The University of Aberdeen is to freeze recruitment, pause promotions and revisit voluntary redundancies as it faces an £11.2 million budget gap.

University staff were reportedly warned last Thursday that the institution would need to take ‘regrettable but necessary’ steps to plug the financial black hole, which is expected to swell due to increased National Insurance Contributions that kicked off this month.

These extra running costs are estimated to reach £4.7 million, pushing Aberdeen further into the red at a time when it is already trying to maintain a deficit of £6.5 million.

A statement from Aberdeen University said: “We’ve made good progress on stabilising and improving our financial position by managing our costs, setting tough savings targets, and pausing recruitment for many roles.

“We now need to make further savings as costs for 2025/26 are set to climb by at least £4.7m due to higher National Insurance contributions, last year’s pay award, the payment of increments and inflationary pressures across a wide range of areas.

“We are taking early action to bring costs down and this includes stopping almost all staff recruitment, revisiting Voluntary Severance and Enhanced Retirement for previously declined applications and pausing the academic promotion exercise.

“The steps are regrettable but necessary to help us offset some of our rising costs and continue to navigate unprecedented times for our sector.”

The news of potential job cuts comes just a few months after Aberdeen’s principal, Professor George Boyne, hailed the progress the university had made in cutting its deficit from £12.5 million to £8.5 million in 2023/24.

Writing in the foreword to Aberdeen University’s annual report, Boyne said that the institution had taken ‘swift and decisive action’ to secure its position, which included more than 200 staff leaving under early retirement or voluntary severance to plug the budget gap.

With that position now in doubt, Aberdeen joins the University of Dundee in the eye of the storm surrounding the financial futures of Scotland’s higher education institutions.

Last month, Dundee University announced it would have to axe more than 600 jobs to tackle a £35 million deficit in what was described as a ‘hammer blow’ to staff, resulting in the university being thrown £22 million lifeline from the Scottish Funding Council, and the Scottish Government stepping in to form a rescue taskforce.        

Meanwhile, staff at Robert Gordon University (RGU), also in Aberdeen, began their first day of strike action last week, with lecturers taking action after ongoing disputes with university management over cost-cutting measures, with union leaders arguing these would lead to substantial job losses and a detrimental impact on educational provision at RGU.

Figures for last year from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that RGU recorded the biggest drop in high-paying international students across Scottish universities, falling nearly 12%, while the number of overseas students in Scotland dropped by 10,000.

Despite falling numbers of the most lucrative students, the Scottish Government has been resolute in standing by free tuition fees for Scottish students, with the education minister, Jenny Gilruth, telling the BBC that “The SNP is never going to support a policy where we bring back tuition fees.” 

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According to the most recent reports from Universities Scotland, which represents eighteen Scottish institutions, the Scottish Government’s funding allocations for 2025/26 do not give the sector the financial support it needs to meet  funding shortfalls felt across the board.

“Taking the long-term view, next year’s cash increase doesn’t fundamentally change the fact that the gap between the cost of teaching and the investment in each Scottish student remains unacceptably high,” said Sir Paul Grice, interim convener of Universities Scotland.

“The reality is that the level of additional investment made by the Scottish Government does not give the sector the financial support we asked for at a time when it has never been more necessary.

“Universities are facing challenging headwinds on multiple fronts, but we need to be straight-forward about the extent to which the decade-long pattern of structural under-funding of Scottish undergraduates and research has eroded universities’ financial resilience.”