It comes in an attempt to balance the books after caps to tuition fees and inflationary pressures.
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00:00 The atmosphere has been quite unusual here today Gabriel, most students finding
00:05 out for the first time about these job cuts today and finding out that their
00:10 education could potentially be at threat if this is all to go ahead. Most quite
00:14 surprised and for most of them we actually sort of broke the news to them
00:17 when we were talking to them today. So I'm joining you now from between the
00:21 Rochester and the Gillingham building. These are two of the buildings which
00:25 leases could be sold off. It's thought that these leases could be sold to
00:29 Greenwich which also resides on this campus. The Gillingham building is probably
00:34 most known for its journalism course, its business courses, medicine as well and
00:38 this one the Rochester building is is known for sort of holding many
00:42 important meetings and also has a social hub sort of on the bottom ground as well.
00:46 So it's likely that these losses could really be felt here as it's such a small
00:50 campus the Medway campus as well. This is all due to what's thought to be
00:54 financial pressures that the University is facing due to capped tuition fees,
00:59 inflationary pressures and fewer applicants to the University too. So if
01:04 this is to go ahead it's thought that in the next stages would be builders coming
01:07 in over the Easter period to sort of look at redesigning these two buildings
01:11 and it's thought that the remaining departments could be moved to the
01:15 Medway building which I'm currently stood in front of now. But it's left many
01:19 staff to speculate about what this means for the future and also left many
01:23 students concerned and also speculating about what this could mean for their
01:28 education. Well as I said before we've been speaking to some of these students
01:31 out on the Medway campus today. It's a bit sad really because this is my third
01:36 year here and obviously it being sold off like it might be weird to say but
01:41 there's been a lot of memories here obviously studying overnight and doing
01:45 work everything but yeah we start to see it go from after leaving uni as well.
01:51 That's really sad to hear that but then I have no any information related to
01:56 that I have not heard about it but yeah that's sad news if that is happening.
02:02 I feel like that might affect our studies a lot especially members of
02:07 this staff or people that are teaching us. According to me what I think is if
02:13 the 40 members are losing their jobs the duties that duties are going to be the
02:21 coming on the other person and that person might get difficulties in future
02:26 time. It's bad if it is happening in this university because the kind of
02:32 information or the lectures that are happening I'm in the US in September now
02:36 and whatever quality of lectures I'm getting are really nice so because of
02:40 financial issues if it's happening it's really bad.
02:45 There are potential cuts that could be taking place at the Canterbury campus as
02:50 well which of course is a much bigger campus for the University. So many
02:54 questions being asked today of course KMTV also resides on the campus as far
02:59 as we know it's not going to be impacting our operations but now we can
03:02 hear from the University of Kent they said that they remain fully committed to
03:06 the Medway campus they said they've been open with staff that they need to
03:10 explore changes and said that it forms part of a wider transformation program
03:15 so of course it's going to be a tough pill to swallow potentially for students
03:19 and staff at the campus today but the next stage is a consultation where this
03:24 will all be confirmed and they'll figure out the decisions and what exactly could
03:29 be happening over the next few months years in fact.