The day before the Easter weekend, completely out of the blue, at a hastily convened staff meeting, the Vice Chancellor of Writtle University College, Tim Middleton, announced the closure of four successful and original courses -
undergraduate degrees in floristry, art and design and conservation, and a master's research degree in art and design.
In addition he announced that up to 80 jobs, both teaching and admin, were at risk of redundancy with approximately 40 jobs eventually to go.
The first many people heard about this was receiving an e mail singling them out for possible redundancy later that afternoon.
There was no prior briefing of staff that there was any sort of problem and the whole thing was presented as a business led fait accompli.

Staff at Writtle -hard working, dedicated educators who have constantly gone above and beyond what can be expected of them to do right by our students - passed a motion of no confidence in the VC and the entire senior leadership team with not a single vote in opposition on the 10th of April and have called for them to resign and for the governors to replace them with a team that is willing to fight for educational values and for the welfare and development of our students rather than defending their own positions, salaries and the bottom line.
We unreservedly condemn the Writtle leadership's educational vandalism, we support the Writtle Staff and call upon the Writtle Senior Leadership team to do the decent thing and resign en bloc.
We also undertake to use social media to spread the word and raise awareness about what is happening at Writtle and to fight for education.
We say: Education - not business!