Baroness Amos denies support for cuts to Soas courses amid student protests

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/10/baroness-valerie-amos-soas-letter-cuts-sit-in

Version 0 of 1.

Just four weeks after taking up her role as director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Valerie Amos has been forced to write to staff and students denying she has backed proposals to slash a third of the institution’s courses.

The row, which has seen students staging a sit-in at one of the buildings at Soas in protest, and the students’ union passing a vote of no confidence in the executive board, was described as a “misunderstanding” by a spokesperson at the university on Saturday.

It began when a letter was sent out to staff, naming 184 courses that were to be scrapped after a curriculum review and stating that Baroness Amos “has decided” on the cuts. The note went on to describe the courses proposed to be cut as “neither of high academic quality nor cost effective”. Students and staff responded with fury.

One student told the Observer: “Soas is known for its unique courses which attract numbers of foreign students paying top whack, as well as providing fantastic teaching in subjects that you simply could not get at any other university in Britain or elsewhere. To take away those unique courses is to take away the heart of Soas.”

Related: Baroness Amos: I was taken aback when I found out I was the first black female head of a university

But the row was described as a “storm in a teacup” by a university spokesperson, who said the letter had been sent in error, and although cuts and savings did have to be made at Soas, no decisions had yet been taken.

In her email sent out to students and staff on Friday, Amos said: “Last week, many of you have told me that ‘management scored an own goal’. A document was sent to deans about the ongoing curriculum review, which stated that I had agreed to cuts to a huge number of courses.” Despite, she said, having told staff and students she had never seen the document sent out, “rumours persist”. She acknowledged that the school did have to make £3m to £5m of savings over the next three years.

She added government changes to the higher education environment were “deeply worrying” and that she would continue to lobby against them.

But Saul Jay of the Soas students’ union said the response of the college to their concerns was “both patronising and predictable”.

“We are certain that if students and staff had not acted so strongly and quickly, these cuts would have been made, resulting in job losses, the potential closure of entire departments and a drop in the quality of education available at Soas,” he said.

“The students’ union passed a vote of no confidence in the executive board this week. To then claim this is the reaction of a ‘handful of students in a room’ totally ignores the fact that hundreds of students have voiced their discontent to the highly damaging decisions of the executive board regarding our education and the outsourcing of support staff. Also, both major unions in the school have issued statements in support of the occupation of the Brunei Gallery.

“To claim this was simply the beginning of a ‘curriculum review’ seems patently ridiculous given that budget adjustments had already been planned and that no consultation with staff or students had taken place.

“Our education and sense of community is being decimated by outsourcing and the threat of course cuts. If the school loses its specialism in the course of trying to cut £5 million, then what will it be? The ‘School of Studies’ would have nothing to set it apart from other institutions.

“Baroness Amos is the chair of this board, and the only way she could have not been aware of these documents is either through willful ignorance or total incompetence. Many students feel that, given her total lack of experience in the higher education sector, either is possible.

“An executive board chaired by a director with no experience of higher education has no place is decreeing what the academic value of a course is. That is for academic staff and students to decide.”