The word “rightsizing” has slithered into British universities like a particularly obnoxious management consultant. It’s the sort of term that sounds vaguely positive—after all, who could argue with making something the right size?—while simultaneously describing the wholesale demolition of entire departments. It’s linguistic chloroform: designed to make unpleasant realities smell faintly of success rather than redundancy notices.

The Euphemism Treadmill

“Rightsizing” joins a distinguished pantheon of corporate doublespeak designed to make bad news sound like strategic brilliance. Its ancestors include:

  • “Restructuring” (firing people)
  • “Optimisation” (firing people more efficiently)
  • “Transformation” (firing people while pivoting)
  • “Streamlining” (firing people, but sleekly)

Each iteration becomes more elaborate as the previous euphemism gets contaminated by reality. Soon we’ll need “strategic talent realignment initiatives” just to describe laying off the catering staff.

How Rightsizing Actually Works

The rightsizing process typically unfolds as follows:

  1. Phase One: Discovery. Senior management discovers the university employs actual human beings, who inconveniently require salaries.
  2. Phase Two: Consultation. Expensive consultants arrive to recommend firing the people who actually know how things work.
  3. Phase Three: Communication. Staff receive emails explaining how losing their jobs will “unlock transformational efficiencies.”
  4. Phase Four: Implementation. The university becomes smaller, poorer, and somehow less capable of doing what it was supposed to do in the first place.

The Jargon Ecosystem

Rightsizing rarely travels alone. It brings friends:

  • “Agile structures” (fewer people doing more jobs)
  • “Enhanced productivity” (the same output with half the staff)
  • “Sustainable footprint” (sustainable for the budget, fatal for morale)
  • “Future-ready organisation” (ready for a future with no employees)

Why This Matters Beyond Academic Circles

Universities aren’t widget factories. When you rightsize a philosophy department, you don’t just lose efficiency—you lose institutional memory, research relationships, and the kind of intellectual continuity that makes universities more than just degree-printing machines.

The real tragedy is that rightsizing often creates more problems than it solves. Fewer people means longer delays, reduced innovation, and the gradual transformation of universities into administrative processing centres rather than centres of learning and discovery.

The Alternative: Actual English

Instead of rightsizing, why not try:

  • “We’re making redundancies”
  • “We’re cutting staff”
  • “We’re reducing our workforce”

Revolutionary concept: describing reality using words that actually mean what they describe.

Conclusion: Size Matters, But So Does Honesty

If universities must shrink, they should at least have the courtesy to call it what it is. Rightsizing is corporate-speak designed to make administrators feel better about difficult decisions while making everyone else feel like they’re living in a dystopian novel where words have been drained of meaning.

The next time someone mentions rightsizing, ask them to translate. You might be surprised by what you find lurking beneath the jargon.