Over the summer, Bournemouth University announced the appointment of two new Professors – both members of the University Executive Team, and one only shortly after joining BU.

Normally, we would welcome the recognition of colleagues’ achievements and progression in their careers.

But there is a rather substantial problem.

Career progression at BU is currently frozen for everyone else.

This matters particularly after what BU staff—both academic and professional services, as well as managers not on the UET—have been through.

For the past several years, colleagues across the University have been told that financial circumstances mean promotions and pay progression cannot proceed. We already know there will be no promotions or pay progression for ordinary staff in 2026/27, and there is currently no clear commitment as to when these opportunities will return.

Apparently, however, career progression at BU has not actually been frozen; it has been rationed according to where you sit in the hierarchy.

BU’s own announcement is remarkably clear about how these professorships came about. The University states that the professorial appointments:

“form part of the reward and benefits package, approved by the Remuneration Committee, for the two Pro-Vice-Chancellor roles”

As part of the recruitment process for these executive positions, both candidates were given an assessment against the Professor criteria in BU’s Academic Career Framework, involving academics and an external assessor, alongside their assessment for the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Dean role.

We want to be very clear: our objection is not to the individuals concerned, nor are we questioning whether they met the University’s criteria for Professor. Our objection is to the extraordinary double standard this exposes.

BU has suspended the promotion process for its existing staff because, we are told, the University cannot afford career progression. But when recruiting members of the University Executive Team, professorial appointment can be incorporated into the reward and benefits package, and an assessment process can be convened specifically to enable it.

Years of sacrifice

Over the past few years, colleagues have seen dozens of valued and experienced staff leave the University through restructuring and voluntary severance. Those who remain have absorbed the consequences: larger workloads, depleted teams, lost expertise and institutional knowledge, and ever-increasing expectations.

At the same time, staff have been asked to accept the suspension of their own career progression. For years.

That is not a trivial sacrifice.

For an academic or professional services colleague, losing several years of progression can mean losing not only recognition, but thousands of pounds in salary – losses that compound over the remainder of a career and into pension contributions.

And this is happening against a national backdrop of sustained erosion in university pay. UCU has documented substantial real-terms losses in HE salaries since 2009, while the 2025/26 national pay award was itself another below-inflation increase. The employer offer for 2026/27 is just 2%, which 69.3% of UCU members voting in the recent consultation rejected.

Staff are therefore being squeezed from both directions: our salaries are losing value nationally, while BU has removed the mechanisms through which individuals might otherwise progress locally.

One rule for us

We understand that universities face serious financial pressures. We have never pretended otherwise.

What we cannot accept is financial constraint being presented as an unavoidable fact when it applies to ordinary staff, but becoming negotiable when senior management wishes to make an appointment or confer a promotion.

BU has continued to appoint people to highly paid senior management positions. It has continued to use interim senior appointments. And now it has demonstrated that it can confer professorial status on members of its Executive Team while telling the rest of its workforce that promotion is unavailable.

That sends an(other) extraordinary message to staff: whatever value you’re creating through your hard work, the only people who are going to benefit from it is the University Executive Team, patting each other on the backs while they continue to make our lives worse.

Colleagues who survived restructuring are being asked to work in depleted teams. Academic staff are being asked to deliver teaching, research, knowledge exchange and citizenship within increasingly restrictive workload allocations. Professional services colleagues are being asked to maintain services with fewer people. Staff across BU are being told that everyone must make sacrifices because of the University’s financial position.

But those sacrifices do not appear to be equally shared.

Our careers did not stop because BU stopped recognising them

Promotion isn’t simply about money. It is one of the principal ways a university recognises expertise, achievement, development and contribution.

Across BU there are colleagues who have spent these years producing excellent research, delivering outstanding education, winning funding, developing professional practice, supporting students, taking on leadership responsibilities and making substantial contributions to the University.

Many have done so through restructuring, staff losses, increased workloads and profound uncertainty about their futures. Their careers did not stop developing simply because BU stopped recognising that development.

Yet those colleagues have not even been permitted to put themselves forward and demonstrate that they meet the criteria for progression. Meanwhile, an existing colleague appointed to UET was permitted to do precisely that.

Compare that with what BU has just demonstrated it can do for incoming members of UET: build professorial status into an executive reward package, assess candidates against the Academic Career Framework and convene the necessary process. That disparity is very difficult to justify.

Indeed, many staff have achieved those things while navigating restructuring, increased workloads, reduced staffing and profound uncertainty about their futures.

They deserve better than to see the University find mechanisms for recognising career progression at the very top while continuing to tell everyone else to wait.

So when does career progression return?

BU UCU has repeatedly raised the suspension of promotion and pay progression with the University, and we will continue to do so.

But the University’s recent decisions make one question particularly pressing:

If BU is able to recognise and facilitate career progression for members of its University Executive Team, why is it unable to do the same for the staff who teach our students, conduct our research, deliver our professional services and keep this University functioning every day?

Financial difficulty does not absolve an employer of the responsibility to treat its workforce fairly.

If sacrifices are necessary, they should be shared.

And if career progression is possible at Bournemouth University, it should not be a privilege reserved for those at the top.