Wheeler, does it!

I think that's rather hard on slugs!

But it's actually much more likely that Higman was brought in specifically to wield a big axe. Who better to do that than someone politically and personally insensitive, and who has minimum knowledge of what they are likely to be destroying (and since he won't be here for long, probably little concern).

The VC can hardly be a 'dim-wit' since he is currently 'sorting out' (according to the THE) the problems of the UK's physics provision, as well as overseeing a review of university pension schemes, so let's hope that his success in these initiatives is greater than his apparent success in running the University.

I wonder if Rupert Lowe could be persuaded to take over as the next Vice-Chancellor? It's going to need to be someone very thick-skinned, very determined, and a financial wizard (and probably someone who's never likely to find these comments on the Echo website!! otherwise they'd be likely to run a mile!, despite the perks!)

One of the most controversial areas of expenditure in the University recently has been the in the implementation of big IT projects in accounting, web site management etc. These alone have swallowed many millions of pounds and still don't function any better than the systems they replaced. The Income and Expenditure review has a Working Group to address ICT, chaired by - you guessed it - the current Director of Information Systems Services. I somehow doubt they'll find anything wrong with their own 'strategic' spending decisions, whilst those of us outside of ISS, but with considerable experience in the IT industry look on in horror as more and more money is burned in sacrifice to the god 'IT'.

Decentralisation has proved catastophic. For instance, why does every school need its own research office and marketing office filled with staff when the University has central research and marketing offices which could have expanded just slightly. I was employed to work in a school research office. Highly qualified with more than one degree, and anticipating involvement in research, I found myself with little to do, and subjected daily to the personal problems of colleagues (some loud, unprofessional, with daily foul language) who had no idea what hard work really was. Promotion it seemed was on length of service (3 yrs) not on previous experience or qualifications. People came and went from the office when they realized the person in charge was unqualified, had no understanding of research terminology or finance ability, but earned more and had the ear of the manager and head of school. There are some excellent support staff, many highly qualified, but it's time the VC, Higman and Adams stopped banding them together with one label, and recognised that grading should be linked to previous external experience and qualifications. If a University - a seat of learning - does not value employees with degrees, masters and doctorates in their support staff, but places them on the same level as some who can hardly string a sentence together, spell or write with good grammar, then the whole country might as well forget higher education. Thus I am saying decentralisation has created too many support staff positions and unfairness in pay and work loads. It drives the best people out of the University.

Secondly, why is no one pointing out the huge financial wastage by Estates and Facilities? Applications for new building are costly, yet the powers that be let Schools change plans time and again, resulting in escalating costs. Too many people at all levels have a say, i.e. too many cooks spoil the broth. Management building and Faraday building are just two typical examples of constant vacillation leading to catastrophic financial waste, to say nothing about the psychological impact on academics and admin staff (and students - the most important people who are our raison d'etre). Yes, VC Adams, Higman, carry on increasing student numbers, especially international research students, but take away their dedicated desk space, reduce their package and keep increasing their fees. With the administrative system and admin. staff in chaos, and upsetting students, what sort of reputation is this University aiming for? Academics may be first-rate but they need excellent back up systems to maintain their good reputation.

The powers that be might have practiced the rhetoric, they talk the right talk, but their actions are saying the opposite. Let's bring in a new VC with combined management and academic skills.

The University is currently a big mess, this cannot be in doubt. It is too simplistic to blame this individual or that individual, however. Having said that, the dark cloud of out-dated business thinking has been looming on the horizon for a long time. It has been a mantra of this University's senior management for some years that this is just a business like any other business. No, it is not, and it makes many academics go red in the face if you say it. It simply doesn't work like like that. By insisting it does and by forcing a model on the University that doesn't align with its core principles, like being made to ware badly-fitting shoes, the University now finds itself limping.

Not enough notice has been paid to the incredibly skilled workforce that we have attracted to this University over the years. This is a workforce that are prepared to take a lower salary than they would in industry for a more free-thinking and stimulating environment. Most work long hours to achieve amasing results. So, it is shameful to blame the moderate pay rise recently awarded for the financial difficulties we are now in. The deficit could have been avoided by not paying external consultants exorbitant sums to do what our own internal staff could have done themselves, if someone had had the inclination and imagination to find out what skills we had available. (I'm thinking here, especially, of the £25m allocated to centralised admin system software (ASRP) which so far has proved to be a pigs ear.) It is *easier* to pay a consultant than to manage a project internally. And if something goes wrong, you can blame the consultant.

I fear that any 'savings' though job losses (40 in IT alone, although it is hoped this will happen through 'natural wastage' - i.e. people leaving because they have become disheartenned) will be wiped out by the fact that the people who are left will no longer be prepared to work the sorts of hours they used to or put themselves out for a management who are, at best, out-of-touch and with slopy-shoulders and, at worst, untrustworthy and scheming.

The University was doing fine, by all accounts - it was a happy place and it wasn't broken, so why did the VC decide it needed 'fixing'?