Universities are facing growing strike threats amid 'brutal' job cuts equivalent to almost 15,000 jobs.

The University and College Union (UCU) is set to ballot its members for strike action to demand that the employer body, the UCEA, 'halts redundancies' and gives professors a 'fair pay offer'.

It is also demanding that the UCEA joins it in resisting 'Reform's right-wing anti-immigration agenda' and Labour's attacks on 'international students'.

Explaining the decision to ballot its 65,000 members, UCU General Secretary Jo Grady said: 'These job losses are not minor, and the Government must stop treating them as localised incidents.

'Overpaid vice-chancellors are carrying out brutal cuts and have caused an existential moment for the UK higher education sector; our members do not want to strike, but they have been left with no choice but to ballot to defend it.

'University bosses must protect jobs, come forward with a fair pay offer and safeguard our hard-won national agreements.

'Staff cannot be made to pay the price for management failures.'

UCU members at Edinburgh University take part in industrial action at the start of a planned five-day walk-out in a dispute over plans to cut £140 million from the university budget.

Members and supporters of the University and College Union (UCU) Scotland during a rally at Buchanan Street in Glasgow.

But John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance claims that strikes would 'punish students' not Vice Chancellors.

Speaking to the Daily Mail he said: 'University strikes punish students, not vice-chancellors, and leave taxpayers footing the bill for missed lectures and disrupted courses.

'UCU must stop threatening action and work with management. Students and taxpayers deserve better than this self-serving disruption.'

These latest job cuts come as universities endeavor to tackle new financial challenges, with more than two out of five institutions expecting a deficit for 2024/25.

At Lancaster University, around 400 full-time jobs may be cut to save £30 million, UCU has claimed.

Meanwhile at the University of Nottingham, staff voted to strike in August over more than 250 proposed cuts to jobs.

In Scotland, Dundee University is looking to cut up to 300 full-time jobs to address its £35 million deficit, while the University of Edinburgh is looking to plug a £140 million financial blackhole - which the UCU predicts could lead to 1,800 jobs losses.

Speaking on the BBC's Today Programme earlier this morning UCU General Secretary Ms Grady said: 'Our analysis suggests 15,000 jobs could be cut.

'We have already seen 4,000 courses that have been shut over the past year.

'Students that enrolled and now those courses have been wound up and staff on those courses [have] been sacked.

'These job cuts are really detrimental to higher education.

'Vice Chancellors - the people in charge of our institutions - have quietly increased their own salaries by £40k.

'The job of the UCU is to ensure education in the UK remains as globally prestigious as it always has been.

'Our job is also to protect our members' jobs and conditions.

'In many cases (...) job cuts do not need to be made.'

The Department for Education is expected to publish a White Paper setting out plans for higher education reform later in the year.

University staff threaten strike action in row over 15,000 job cuts