The University's early retirement scheme has been a "great success"
according to Old Shire Hall officials. The scheme, approved by Council last year, allowed many staff to take a competitive early retirement package, and many took up the generous terms of the offer.
In all, over 5000 staff throughout the organisation have left, at a total one-off cost of £300 million. The University points out, however, that after two years, the savings on pay will pay this off completely.
One of the retiring staff, who declined to be named, said
Well, it was a simple enough choice. I can either stay here on low pay, or I can be paid lots to leave and use the money to travel abroad and go to a University that will pay enough to live on. Or I could use the retirement pay to set up my own business. I've been working at the Business School since it was set up, and I was paying a bit of attention to the lectures I gave, so it can't be that difficult.
The low pay, it has been suggested, is more a fault of the government's funding policies. However, Millbank has made it known that such suggestions are unwelcome, and so these suggestions will not be printed here.
The University management is reported to be very pleased with the progress of the scheme, and says that the long-term savings made will be able to upgrade their departments and conference facilities immensely, to a standard befitting a world-class university.
However, not everyone is satisfied by the plan. Due to a slight administrative error (caused, if rumour is to believed, by the administrator who's job it was to ensure that this didn't happen having taken early retirement only two weeks previously), several lecture groups were without a lecturer for the first two weeks of term. The students were only informed of this when a second-year PhD student, reluctantly drafted in to replace the lecturer, explained the situation.
The department explained that there had been an "unfortunate breakdown of communications"
due to their entire secretarial staff taking early retirement. Old Shire Hall was unavailable for comment on how this had happened.
Further investigations have revealed that the University now only employs thirty people.
- The Vice-Chancellor
- The Registrar and Secretary
- The Treasurer
- Three pro-Vice-Chancellors
- Eight Accountants
- Four people on the phones to get donations for the Student Opportunities Fund
- Two receptionists
- One very stressed lecturer who now has to find a way to teach 4582 hours of lectures, seminars and tutorials a week, at both the Durham and Stockton campuses
- The Director of Estates and Buildings
- A man with a hammer, said to be the underling of the Director of E&B
- One College Principal
- Three ITS Helpdesk workers
- Two postgraduate demonstrators and research assistants
- One temporary press release writer.