There is a particular kind of dissonance that settles over Edinburgh’s Old College when the chanting starts. The grand neoclassical courtyard, with its hushed corridors and portraits of long-dead scholars, seems an unlikely backdrop for industrial picket lines. Yet that is exactly where the university found itself on the day Sir Peter Mathieson chose to announce he would not seek a third term as principal and vice-chancellor. Outside, students and striking staff were making their feelings known, their voices rising in unison against a wave of cuts that has already reshaped the institution. Inside, Mathieson sat before the University Court, delivering a decision that was, by his own admission, hardly surprising for a man who would be 73 by the end of a third term. But the timing was always going to be political. Whether he intended it or not, the announcement landed in the middle of one of the most turbulent periods in the university’s modern history. The protests outside were not an abstract gesture; they were the physical manifestation of years of growing frustration, a frustration that has now reached into almost every corner of the university community. The irony is hard to miss. A man who once led the University of Hong Kong through the charged atmosphere of pro-democracy student protests is no stranger to being the target of anger. But knowing that does little to soften the mood in Edinburgh, where the latest round of programme closures has turned simmering discontent into open revolt.
Mathieson’s decade at the helm has been one of dramatic expansion on paper and deepening unease in practice. When he arrived, the university had around 42,000 students and an annual budget of roughly £1 billion. Today, those numbers have swollen to nearly 50,000 students and a budget approaching £1.5 billion. On the surface, that looks like success. But beneath the figures lies a more complicated story, one marked by repeated industrial disputes, strikes, and a growing sense among staff that the institution’s leadership is moving in a direction they neither understand nor support. The current strike wave did not come out of nowhere; it has been building for years, fuelled by concerns about pay, working conditions, pension changes, and the creeping commercialisation of higher education. Now, with Mathieson preparing to see out the final sixteen months of his term, he has made clear that he intends to push through £150 million in annual budget cuts. He insists these are necessary even though the university is not technically in deficit, arguing that the institution needs to be placed on a firmer financial footing for the long term. That message has not landed well. To the striking academics and their student supporters, cutting £150 million from a budget that is still growing feels less like prudent management and more like an ideological statement. And the opposition is no longer confined to the usual suspects. The growing cast of protesters now includes actors, film stars, and theatre directors, people with public platforms and cultural authority. Among them is Hugh Bonneville, the actor best known for Downton Abbey, whose presence outside or alongside the university’s gates has helped draw national attention to the fight.
The latest flashpoint is the announcement that more than ninety degree programmes are to be “taught out” and closed to new entrants. To those unfamiliar with university jargon, the phrase sounds almost gentle. In practice, it means that current students will be allowed to finish their degrees, but no new cohort will be admitted. Over time, the programmes will simply fade out of existence, and with them the dedicated pathways that students once chose. Of those ninety-plus closures, more than half—48 to be exact—come from the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, known as LLC. That is a staggering concentration, and it has set alarm bells ringing far beyond the university’s own walls. The head of LLC, Professor Alex Thompson, has defended the move as a necessary consolidation, arguing that courses with low uptake are being folded into other degree programmes and that the subjects themselves will still be available. To critics, however, this is a distinction without much of a difference. The closure of Scottish Literature and Celtic studies, in particular, has been met with fury. Many see it as the university abandoning Scottish culture and the students who want to study it. It is one thing to trim a few niche programmes in the name of efficiency; it is quite another to cut at the heart of the nation’s literary heritage. The symbolism alone, they argue, sends a devastating message about what the university values. And for a Scottish institution with a global reputation, that is not just a financial decision; it is an identity crisis.
Into this storm has stepped Robert Irvine, a reader in Scottish Literary History, whose email to undergraduate students in the English and Scottish literature department condemned what he called an “extraordinary full-spectrum firestorm of misinformation” in much of the media coverage. Irvine is not a spin doctor sent out to defend the leadership; he is an academic on the front line of the cuts, someone whose own department is being reshaped around him. But he is determined to correct what he sees as factual errors, even when doing so puts him at odds with the anger of his own colleagues and students. In an interview with The Edinburgh Inquirer, Irvine tried to clear up the confusion by drawing a simple but crucial distinction between two terms that are often used interchangeably: programmes and courses. A programme, he explained, is the title of the degree—the “name on the box.” A course is what is actually taught inside that box—the seminars, the lectures, the reading lists, the essays. Scottish Literature is being axed as a programme, which means that after the current cohort graduates, no student will leave Edinburgh University with a degree that carries the title “Scottish Literature.” But that does not mean the content of the Scottish Literature programme is being stopped. It will be available within different degrees, offered as part of a broader course structure. Irvine points out that, in the context of budget cuts, this particular move saves no money at all. “There’s nobody to sack,” he said bluntly. The teaching will still happen, the seminars will still run, and the content will still be delivered—just under a different name, and as part of a wider degree rather than a standalone one.
For students who had their hearts set on a degree in Scottish Literature, that may be cold comfort. The name on the box matters. It matters for identity, for career direction, for the simple feeling of being recognised as a specialist in something you love. But Irvine’s point is that the actual educational experience may not be as diminished as the headlines suggest. An MA in English and Scottish Literature will allow students to study just as much Scottish Literature as the single honours programme ever did, with around half of all seminars focused on the subject. If a student wants to immerse themselves in the poetry of Burns, the novels of Walter Scott, the modern voices of contemporary Scottish writers, that opportunity remains open. They will just be doing it within a slightly differently labelled degree. This is a nuance that has been lost in much of the coverage, where the word “closure” has been taken to mean the death of the subject itself. When asked about claims that this would make Glasgow University the only institution in the country offering Scottish Literature on its own, Irvine let out a frustrated sigh. That sigh says a great deal. It speaks to the exhaustion of trying to explain a complex situation to a public, and a media, that understandably latches onto the most dramatic version of events. It also speaks to the awkward position of being a critic of the cuts while simultaneously pushing back against misinformation about them. It is possible, after all, to believe that the closures are a mistake and still believe that the coverage has been sloppy.
Ultimately, the situation at Edinburgh University is not a simple story of heroes and villains. It is a story about what a university is for, who it belongs to, and what happens when financial pressures collide with cultural and educational values. The leadership, led by Mathieson, argues that difficult decisions must be made now to secure the institution’s future. They point to the changing landscape of higher education, the uncertainty of government funding, the need to invest in areas that will attract students in the coming decades. Their critics see a different reality: a university with no deficit making cuts that will be felt for generations, not because they are necessary but because they reflect a particular vision of what education should be—lean, marketable, and focused on immediate returns. The staff on the picket lines are not asking for luxury; they are asking for recognition, for fair treatment, for a say in the future of the place where they have built their careers. The students chanting outside are not simply defending a degree title; they are defending the idea that education is more than a transaction. And the celebrities and cultural figures who have added their voices to the protest are lending their prestige to a fight that feels, to many, like a battle for the soul of a great institution. As Sir Peter Mathieson prepares to leave, the university he leaves behind is bigger, richer, and more divided than when he found it. Whether that is a legacy to be proud of or a warning for the future will depend on what happens in the next sixteen months—and long after he is gone. What is clear is that the shouting outside Old College is not going to fade away on its own. The conversation, painful and messy as it is, has only just begun.