Middlesex University - Restructuring

Restructuring

In May 2001 Middlesex University appointed C Eye, a branding consultancy, to design a new logo for the University. In 2003 the previous "M" logo was replaced with a new red-coloured wavy line that is supposed to express a flexible and responsive approach to the needs of students.

Following the review of the sustainability of its academic programmes, the university implemented a string of cost-containment adjustments over 2005–2006. Specifically, in late 2005 it decided to stop offering history courses in an attempt to reduce £10 million deficit that had built up. The decision, however, was met with considerable hostility from Middlesex's student union as well as from The National Union of Students. In other moves to save costs, the university made 175 voluntary redundancies, including 33 academic staff, a measure that was supposed to save £5 million.

Since 2000 Middlesex embarked on a new strategy to achieve ‘fewer, better campuses’ in order to reduce costs and improve the long-term sustainability of the University. The strategy translated into the disposal of several small uneconomic arts campuses in Bedford, Hampstead and Wood Green and larger, but still uneconomic and unattractive campuses at Bounds Green, Enfield and Tottenham. The University has also closed the Corporate Services building at the North London Business Park and consolidated most of the functions carried out on these sites at Hendon, where it aims to accommodate nearly all its London based teaching.

In 2010, Middlesex announced the closure of its Philosophy department. The move was taken because the department was judged by the University to be not financially sustainable. This was despite the fact that Philosophy had been the highest ranking department in the University's latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2008, building on its grade of 5 in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. An international campaign of support was quickly organised, with figures such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jean-Luc Nancy, Slavoj Žižek, Étienne Balibar, David Harvey, Isabelle Stengers and many others expressing their strong disapproval. Articles condemning the decision appeared in the national press and students protested actively on campus and elsewhere for the restitution of the department. In early June 2010 it was announced that the department's postgraduate component, the CRMEP, was to be transferred to Kingston University but the undergraduate programme still to be phased out.