A university chief said it would be “compassionate” with staff and students while “heading down” to cover a multi-million pound deficit.
The University of East Anglia (UEA) faces a deficit of £30m for 2023-2024 and potentially £45m in three years.
The new vice-chancellor, Prof David Maguire, said increasing the number of students and cutting staff costs would solve the problems “quite quickly”.
A member of campaign group Save UEA said the prospects were “scary”.
Amid rising tensions on campus, a security officer recently attended a staff meeting, the Eastern Daily Press reported, and the student union council approved a vote of no confidence in the UEA leadership team.
On Monday – the first day in this role – Prof Maguire said: “Not surprisingly, staff and students are concerned; these are difficult times for the university.”
The security presence was “a bit excessive” and “not a big deal,” he added.
“While there are changes that need to be made, these are things we will be working with the community on to try to mitigate their impact,” he said.
“We will be compassionate, work with employees and make the changes as quick, easy and smooth as possible.”
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Student applications to UEA this year were down 16% compared to 2022, with 2,792 fewer students seeking a place at the Norwich-based institution.
In 2021–22, UEA made a loss of £74m. The then Vice-Chancellor, Prof David Richardson, resigned in February and was replaced by an interim official.
“There are two big things we need to look at – one is increasing the number of students and our income from students,” said Prof. Maguire.
“The other option is to keep costs well under control and the main costs are staff, staff payroll and pensions.”
“We have to take a closer look and reduce the number of employees.”
He said staff cuts would be made through voluntary redundancies whenever possible and the UEA had held back on a pay rise.
In April, the university said staff who had agreed to leave their posts had saved more than £6million so far.
“All of these measures taken together will close the deficit quite quickly and allow the university to move forward on a much more solid footing,” said Prof Maguire.
He said the executive hopes to “be able to reduce a large part of the deficit over the next 12 months”.
“It will probably be another year before we can break even again and we will look to build the balance sheet again in the years to come.”
Student John Hodson, a member of Save UEA, said he was “panic” about the future of his advisor, whose expertise he needed to complete his PhD.
“It’s incredibly scary – I don’t know if all the services available to me and other students will still be available when we come back in September.”
When asked about the leadership team, he said: “With David Maguire, we’re going to wait and see because as far as the other members of the team go, we have no confidence in them at all.”
“We feel like they made this mess and we don’t think they can fix it.”
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