Staff shortages hit higher education sector hard

Higher education is struggling, with unprecedented financial pressures, workforce shrinkage, and organisational change. This has created a sense of sadness and uncertainty across the sector, with staff feeling the ripples of these changes.

Comments from colleagues, such as “I’ve checked out” or “I’m just doing what I need to get by,” have become commonplace. This situation indicates that the issue is not just low morale or change fatigue, but a deeper crisis of belonging.

Understanding Belonging

Belonging can be defined as being valued, needed, or important for others in a specific context, and feeling like you fit in through shared or complementary features. In psychology, belonging is considered a fundamental human need, closely linked to wellbeing, motivation, and resilience.

When belonging is disrupted, people can begin to question their identity and place within a community. This can be seen in the responses of staff across higher education, who are struggling to come to terms with the loss of colleagues, changes in their work environment, and the erosion of their professional identities.

The Loss of Tribes

The concept of “tribes” is important in understanding belonging. A tribe is a group of people with shared understanding, common purpose, and mutual trust. These tribes create a sense of individual belonging and provide psychological safety, allowing people to explore ideas openly and be their authentic selves.

Many of these tribes are disintegrating due to restructuring, redundancy programmes, and sector contraction. This has resulted in the physical loss of valued colleagues and the fragmentation of professional networks. The consequences extend beyond those who leave the sector, with those who remain experiencing uncertainty and unease.

Rebuilding Connection and Purpose

University leaders face the challenge of helping to lead their teams through the necessary process of adaptation, reorganisation and strategic change. Many colleagues seem lost, and as though their only means of survival is to “keep their heads down.”

The challenge is not simply increased workload or uncertainty about the future. Many people are also working through the loss of communities that helped define who they were professionally. In some respects, what we are seeing resembles a form of collective grief. Not only grief for colleagues who have left, but grief for ways of working, professional identities and communities that once gave meaning to academic life.

This creates an important challenge for university leaders. Financial sustainability matters. Organisational structures matter. Policies matter. Institutions cannot function without them. Yet these are fundamentally systems-level responses.