The UK¡¯s biggest higher education union has accused university leaders of exploiting the sector funding crisis to make ¡°vampiric cuts¡±.

Speaking at a rally outside the Houses of Parliament, as thousands of jobs are cut by institutions, University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady said that funding models across the UK are ¡°broken¡±, ¡°exploiting students¡± and fuelling ¡°financial¡± volatility on campuses.

¡°[We have a] funding system that has created a business model that only works by driving staff, pay conditions and morale into the ground,¡± she said.

¡°We have universities acting like rogue corporations. And it is true that it is a broken funding model that has brought some institutions to the brink. We need to be serious¡­this only accounts for a handful of institutions in the UK.

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¡°Yet we currently see one in two universities engaging in some form of cut. This is vampiric. It is opportunistic. It is being delivered with ultimate, bureaucratic cruelty. And it is university leaders seeking to exploit a crisis that they have helped oversee to now make cuts that they wanted to make anyway.¡±

Around 40 union members met in the capital to lobby politicians, including academics from as far afield as Lancaster and Bangor, with many expressing dismay at mounting workload pressures and the deteriorating state of the sector.

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UCU has estimated that 5,000 jobs have already been lost in the UK sector this academic year alone, and fears that another 5,000 could?go by the summer.?

Grady told?Times Higher Education?that the mood among university staff members was ¡°a mixture of absolute fury and utter demoralisation¡±.?

¡°The problem we¡¯ve got with [the] Labour [government] right now is that they are executing a plan of inaction, but inaction is action. If you are walking past a burning building and you do nothing to intervene, you¡¯re aiding it burning down,¡± she said.

John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington and former shadow chancellor, told the rally that universities were being ¡°decimated¡±, ¡°almost unnoticed by some¡±.

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¡°The reality is, if we¡¯re going to maintain the quality and the standard of higher education in our country, there has to be government intervention. There has to be government funding,¡± McDonnell said.

¡°I always say, education is a gift from one generation to another and it¡¯s a gift that the state needs to ensure is protected for the long term,¡± said McDonnell, who has been on the picket line with striking staff at Brunel University of London, where?135 academic staff are losing their jobs.

¡°The whole point of this government¡¯s economic strategy is about growth. And how can you have growth if you don't have a trained and educated workforce coming out of higher education?¡± McDonnell asked.

Academics at the rally told?É«ºÐÖ±²¥?that the sector was ¡°doomed¡±, and added that they felt ¡°depressed¡± about the state of the sector. ¡°Good academics are not going to want to come here,¡± said Laura Kormos, vice-president of the Lancaster University UCU branch.?

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juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com