“you think it doesn’t hurt?” UCU Edinburgh comment on Peter Mathieson’s announcement not to seek a third tenure
The news of Peter Mathieson’s stepping down speaks to the growing pressure of the moment and the scale of his personal responsibility in it.
The fact that we are having to take five weeks of strike action to protect jobs, in a university that is not in deficit, is a direct reflection of his failure as a university principal and as a manager.
Mathieson’s track record is marked by mismanagement and poor predictions. This is the man who claimed student numbers would sink during Covid and we ended up with massive over-enrollment. He presided over enormous over-investments, including the Edinburgh Futures Institute, which cost the university over £100 million more than Senior Management had claimed. The ‘People and Money’ digital infrastructure debacle likewise cost £37 million against a £14 million budget, and led to thousands of people going unpaid in 2022.
Mathieson’s investment strategy has systematically prioritized capital and buildings over staff and students, and has been characterized by inaccurate and unexplained projections to justify overwork and budget cuts that risk our colleagues’ livelihoods.
If students and staff are now united against him and his left hand, Kim Graham, it is because of how little consideration and respect this senior management has shown to their workers and to the University community during their tenure thus far.
Indeed, the real question is why Peter Mathieson is still in position, despite the university Senate overwhelming vote of no-confidence against him in May 2025. That he felt able to ignore this no-confidence vote speaks volumes about the democratic breakdown he has come to embody.
The accusation that UCU is weaponising students by going on strike is completely disingenuous. Since last July, when the strike was decided, the union has given management countless opportunities to avoid it. We asked again and again for management to negotiate with us, so we wouldn’t have to do this and lose 5 weeks of work and pay for our members and students. Instead, Peter Mathieson came to the negotiation meeting the week before the strike started, offered literally nothing, and hasn’t met with the UCU since.
It’s deeply patronising to our students to speak as Peter Mathieson does of the current tidal wave of student mobilisation as if it reflects no more than the default anti-establishment attitude of youth, or as though students are being manipulated by the union.
We know our students. It is a privilege to teach them. They are incredibly bright people with a mind of their own. They’re fighting right now for the learning conditions that they deserve and the university model that they believe in: one that centres students and staff voices, that centres people over assets and investments. That simply isn’t what this management is giving them.
UCU Edinburgh welcomes the news of his stepping down, and we want to encourage him to do the right thing now: Start listening to the voices of staff and students; negotiate with UCU; stop the cuts and make a proper proposal to end the strike; and ultimately resolve this dispute that is entirely of the University management's making. Alternatively: resign immediately.
[The quote in the title of this post is from an interview Peter Mathieson gave to the Scotsman newspaper published on 7 October 2026. He was commenting on the Academic Senate’s vote of no confidence in May 2025 and a staff survey revealing that fewer than six per cent of staff had confidence in management.]
