More than 130 staff at the University of Huddersfield have taken up an offer to leave under a voluntary severance scheme.

Details of the scheme were revealed by university vice-chancellor Prof Bob Cryan in July – when he also warned that some courses struggling to attract students could be axed.

Now the university has disclosed that 74 academic staff and 64 professional service staff have chosen to take voluntary severance and will be leaving at the end of this month. It is understood that those leaving could receive over a year’s net salary.

The university has more than 1,000 academic staff listed on its website.

The University of Huddersfield's Creative Arts Building, which is to be renamed the Steinitz Building in honour of Prof Richard Steinitz, founder of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

A spokesperson for the university said: “The university has been running a voluntary severance scheme (VSS), that staff could take advantage of. This was not a redundancy process and wasn’t linked to one. The purpose of the scheme was to help the university position its workforce for future development and growth.

“It was not driven by any specific government policy, nor is it financially driven. Huddersfield has been able to take this approach as it is number one in the HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) financial sustainability index.”

He said: “The VSS was announced in July this year and each application has been carefully considered by the dean or director of the area involved before a final decision was made.”

But he added: “The university is actively recruiting new staff and we currently have over 25 vacancies advertised with a closing date within the next four weeks and have plans to advertise more positions after Christmas.”

Prof Bob Cryan, the University of Huddersfield's vice chancellor
Prof Bob Cryan, the University of Huddersfield's vice chancellor

The Examiner reported how, in an email to staff, Prof Cryan warned that the higher education sector was facing many challenges, including private providers being encouraged to enter the marketplace, uncertainty about fees and “increasingly aggressive” recruitment tactics by competitors.

The email said: “To ensure that we maintain and develop our place within the market we have begun a process of closely analysing the provision we offer and this will continue into the future. Where subjects are less popular we will consider the closure of courses.”

Prof Cryan said the university also needed to “ensure the highest levels of academic authenticity” by engaging and developing highly qualified individuals with the desire to achieve and deliver outstanding teaching and research.

The spokesperson said: “The commitment to all academic staff holding a PhD is nothing new and is something that the university began back in 2007.

“It has long been a part of our strategy to ensure that our students are taught by the most highly-qualified individuals and those staff that didn’t hold a PhD have been given time off and university support to complete one.

“Huddersfield is now the number one university in England for the number of staff with teaching qualifications and in the top five for staff holding higher qualifications.”