Higher education crisis spreading through nursing courses as RCN calls for emergency package

An ‘explosion’ in nurse lecturer redundancies and severances shows the higher education financial crisis is spreading through nursing courses in England and posing a risk to domestic workforce plans, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warns today [15 May].

Ahead of the release of a new report into the nurse educator workforce in England, the College says the crisis is a real threat to the domestic supply of nurses into the workforce - just days after the government announced immigration plans which could lead to an exodus of international nursing staff - and poses a serious risk to patient safety.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent by the RCN to universities offering nursing courses in England revealed that nurse educator jobs decreased in 65% of institutions between August 2024 to February 2025.

On the fourth day of its annual congress in Liverpool, the RCN has called for the government to take urgent action to protect nursing courses, warning that an unstable higher education sector and diminishing nurse educator workforce is a threat to the government’s plans for the NHS, and to the quality of education students receive.

Responses to FOI requests sent by the RCN to universities in England show that in 2020/21, there were eight redundancies and severances in nursing departments. However, in 2024/25 this has risen to a new high of 103. In the last two academic years combined, there have been over ten times the number of severances and redundancies than in the previous three years combined.

The findings come amid widespread financial pressure on the higher education sector, with the Office for Students (OfS) warning last week that two in five universities in England are expected to face deficits this year.

The RCN says this instability could potentially derail the government’s ambitions in the forthcoming 10 Year Health Plan due to be published this summer.

The FOI data is published alongside findings from a survey of RCN members working in higher education in England. Responses to the survey reveal serious concerns about the impact of job cuts on already unsustainable workloads, student experiences and the ability of universities to accept people onto courses.

When asked how nursing programmes would be impacted by reducing staff costs, nine in ten (91%) nurse educators say job cuts will negatively affect their workload, whilst 88% say it will affect the experience of students. Worryingly, more than half (52%) say reductions in staff will negatively affect the number of students that can be accepted onto courses.

Many lecturers are now responsible for teaching, assessing and providing pastoral care for increasing numbers of students, as a result of the staffing and financial pressures on universities, increasing the strain on both them and their already-overburdened students. One third (33%) of respondents to the survey say they are responsible for 80 students or more.

Morale in nursing education is deteriorating. In response to a poll during listening events with nurse educators in England, held as part of the research, one in four said their workload is so overwhelming that it is affecting their personal life. Staff said they are struggling to cope with the instability and increased workload and had even suffered mental breakdowns.

One nurse educator quoted in the report said: “I had a complete mental breakdown last winter. 70-80 hours a week working, so many left in my team, three doing work of eight or nine people, no acknowledgement of workload, told off for going on annual leave for my birthday, felt bad for going off sick because I was so burnt out and no one would have covered me.”

Another said: “We’ve gone through chaos and we are still going through chaos, for the last five years. This year had compulsory redundancy - we’ve gone down from a team of 45 to a team of 14 and that’s just to teach adult nursing, we have 800 students across 6 cohorts. We are just about to lose 2 more staff who have resigned. Workload is atrocious.”

“I hear and see the desperation from colleagues across the country where nurse educators are on their knees,” said another.

While the research focuses on courses in England, universities in other parts of the UK are facing similar pressures. Just this year, the nursing course at Cardiff University was threatened with closure and, although an agreement with management has been reached that protects jobs this year, the risk of redundancies still looms beyond 2025.

The College is calling for the government to take action to protect all nursing courses and for the departments for Education and Health and Social Care to produce a nurse educator workforce strategy and funded action plan which addresses recruitment and retention issues, alongside those planned for the NHS and NHS workforce.

RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive, Professor Nicola Ranger, said:

“University nursing courses are the main route for training the highly skilled nursing staff we need, but our findings reveal a worrying explosion of redundancies and cuts in England. This is an incredibly serious moment, raising questions about the ability of our country to educate the nurses of the future, and about how it staffs the NHS. As it shuts off routes from abroad, these shocking findings show the government must get a grip of its domestic workforce plans.

“This isn’t just about universities; it’s about patient safety. Without lecturers and those who run nursing courses, there will be fewer nursing staff in our NHS and social care. Job cuts also leave the staff that remain with an impossible task as they try to uphold standards, desperately trying to ensure students get the best education, but there is only so much they can do without intervention. Fewer staff and higher student ratios pose a risk to the quality of education that nurses of the future receive.

“Ministers must provide ringfenced financial subsidies that protect nursing courses from being engulfed by the financial crisis gripping universities. Failure to do so will only deepen the workforce crisis, put patients at risk and undermine the government's own long-term ambition for NHS reform.”

Ends

Notes to editors

The Nurse Educator Workforce in Higher Education in England: Capacity, Challenges, and Trends

The RCN sent Freedom of Information requests to 73 universities delivering pre-registration nursing courses in England, in February 2024 and February 2025. Around 2 in 3 (65%, 31 out of 48 responses) reported that they had a decrease in the number of nurse educator posts (FTE) between August 2024 and February 2025.

The FOI responses also showed that severance and redundancies (based on responses from 60 universities) have increased over the past two academic years:

• 2020/21: 8
• 2021/22: 8
• 2022/23: 3
• 2023/24: 92
• 2024/25: 103

In a survey of RCN members working in nurse education in England, run in February 2025, when asked how nursing programmes would be impacted by reducing staff costs:

• 92% said it would have a ‘Highly negative’ or ‘Somewhat negative’ impact on the morale of nurse educators
• 91% said it would have a ‘Highly negative’ or ‘Somewhat negative’ impact on the workload of nurse educators
• 52% said it would have a ‘Highly negative’ or ‘Somewhat negative’ impact on the number of nurse students that can be accepted to university.

When asked how many students they are responsible for as an academic assessor:

• 33% said that they are responsible for 80 or more students. 

According to bespoke data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the nurse educator workforce is becoming more junior. 50% of nurse educators are aged 50 or older, meaning a significant number are due to retire soon. The proportion of Senior Lecturers dropped from 55% to 42% between 2013/14-2022/23. The number of staff aged under 34 increased by 5% in the same period.

In a poll taken during listening events with nurse educators in England held as part of the research, one in four said their workload is so overwhelming that it is affecting their personal life. There were 132 responses to the poll.