In the Summer of 2024, QMUL put out a tender for a contract to help the university undertake a review of its teaching programmes, the ‘portfolio review’ run by a change management team in the ‘strategy delivery’ office.  The aim of the review was to ensure that QMUL’s programmes and modules were “fit for the future”. Although presented as a relatively routine, bureaucratic, operational exercise, from the view of Spring 2026 we are beginning to see significant programme closures and module withdrawals, with the risk of wider restructuring of staff and workloads being brought into sharp relief. The costs of employing the external consultancy and the wider portfolio review has resulted in a bill of over half a million for QMUL.

Rather than seeking input based on the knowledge, experience, and insights of its staff on how to conduct the review, QMUL outsourced a large chunk of the work to an external consultancy. Enter Nous Group, an Australian-based firm with a growing, and pernicious, presence across UK HE – see for instance this interview with its directors. Nous was contracted to provide expert external support to develop an approach to evaluating internal financial and educational data handed over by QMUL, and a ‘stakeholder engagement’ plan. The sidelining of staff’s expertise and disciplinary needs naturally sets off alarm bells. On the ground, we hear from members that Nous has caused great mistrust of management’s intentions, raised concerns about the quality of future education and, critically, made staff feel uncertain about their job security. Given that the university has reduced staff numbers by roughly 250 through VSS and PS restructuring over the last two years, this last point is felt particularly acutely.

The role of Nous has essentially focused on providing QMUL with a ‘change management’ service, along with a process to compare and score modules and programmes through the portfolio review. The primary basis of this review appears driven less by pedagogical needs, and more by the competitive, financial priorities of senior management. QMUL are keen to ‘free up resources’, implying a considerable reallocation of teaching and, by extension, research capacity amongst staff. The Portfolio Review Steering Group, on which QMUCU took a seat on since February 2026 but holds no decision-making authority, is the forum where much discussion takes place, but in essence equates to a process that underpins the rationalisation of modules and programmes. The steering group itself refuses to be drawn into staffing and workload issues, but the Faculty Executives that sit on the group have the managerial authority to make the changes outwith the group, causing a blurring of governance and the accountability for any restructuring that occurs: the groundwork for jobs losses is being laid through the group, but the critical decisions will be taken elsewhere.  

Staff at QMUL are beginning to feel the consequences of the influence of Nous in the portfolio review. In terms of undergraduate degrees only, hundreds of modules have been withdrawn, and, at the time of writing, just under 20 programmes are set to close between now and September 2027. The School of the Arts has been hit hardest as over 300 undergraduate modules have been cut, with the modern languages provision severely under threat. Behind these big numbers are the workers: people who have built their careers, developed unique and contemporary courses, and given much of their lives to QMUL. The removal of a module through a calculation on a spreadsheet ignores the sense of loss and disregard workers experience as a result, the devaluing of their work, the challenge to their professional identity. The impact on Teaching Associates and Teaching Fellows is even more troubling, where the cutting of modules and programmes leads directly to the non-renewal of contracts, in a wider context of change in how the university inappropriately manages and deploys these colleagues.

Students also stand to lose out. A notable debate in the pedagogical literature around curriculum coherence is the role that choice plays in the student’s academic journey. For example, electives are not simply optional extras, they are central to the formative years of a young person’s education, giving them the flexibility to explore interests, developing broader skills and discover their own personal or professional identities. And electives are now drastically reduced – with 100% compulsory modules in the first year, 50% compulsory in the second year, and 25% compulsory in the third. QMUL is denying students that developmental choice.

The use of Nous at QMUL is not an isolated case. Across UK HE, the same name reappears wherever universities take on strategic reviews based on transforming the curriculum or operational restructures. This is why staff feel so insecure: Nous has been associated with large-scale restructuring at other universities such as Derby, Nottingham Trent, Cardiff and Edinburgh. And this intrusion in UK HE comes after years of cutting in Australia and Canada, which garnered them the nickname ‘Nousferatu’. Nous has a reputation for triggering redundancies and course closures. QMUL staff are well within their rights to draw conclusions on what this might mean for their jobs.

The use of Nous at QMUL and the wider sector is also corroding important principles of higher education associated with collegiality, academic freedom and public accountability. The more money that universities hand over to external consultancies – with QMUL spending over £2 million in recent years for a range of services – the more the corporate logic becomes embedded in its governance and decision-making, displacing the civic duty that universities should be led by. For most of this, that horse has more than bolted. But also, external consultancies like Nous are in the business of breeding dependence on them, building into their products a need for never-ending consultancy: they don’t want their customers to find the answers themselves so that they stay in business.

For QMUL staff, now is the time to be vigilant. Although the undergraduate review has concluded, more change through the postgraduate review is on the cards. QMUL is also hoping to institute the portfolio review as ‘business as usual’, indicating that our modules and programmes are never settled and potentially always on the chopping board, where financial and managerial priorities outweigh educational ones. QMUCU is committed to challenging senior management over the portfolio review, and will continue to fight for jobs and against the closure of programmes. QMUCU members must stay informed and united against these changes: organise school meetings, listen to your colleagues, share information, and demand answers from your School and Faculty management.

Further Reading