12 Dec 2025
The Department of Veterinary Medicine said the closure would represent “a great and irreparable injustice”.
Chris Simpson
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Image: Alexey Fedorenko / Adobe Stock
Staff and students at the University of Cambridge’s vet school have slammed the institution’s recommendation to close it as “a hasty, unjustified and flawed process” and vowed to fight the decision.
The university revealed yesterday (Thursday 11 December) that its Council of the School of the Biological Sciences (CSBS), the school’s principal decision-making body, had recommended the university cease veterinary education with the final cohort graduating in 2032.
In a strongly worded statement, the Department of Veterinary Medicine’s (DVM) staff and students said the decision had “come as a bolt from the blue” and they are “calling on the university authorities to pause and reconsider a hasty, unjustified and flawed process”.
It continued: “As well as lacking transparency and proper consultation about such a serious and irreversible move, closing the veterinary medicine course also has much wider implications which are not being taken into account.”
The statement highlighted the shortage of vets in the UK and noted the “vital importance” they will play in the event of another pandemic due to their knowledge of animal to human disease transmission.
It argued the CSBS “was unable to provide clear and compelling justification” for its recommendation, adding: “They would not or could not explain if this rush to judgement is based on concerns about the financial sustainability of the school, about the quality of teaching or about criticisms of the veterinary department raised by the RCVS in 2024.”
The statement continued: “We believe the university is acting precipitately based on inaccurate information about our finances. They can have no doubt about the world-class ranking of our course.”
Last year, the RCVS made 55 recommendations of improvement needed for the course to meet its accreditation standards, and in November it granted the vet school programme conditional accreditation for a further year with 20 still outstanding.
The DVM said it had taken the recommendations “extremely seriously” and made “huge improvements”, which the college also highlighted in its response to the announcement.
The statement concluded: “We were not expecting – and were not even given an opportunity to consider how we would react to – a recommendation of closure.
“We would and will oppose it with all the means at our disposal, in the interests of our students, of veterinary science and of the animals treated by our outstanding experts.
“Unless the university pauses this flawed process, a great and irreparable injustice will be done to hundreds of staff and students, present and future, as well as to the reputation of Cambridge as a world leader in sciences of every type.”
A “Save the Vet School” website has been set up as part of the campaign to oppose the recommendation.
In the announcement of the recommendation, a university spokesperson said CSBS had sought “options for the sustainable delivery of clinical services”, which had been “explored in-depth and weighed up carefully against the school’s strategic vision and plan, their implications for teaching and research, financial impact, and achievable implementation”, but it found “no viable long-term solution”.
