DESPAIR has descended on Liverpool Hope University, where a projected cull of 39 members of the academic staff — about one tenth of the total — has included four of the six who taught theology and religious studies (TRS).
All TRS staff received a letter in May saying that their jobs were at risk, one of their number told the Church Times. Three have since taken voluntary redundancy, and one has been redeployed to teach the Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies (CCRS).
Dr Roberto Catello, a former lecturer at Hope, who is also the secretary of the Liverpool Hope branch of the UCU (University and College Union), said that most of the six were too devastated to speak to the media, even anonymously.
One had previously emailed him: “Being treated this way has left me feeling humiliated before my peers. I feel devalued in my role and reputation.” Another had written: “The whole experience has been incredibly difficult, lacking in clarity, coherence and compassion. To have worked so hard over the years to develop theology. . . It feels like it is all for nothing.”
The university’s axe has hit humanities and social sciences disproportionately, Dr Catello says. “With AI and all of that, there’s a trend towards more science- and maths-based subjects. Employability is another big factor, and so a lot of the traditional disciplines, including theology, are increasingly viewed with suspicion.”
Liverpool Hope is one of the Cathedrals Group of 14 universities, whose website advertises their “common history . . . as Church founded institutions” and says that the university believes that a higher-education experience is “worth so much more than what people earn after graduating”.
Liverpool Hope’s website says that it is “the only ecumenical university foundation in Europe”, and that its “distinctive philosophy is to ‘educate in the round’ — mind, body and spirit — in the quest for Truth, Beauty and Goodness.”
This year, in the Complete University Guide (thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk), Liverpool Hope’s TRS team was ranked fifth in the country for student satisfaction. One of the team has noted that the university has expressed pride in that rating in social-media posts and internal emails: “How can Hope say they are proud of TRS’s achievements and then cut staff drastically in our area? Isn’t that a contradiction?”
“Theology has been at the heart of Hope for decades,” another member of the team said. “It is now clear that the mission and values of the University are quickly transgressed when money overrides all else.”
Dr Catello says that the university’s senior management have “lost sight of the fact that this is a Christian educational charity, not a business enterprise”. Its mission is encapsulated in its “public benefit requirement”, which states that its objects “include the furtherance of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, of Christian education, of ecumenical ideals, and of understanding between Christian Churches in the promotion of the Gospel”.
Members of the TRS team serve not only as academics but also as ministers, priests, and pastors embedded in the city’s religious life, Dr Catello says. They “literally embody the university’s ecumenical ethos”, and “are essentially the reason the university meets its public benefit requirement”.
THE staff cuts have been occasioned by a deficit of £2.2 million (on a turnover of just over £60 million) which the university is running this year. Dr Catello argues that this shortfall is supportable, given that the university has £17 million in the bank.
Student numbers have fallen by about ten per cent over the past few years. Although the university relies almost entirely on domestic students, Dr Catello explains, the fact that the Government is making it ever harder to recruit international students has prompted the city’s two larger universities to lower their entry requirements for domestic students, competing directly with Liverpool Hope for people from poorer backgrounds and more marginalised areas.
Dr Catello and his colleagues believe that there is little understanding of the unique part played by TRS. For example, the university earns about half a million pounds a year from students coming from Christian partner universities overseas. “The moment these institutions start to notice that Liverpool Hope is not as religious as it claims to be, they may no longer want to send students here,” he says.
“We cannot deny that there are not as many students who want to study theology or religious studies as in the past,” one of the team admitted. “This is something that universities all over the country are experiencing.
“However, it is only recently that we have been allowed to develop our own programmes. One of the disadvantages of theology being so central to Liverpool Hope was that, in the past, there were certain expectations from senior management that there are certain things we do — and they were not necessarily the sort of things we thought would draw a lot of students.”
Last year, the team introduced a postgraduate certificate in Catholic pastoral leadership. The team member continues: “As long as there are men in the northern dioceses [of the Roman Catholic Church in England] who want to become deacons, we are guaranteed students for this.”
Furthermore, the university’s new Bachelor’s degree in Religion, Theology and Spirituality is proving attractive, they say. “We noticed in a recent open day that there were more people interested in this than in philosophy and ethics, which typically attracts far more applicants than TRS. We know that fewer and fewer people want to belong to any of the major traditional religions, but people are clearly looking for something more than what they can experience in our materialistic society.
“We are willing to develop new programmes that will attract more students than traditional TRS. We are not saying that we could ever be a very profitable subject — but at the same time the university keeps saying that it’s not about money, it’s also about making sure that the university supports the local community. Well, for us, churches are part of the local community.”
Morale at Liverpool Hope is “at the lowest point it has ever been”, Dr Catello says. One professor wrote in a Facebook post last week: “First day back in work today after being on leave. A sad day: a lot of people I respect have taken voluntary redundancy. Gone, before they were pushed.”
A university spokesperson said that the proposals had not been made lightly. “Our institution is not immune to the challenges facing the higher-education sector across the UK and these proposals have been put forward to ensure financial and academic stability, while enabling us to continue to deliver excellent educational outcomes into the future.”
Asked for its response, the Cathedrals Group declined to be drawn. “We don’t comment on the decisions that individual member universities make in respect of course programmes which, you will appreciate, are currently being made in challenging circumstances in terms of funding and recruitment,” a spokesperson said.
Read more on the story in our Leader comment, Comment, and Education features
