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  • WEEKEND READING: Should universities build or buy their online education capability?

    WEEKEND READING: Should universities build or buy their online education capability?

    This blog was kindly authored by Anna Wood, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Online and Lifelong Learning, University of Arts London (UAL).
    The University of the Arts London (UAL) has set out an ambition in its Strategy 2022-2032 to bring a high-quality creative education to more students than ever before. It places online education within its strategic Access and Lifelong Learning Pillar, which focuses on widening participation in creative education for learners at different life stages, from diverse backgrounds, at every point in their learning journey.

    Online education is a key driver of access and scale, with an aim to serve a wider range of students at a reduced overall cost of study for the student. 

    Within its online education strategy, UAL has made the decision to build its provision in-house as an internal startup. The new venture operates somewhat independently but with the backing and resources of the broader institution. The idea is to combine startup agility and innovation with established resources, expertise and stability. At present, where we decide to partner, we will seek to supplement capacity, not baseline capability, with extra resources.

    We have made the upfront investment by building new commercial and production teams, are on the journey to implementing new systems, and we accept that breakeven will not happen immediately. It is a focus on capability-building and offers insights into how universities might approach not just online education, but new product development more broadly. 

    Understanding the Online Programme Management (OPM) partnership model 

    UAL is unusual in taking the decision to build an internal start-up. Many  UK universities have chosen to partner (outsource the bulk of services needed) to launch their online education products. Between 2018 and 2024, Mosley counted that an average of nearly five new UK university-OPM partnerships were formed annually.OPM stands for Online Programme Management. These are companies that partner with universities to help them develop, launch, and manage online degree courses by taking on a full suite of services on the university’s behalf, often under a white label. 

    To understand why these partnerships exist, we need to look beyond online education as a mode of study and recognise how it functions as a commercial product requiring significant upfront investment and specialised capabilities. OPMs provide comprehensive services that include market research and analytics, design and production, academic recruitment and delivery, digital marketing, student recruitment, and student support.  

    The financial arrangement is typically a revenue-share agreement, which ranges depending on the services provided. At a time when the Office for Students report that 124 institutions (45 per cent) in the UK face a deficit in 2025-26, the appeal of developing new revenue streams without additional financial exposure is clear.  

    OPM partnerships have benefits. They demonstrate that universities can broker innovative contracts with the private sector where they lack certain capabilities needed to compete effectively: data-driven performance marketing, speed to market, target-driven recruitment teams, sophisticated CRM systems, and support services operating beyond UK business hours. OPMs are also developing capabilities, particularly in AI, at a faster pace than might be realised in-house, and this may be something in the future that could give us pause for consideration on new initiatives, should this continue to be the case.

    These benefits need to be weighed against certain longer-term disadvantages. When you outsource services, you effectively lose oversight of those areas. When marketing, recruitment and student support are outsourced, you can lose visibility of the addressable audience for your degrees and the retention concerns of your students. Is it acceptable for an organisation to not fully understand its customer base?

    Online as pathfinder for broader change 

    The capabilities required for online education are also those that universities need to become more student-centric and agile across all activities. In a 2025 HEPI blog, Nick Gilbert, Chief Information Officer of the London School of Economics and Political Science, stated:

    We can no longer afford to simply implement new systems or processes. If our investments aren’t vital to the changes that our organisations need to make to survive and thrive now, we really must be questioning why we’re doing them.

    The government’s recent Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper aims to “make lifelong learning a reality with more modular study options,” emphasising that skills are central to the government’s growth mission. Universities that have built internal capability to respond flexibly to this agenda: creating pathways between short courses and degree programmes, enabling credit transfer and supporting modular study, will be better positioned than those with arrangements optimised solely for full degree recruitment. 

    UAL Online’s operational requirements have led to useful insights for the wider institution. The need for rapid course development has resulted in expedited course approval processes. Working in the digital space has required investment in UX and UI that prioritises accessibility, student navigation and high-quality learning experiences even before they have begun studying with us.  

    A different way of working 

    Part of why online education is often perceived differently internally is that it requires different approaches to course development and delivery. Where academics developing face-to-face courses work independently, online education typically encompasses partnerships between them and learning design teams.

    The learning designer role exemplifies this by working with subject experts to structure content, design activities and determine how to deliver learning using various technologies and pedagogical approaches. During challenging moments, there can be creative tension as academics are not used to their content being challenged and learning designers could approach their feedback with a greater level of diplomacy. However, these conversations often lead to better outcomes, encouraging academics to articulate their pedagogical intentions more clearly and consider alternatives they might not have explored independently. 

    Online education is predominantly asynchronous, requiring content to be fully designed before students engage with it. This differs markedly from face-to-face teaching, where academics can adapt in real-time. With multiple specialists involved – video producers, content developers, editors, project managers, visual designers – the result is a collaborative effort that arguably raises quality standards, with each specialist bringing professional standards from their field. 

    What are the considerations when thinking about going it alone? 

    The internal startup approach requires upfront investment and longer-term commitment that not all institutions can make, particularly those already facing significant financial pressures. 

    If universities choose not to partner with an OPM then they need to tolerate an investment timeline of 3-5 years before break-even and an upfront spend that can require a 7-figure sum investment that will vary based on institutional readiness, number of courses launched and student number targets. The cost of digital marketing spend will be between 20 and 40 per cent of revenue for the first intakes. Economies of scale, lower delivery costs, and selective use of AI are what will ultimately bring universities the margin they seek.  

    Online education is a rapidly evolving market and we have limited data and insight to make accurate predictions. It is advisable to hire key staff within the start-up who have previous experience, expertise and relationship-building skills to bring to bear.

    Universities are also not always comfortable giving internal teams freedom to experiment with new business models or technologies. A level of resilience, even stubbornness, is needed if you want to see this through. Reworking new systems and processes is not swift and resources are always limited. Pauses may be required to accommodate other priorities. Strong, close working partnerships with stakeholders across the university are essential to progress.

    We would love to hear from other universities who are embarking on this journey to share successes and challenges and co-solve common issues.

    Are you ready to do this in-house? 

    When considering whether your university is ready to go it alone in launching online education, you would likely need to answer ‘yes’ to the following five questions:  

    1. Is there full executive support?  
    2. Is launching online education a top 5 strategic priority?  
    3. Is there appetite for significant financial investment? 
    4. Is there a willingness to redesign traditional structures and processes?  
    5. Is there capacity and capability to undertake systems development where required?  

    If these things are not in place, then I would probably suggest reaching out for external support. OPM partnerships have proven valuable for many institutions and have helped expand access to online education. There are many different ways of approaching this – long terms partnerships or fee for service options are all available to the sector in unbundled ways that were not part of the offer ten years ago. 

    For universities able to make this investment, building an in-house function offers something beyond new course launches: it builds the institutional ability and capacity to help navigate and succeed in an uncertain future. 

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  • Whole-of-society defence needs an alliance that universities actually own

    Whole-of-society defence needs an alliance that universities actually own

    “Whole-of-society” has become the sort of phrase that looks great in a strategy document and sounds faintly absurd when you say it out loud in a committee room. But the UK is now using it a lot in defence and security.

    With the government signalling it wants to accelerate defence spending, the question is no longer whether universities will be pulled closer into the defence ecosystem, but how. If the flagship mechanism – the Defence Universities Alliance – is built as something done to universities rather than with them, it will fail on the only metric that really matters: legitimacy.

    On paper, the Defence Universities Alliance sounds sensible: a structured relationship between defence and higher education, rather than a scatter of contracts, one-off announcements, and informal networks. Done well, it could align skills provision, research pathways and national resilience planning in a way that is currently missing.

    But here is the problem. If the alliance is built as something done to universities – a procurement wrapper with a comms strategy – it will fail. If it is built with universities – through consultation, shared governance, and genuine partnership – it could close a serious gap in UK readiness. Too often, the sector is invited to deliver, not to design.

    That gap is simple: we are building a defence skills pipeline at speed, but we still do not have a serious framework for universities in national resilience.

    A fast-moving pipeline

    The government has announced an £80m investment, delivered via the Office for Students, to expand capacity in computing and engineering with “defence-related skills” in mind. The guidance is explicit about additional student places over the next three academic years, alongside capital funding for facilities.

    This is not abstract. In early February the minister chose to make the announcement at the University of Portsmouth, explicitly linking defence industry needs, regional growth, and skills pipelines. That is policy theatre, yes – but it is also policy direction. The government is signalling that higher education is part of the defence industrial base, whether institutions like the framing or not.

    The pace matters because it changes the order of operations. When money is on the table, activity accelerates. Governance, legitimacy, and consent often come second.

    That is exactly why the Defence Universities Alliance cannot be a late-stage branding exercise. It needs to be the place where the awkward questions get answered up front.

    Overlooked resilience assets

    If you stop thinking of universities as lecture theatres with branding, their role in readiness becomes obvious.

    Universities are geographically distributed, often centrally located, and have large estates that can be repurposed quickly. They have laboratories and specialist equipment, expert staff, and deep links into local economies and public services. They host large student populations who, in a crisis, are not just “learners”, but a community with housing, welfare, and safeguarding needs.

    They can also convene. In many towns and cities, universities are among the few institutions able to pull councils, the NHS, police, third sector and employers into the same room quickly. That convening power is a form of resilience – and it is not talked about enough.

    And yet recent commentary on UK wartime readiness planning makes the point bluntly: universities are overlooked. Not because they are irrelevant, but because nobody has properly joined up the policy and governance that would make their role legitimate and workable.

    So we end up in an odd position. Universities are being asked to help deliver “defence-related skills” and defence-adjacent research outputs, while their broader resilience contribution remains largely unplanned. They are treated like a supplier, not a partner.

    The funding context

    This is where the sector context matters. The financial fragility of UK higher education is increasingly being framed as a national resilience, if not security, issue. If providers retrench hard – closing courses, cutting capability, shedding staff – the loss is not simply fewer graduates. It is the thinning-out of skills and institutions that underpin security in the widest sense.

    In that context, defence-linked funding can look like a lifeline. There is an emerging narrative that defence research and defence-aligned skills investment might help universities stay afloat, especially as other income sources wobble.

    But when money is tight and geopolitics is hot, mobilisation tends to happen quickly and unevenly. If institutions are pulled into defence activity through ad hoc pots, quiet partnerships, and hurried decisions, even socially useful work will start to look like stealth militarisation. And that is how you manufacture backlash.

    The uncomfortable truth is that the main constraint on “whole of society” defence in universities is not capacity – it is legitimacy. If universities lose trust, they lose the very qualities that make them useful in a crisis: autonomy, credibility, and convening power. A Defence Universities Alliance that ignores this will not just be unpopular. It will be strategically self-defeating.

    A transparent alliance

    If the Defence Universities Alliance is going to be more than a logo, it needs to answer three questions that are currently being dodged.

    First, define “defence-related”. If the alliance is only about producing more engineers for industry, it will feel like a narrow pipeline project. If it is about national resilience, it must also include cyber resilience, AI assurance, information integrity, languages, logistics, health capability, and the ability to reason under uncertainty. A credible taxonomy matters because it shapes what gets funded, what gets celebrated, and what gets quietly deprioritised.

    Next, share governance. An alliance without shared governance is not an alliance. Universities will not accept – and should not accept – a model that bypasses academic freedom, campus ethics processes, or public accountability. If government wants universities to play a resilience role, it needs to treat them as institutions with their own legitimacy, not as delivery arms.

    Finally, set transparency as the default. Not a press release – a register. Who funds what, to do which kind of work, with what ethical review, and what is withheld on genuine security grounds. Secrecy-by-default is an accelerant: it turns legitimate disagreement into suspicion, and suspicion into mobilisation of a different kind.

    These are not “nice to haves”. They are the operating conditions for stability.

    The alliance should also do something more basic: connect universities into resilience planning properly, without coercion.

    If we want institutions to contribute in a crisis, there should be pre-agreed protocols and relationships, not frantic phone calls and unclear expectations. That means formal integration into local and national resilience structures, with clear boundaries that protect institutional independence. It also means planning for the student population itself: welfare, housing, safeguarding, and communications are not side issues in a national emergency.

    And it means acknowledging that readiness is not just kit and contracts. It is also trust. Universities are one of the few national institutions that still retain a measure of public credibility across diverse communities. If government squanders that credibility by rushing engagement without consultation, it will make readiness harder, not easier.

    The choice we are drifting into

    The UK is moving quickly: money for defence-related skills, a strategy that casts defence as an engine for growth, and an emerging mechanism in the form of the Defence Universities Alliance.

    But “whole of society” cannot just mean “whole of provider”.

    We can build an alliance that treats universities as a convenient subcontractor – and be surprised when legitimacy collapses and campus contestation becomes the story.

    Or we can build a Defence Universities Alliance that universities actually own: consultation up front, shared governance, transparency by default, and a readiness role that protects academic independence rather than undermining it.

    The next steps are not complicated. Before the Office for Students allocates the bulk of the new funding, and before the alliance architecture hardens, publish draft terms of reference, run a time-limited consultation with providers, students and staff, and be explicit about the transparency default. That is how you turn a slogan into a settlement.

    If government wants universities in the defence ecosystem, it also has to take responsibility for the governance that makes that ecosystem legitimate.

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  • Ensuring Financial Sustainability for European University Alliances

    Ensuring Financial Sustainability for European University Alliances

    Cover of EUA report

    The European University Association (EUA) released a report “Strategies for the financial sustainability of European Universities alliances” last week. The briefing explores the long-term financial sustainability of European Universities alliances, noting that after six years of implementation, these consortia must move beyond reliance on short-term project grants. While the report proposes a “temple” framework for sustainability; built on institutional purpose, full-cost understanding, income diversification, efficiency, and leadership.It highlights several critical unanswered questions and unresolved tensions:

    Unresolved Funding Responsibilities

    • Public Funding Roles: It remains unclear which level of authority, European or national, should be responsible for the long-term structural and organisational costs of alliances.
    • National Disparities: There is no solution yet for the “unevenness” of national funding, which creates financial capacity gaps between partners in the same alliance.
    • Invisible Contributions: A significant portion of alliance funding comes from institutional block grants, yet this contribution often remains invisible in policy debates and is not systematically quantified.

    Gaps in Cost and Operational Awareness

    • Full-Cost Identification: A majority of institutions (55%) indicate that costs are not fully covered, and many lack a structured model to calculate the substantial indirect costs of participation, such as staff time and digital infrastructure.
    • Diminishing Efficiency: While alliances are expected to generate economies of scale, the report notes that these efficiencies have “not yet materialised at scale” and that activities remain resource-intensive.

    Strategic and Legal Hurdles

    • Research Integration: Most alliances were formed for teaching cooperation; it is still unclear how they can effectively define common research priorities to successfully compete for Horizon Europe funding.
    • Regulatory Barriers: National regulations continue to prevent or complicate critical sustainability efforts, such as joint staff recruitment and the sharing of physical research infrastructures.
    • Future Formats: The report questions whether the current “binary” model (alliance vs. non-alliance) is sufficient, suggesting a need for more flexible, less cost-intensive cooperation formats that have yet to be defined.

    Building on the report’s conceptual framework, these alliances have established specific thematic focus areas to drive their joint research and teaching activities. The following table compares the strategic priorities of a selection of major European University alliances:

    Comparative Strategic Priorities of Selected Alliances

    Alliance Key Thematic Focus Areas
    EuroTech Universities Additive manufacturing; AI for engineering systems; Health & bioengineering; Sustainable society (Space, Circular economy, Smart mobility); Entrepreneurship & innovation.
    Una Europa Cultural heritage; Europe and the World; One Health; Sustainability; Data Science & Artificial Intelligence.
    Aurora Sustainability & Climate change; Digital society & Global citizenship; Health & Well-being; Culture: Diversities & Identities; Social entrepreneurship & Innovation.
    ATHENA Emerging manufacturing technologies; Digital society & Digital arts; Assistive technologies; Artificial Intelligence; Sustainable materials and energy; Health & Food technologies.
    UNITE! Industry 4.0; Entrepreneurship; Artificial Intelligence; Sustainable energy; Biological engineering; Space; Cybersecurity.

    Implementation Challenges for These Priorities

    While these themes are well-defined, the report highlights significant barriers to making them sustainable:

    • Research Alignment: Because many alliances were originally formed for cooperation in learning and teaching, their shared research profiles are often underdeveloped. This makes it difficult to define common priorities for competitive funding.
    • Individual Competition: Member universities often continue to compete against each other for the same European research grants individually or through different consortia.
    • Operational Silos: Competitive funding applications are typically initiated at the laboratory or individual academic level, rather than through central alliance structures.
    • Resource Sharing: Regulatory complexities and a lack of geographical proximity currently make the sharing of physical research infrastructure nearly “unattainable”.

    The report’s conclusion is that to secure the future of European higher education, institutions must transition from short-term project “chasing” to a strategic model of long-term financial resilience. This report provides the essential roadmap for institutional leaders to align alliance participation with their core mission, accurately quantify hidden costs, and navigate the complex funding landscape between national and European authorities. 

    While European University Leaders would benefit from reviewing the report whether or not they are currently part of any of these current networks, other countries (including here in New Zealand Aotearoa) can benefit from taking heed of the challenges and solutions proposed here.

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  • German chancellor echoes the frequent — and illiberal — call to end online anonymity

    German chancellor echoes the frequent — and illiberal — call to end online anonymity

    We’ve said it before. We’ll say it again. Ending online anonymity is not some magical cure to “fix” whatever problems you believe plague the internet and its culture. And for whatever ills may exist on social media, this kind of cure would be worse than the disease. But German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at an event this week that online anonymity is a problem — and he wants it to end.

    “I want to see real names on the internet. I want to know who is speaking,” Merz said on Wednesday in Trier, Germany. “In politics, we engage in debates in our society using our real names and without visors. I expect the same from everyone else who critically examines our country and our society.”

    Merz also expressed concerns about fake news, algorithms, and the prevalence of social media use among minors (German politicians are currently discussing following other nations in adopting a social media ban for teens).

    German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Shutterstock.com)

    It’s one thing to praise the value and benefits of speaking out under your true identity, but German citizens have reason to be troubled by Merz’s comments. For one, given the extent to which Germany and European nations regulate internet speech, Merz and other officials may indeed push for further rules that require social media users to post under their real names. Second, and most importantly, what you post online can already have consequences in Germany. There are very real risks of telling the world who you are when you tell them what you think.

    German police regularly raid the homes of those accused of hateful speech, or even just insulting speech — sometimes in pre-dawn raids, where the target’s electronics are seized. Prosecutors have said that online insults may be taken more seriously because of the more permanent nature of speech typed rather than spoken. And, believe it or not, insults directed at politicians are treated even more harshly under German law than those about non-public figures.

    Anonymity isn’t some minor issue. For many people, it’s the only way they can express themselves.

    So you can probably see why German citizens (or any nation’s citizens) of all political persuasions might prefer to have at least the initial protection of a pseudonym when they engage in political speech online.

    But Americans should remember that our right to speak anonymously online is under attack here at home, too. Legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and the growing state-by-state age verification bills present a real risk to the privacy and anonymity of American adults and minors alike.

    Free Speech Dispatch

    The Free Speech Dispatch is a regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression.


    Read More

    Perhaps even more urgent for Americans are the reported efforts by the Trump administration to unmask citizens who have done nothing more than exercise their rights to condemn and discuss government acts. A disturbing Washington Post investigation earlier this month detailed how the Department of Homeland Security is abusing oversight-free administrative subpoenas to target protected speech, including a man who sent an email about efforts to deport an Afghan asylum seeker on humanitarian parole.

    The New York Times followed with a report that DHS has issued hundreds of these subpoenas to tech companies, including Google and Meta, to get identifying information for people who have criticized ICE or discussed where and when agents are conducting operations. (This month, FIRE filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over their efforts to strong-arm Apple and Facebook to take down speech reporting on ICE activity.)

    Anonymity isn’t some minor issue. For many people, it’s the only way they can express themselves. German citizens should speak out to protect the future of anonymous speech in their country. And Americans must, too. 

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  • Inside the Retention Gap: Why Adult Student Retention Demands a New Strategy [Infographic] 

    Inside the Retention Gap: Why Adult Student Retention Demands a New Strategy [Infographic] 

    Adult student retention has become a defining measure of institutional health. As colleges and universities expand online programs to serve working professionals and adult learners, persistence has become just as important as enrollment.

    To better understand today’s retention realities, Collegis partnered with UPCEA to survey online adult learners and higher education leaders nationwide. We examined what’s driving stop-out risk, where institutional strategies fall short, and how perceptions differ between students and leadership.

    The results reveal a clear disconnect and a significant opportunity to rethink adult student retention with greater alignment, flexibility, and data-informed strategy.

    Explore the key findings below.

    Closing the Adult Student Retention Gap Starts with Alignment

    The research reveals four clear disconnects: institutions prioritize structure while adult learners prioritize flexibility; students value dashboards more than leaders realize; support models remain generic despite varied life stages; and nearly half of institutions don’t track online retention at all.

    Improving adult student retention requires more than small adjustments. It demands student-centered strategy, integrated data, and proactive engagement built around the realities of adult learners’ lives.

    The infographic offers just a snapshot. Download the full eBook to access the complete findings and build a smarter, more effective adult student retention strategy.

    Download the Complete Report

    “The Retention Disconnect: What Adult Learners Need and What Institutions Miss”

    Callie Malvik is an Associate Content Director at Collegis Education, where she leads content strategy to help higher ed institutions grow and evolve. With a background in journalism and more than a decade of experience in higher ed digital marketing, she specializes in creating compelling, SEO-driven content that connects with audiences and drives results.

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  • The Society for Research into Higher Education in 2015

    The Society for Research into Higher Education in 2015

    by Rob Cuthbert

    In SRHE News and Blog a series of posts is chronicling, decade by decade, the progress of SRHE since its foundation 60 years ago in 1965. As always, our memories are supported by some music of the times. This is the last of the series.

    2015 was a troubled year, as wars and terrorist outrages proliferated. Russia had invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 and a supposedly agreed ceasefire in 2015 broke down within days, as had a previous agreement in 2014. The war in Iraq involving Islamic State, which had started in 2013, would not end until 2017. Islamic State were also involved in the Syrian civil war, drawing in more and more major powers on opposite sides. It would continue until the Assad regime was overthrown in 2024, but elsewhere the Arab Spring popular uprisings had mostly faded. Massacres in Nigeria by Boko Haram killed more than 2,000 people. Al Qaeda gunmen killed 12 people and injured 11 more in Paris at the offices of newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Al-Shabaab killed 148 people, mostly students, at the Garissa University College in Kenya. A terrorist bomb probably brought down Metrojet Flight 9268, an Airbus A321 airliner which crashed in Sinai, killing 224 passengers and crew. Another Airbus was deliberately crashed by its first officer in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. An earthquake in Nepal killed 9000 people, and at least 2200 people died in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca.

    Xi Jinping had been leader of China since 2012, as had François Hollande in France; Angela Merkel was in her tenth year as German Chancellor and Barack Obama was halfway through his second term as US President. The UK general election in 2015 was won by the Conservatives under David Cameron; their former coalition partners the Liberal Democrats suffered their worst result in recent history, paying for their betrayal of Nick Clegg’s “pledge” before the 2010 election to abolish HE tuition fees, even though they almost said sorry. The Labour Party elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-serving British monarch. The Paris Agreement at COP 21 saw countries agreeing to “do their best” to keep global warming to “well below 2 degrees C” and Greece became the first advanced economy ever to default on a payment to the International Monetary Fund.

    Australia beat New Zealand to win the Cricket World Cup, jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand. The Rugby World Cup was held in England but the hosts flopped as New Zealand beat Australia in the final. Microsoft launched Windows 10, and a new startup called OpenAI was founded.

    Higher education in 2015

    In 2015 the dominant theme in higher education was internationalisation. A 2016 book by Paul Zeleza (Case Western Reserve University, US), The Transformation of Global Higher Education 1945-2015 argued that “Internationalization emerged as one of the defining features of higher education, which engendered new modes, rationales, and practices of collaboration, competition, comparison, and commercialization. External and internal pressures for accountability and higher education’s value proposition intensified, which fueled struggles over access, affordability, relevance, and outcomes that found expression in the quality assurance movement.”

    The Economist leader in March said the world was going to university but: “More and more money is being spent on higher education. Too little is known about whether it is worth it”. Students in Canada, Netherlands, UK and elsewhere were still protesting, trying to hold back the river of commercialisation, but they were just washed away.

    Simon Marginson (by then at the UCL Institute of Education) naturally provided the authoritative commentary in his 2016 article in Higher Education: “Worldwide participation in higher education now includes one-third of the age cohort and is growing at an unprecedented rate. The tendency to rapid growth, leading towards high participation systems (HPS), has spread to most middle-income and some low-income countries. Though expansion of higher education requires threshold development of the state and the middle class, it is primarily powered not by economic growth but by the ambitions of families to advance or maintain social position. However, expansion is mostly not accompanied by more equal social access to elite institutions.“

    The Going Global conference in 2015 in London had 1000 VCs and others debating “the impact of the greatest global massification of higher education ever experienced”, as NV Varghese, Jinusha Panigrahi and Lynne Heslop reported for University World News on 27 February 2015. Oxford University provided its own report on International Trends, and there was continuing progress towards a common European Higher Education Area, as the 2015 Implementation Report said: ““The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has evolved towards a more common and much more understandable structure of degrees. There is, however, no single model of first-cycle programmes in the EHEA.” No single model for pop music either, as the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna was won by Sweden with “Heroes” (no, me neither) and George Ezra’s European tour included Budapest.

    UK HE in 2015

    In 2015-2016 there were 162 publicly-funded HE providers in the UK; HESA held data on all of them, plus the decreasingly private University of Buckingham. In addition there was HE provision in FE colleges and other places. Of the 2.3million HE students, 60% were full-time undergraduates. 56.5% of all students were female, 43.5% male. Total numbers had been falling since 2011-2012, because the decline in part-time numbers had outstripped the continuing growth of full-time and sandwich student numbers, up by 5.8% over the same period. Business and administrative studies was the most heavily populated at both UG and PG levels, as in previous years; at PG level Education was second. Reflecting the globalisation of HE, UK universities in 2015-2016 had over 700,000 students registered in transnational education.

    The 2004 Higher Education Act (2004 c. 8) had established the Arts and Humanities Research Council and provided for the appointment of a Director of Fair Access to Higher Education. It set out arrangements for dealing with students’ complaints about higher education institutions and made provisions on grants and loans for FHE students. Then came the 2005 Education Act (2005 c. 18), which renamed the Teacher Training Agency (established by the 1994 Education Act) as the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA). The Learning and Skills Council was set up by the 2007 Further Education and Training Act (2007 c. 25) and the 2008 Sale of Student Loans Act (2008 c. 10) allowed the government to sell student loans to private companies. The school leaving age went from 16 to 18 under the 2008 Education and Skills Act (2008 c. 25) and the2009 Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act (2009 c. 22) created a statutory framework for apprenticeships, and established among other things the Young People’s Learning Agency for England (YPLA), the office of Chief Executive of Skills Funding and the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual).

    Labour might have had a head full of dreams, but many of their new structures were dismantled after the coalition government was elected in 2010. There was bad blood between Education Secretary Michael Gove and the teacher unions’ ‘blob’; his 2011 Education Act (2011 c. 21) put an end to the General Teaching Council for England, the Training and Development Agency for Schools, the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency and the Young People’s Learning Agency for England. The Act also ended the diploma entitlement for 16 to 18 year olds and abandoned Labour’s aim of making 18 the upper age limit for participation in education.

    The tortuous rise of HE fees for undergraduates was usefully summarised in a 2015 House of Commons Library Briefing Note. The £1000 fee introduced in 1998 had risen to £3000 after 2006, in a move which almost brought down the Labour government. The 2010 election saw the Liberal Democrats renege on their pre-election ‘pledge’ to abolish tuition fees, instead agreeing with their Conservative coalition partners to triple them instead, which had many asking ‘What do you mean?’ The £9000 fees were partly a consequence of the Browne Review, but the government as always cherry-picked the recommendations it liked and ignored the package which was proposed. A 2010 vote set fees at between £6000 and £9000, but as everyone had predicted – except the Universities Minister David Willetts – English universities scrambled en masse to charge £9000, for fear of otherwise being labelled as inferior. The £9000 fees took effect in September 2012, while in other parts of the UK tuition fee arrangements increasingly diverged from England’s world-beating fee levels. The fee rose with inflation to £9250 but was then frozen, fiscal drag which would cost HE many £billions in revenue and lead to today’s widespread financial problems.

    In June 2011 the government published the White Paper Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System, but the anticipated Higher Education Bill did not follow. Minister David Willetts was not letting go; he brought forward a package of reforms to change HE regulation: placing the funding council in an oversight and coordination role; establishing a Register of Higher Education Provision; introducing designation conditions for HEIs, and a new designation system for alternative providers; updating the Financial Memorandum; reforming student number controls, including a system for alternative providers; and creating a Designation Resolution Process. Once again Sue Hubble of the House of Commons Library provided a definitive record in September 2013, noting some commentators’ criticisms that such sweeping changes had been achieved by administrative procedures rather than primary legislation.

    In July 2015 DBIS updated the statistics on widening participation, which showed continuing but erratic progress despite too many policy interventions. We had to wait until November 2015 for a Green Paper, Fulfilling Our Potential, which proposed establishing a Teaching Excellence Framework, abolishing the Higher Education Funding Council for England and replacing it with the Office for Students. It would not be until 2017 that the Higher Education Reform Act confirmed and enshrined these changes in statute. HEPI Report 161, edited by SRHE member Helen Carasso (Oxford), looked back on the 20 years since HEPI’s formation in 2022-2023. It included a chapter by SRHE Fellow Michael Shattock (UCL) on how ‘self-governed’ universities (I doubt if we’ll see you again) were forced to say Hello to a ‘regulated’ university system: “The year 2003 can be seen as starting point in a process of systemic governance change in UK higher education.”

    SRHE and research into higher education in 2015

    By 2015 research into higher education had been noticed even in the furthest corners of academe. A 2012 book chapter by philosopher Andre V Rezaev (St Petersburg State University) was thinking out loud: “… to articulate a possibility for integrating a number of perspectives in studying higher education as a scholarly subject in current social science. We begin with the reasons for such an undertaking and its relevance. We then develop several basic definitions in order to establish a common conceptual basis for discussion. The final section presents new institutionalism as one of the ways to integrate several approaches in understanding higher education. This chapter is rather theoretical and methodological in its outlook. We develop the basic approach that, in many respects, is still a work in progress. We take in this approach a set of arguments that open up new research agenda rather than settled a perception to be accepted uncritically.” Even latecomers were of course welcome.

    With due ceremony SRHE staged a 50th Anniversary Colloquium in London on 26 June 2015. The congregation of more than 200 people included almost everyone who had been anyone in HE research in the UK, and many places beyond, gathered in Westminster for discussion and celebration, primed by ‘think pieces’ from SRHE Fellows past and future. The themes encapsulated the scope of research into HE: Learning, Teaching and the Curriculum (Marcia Devlin); Academic Practice, Identity and Careers (Bruce Macfarlane); The Student Experience (Mary Stuart); Transnational Perspectives (Rajani Naidoo); Research on HE Policy (Jeroen Huisman); Going Global (Paul Ashwin); Access and Widening Participation in HE (Penny-Jane Burke); and, Reflective Teaching in HE (Kelly Coate).

    The Society had managed to shake off its financial woes and was flourishing in financial and academic terms. The chairs from 2005 were Ron Barnett (UCL), George Gordon (Strathclyde), Yvonne Hillier (Brighton), and Jill Jameson (Greenwich). The successful series of books published by the Open University Press had ended when it was swallowed by McGraw-Hill, but a seamless change led to a new and even more successful series with Routledge from 2012. SRHE News was reimagined and relaunched in February 2010, and the SRHE Blog followed from 2012. The Society’s office moves continued, switching in 2009 from the Institute of Physics in Portland Place to a brief sojourn at Open University offices in 44 Bedford Row, London, before finding a longer-term home on the second floor at 73 Collier Street in London. In 2009 the annual Research Conference was held for the first time at Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales (where François Smit might often have said shut up and dance). It would return every year until 2019, just before Covid disrupted the world, including the world of research into higher education. The Society would however emerge even stronger, having discovered the power of online meeting (if you don’t believe me, just watch) to expand its global reach, as a more prominent complement to the still essential face-to-face meetings in networks and conferences.

    Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email [email protected]. Twitter/X @RobCuthbert. Bluesky @robcuthbert22.bsky.social.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • 31 Colleges Agree to End Partnerships With PhD Project

    31 Colleges Agree to End Partnerships With PhD Project

    The PhD Project aimed to support underrepresented students who are pursuing a doctoral degree in business. But ED said it discriminated against students by limiting eligibility based on race.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | CSUDH/iStock/Getty Images | WSCUC NEW

    All but 14 of the 45 universities placed under investigation for participating in the PhD Project and allegedly violating civil rights law have agreed to cease partnering with the organization, the Education Department announced Thursday.

    The Office for Civil Rights launched the investigations last March, arguing that the PhD Project, a nonprofit organization that connects prospective business doctoral candidates from underrepresented backgrounds with academic networks, was “limit[ing] eligibility based on the race of participants.” 

    So by supporting or partnering with the PhD Project, OCR accused the universities of violating regulatory guidance from the department as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. (Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.)

    The 31 universities that reached agreements with OCR had either already terminated their relationship with the nonprofit or have agreed to do so moving forward. They’ve also agreed to review their partnerships with all other external organizations to ensure they don’t also restrict participation based on race, according to the department.

    “This is the Trump effect in action: institutions of higher education are agreeing to cut ties with discriminatory organizations, recommitting themselves to abiding by federal law, and restoring equality of opportunity on campuses across the nation,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a news release. “We are hopeful that other institutions with similarly discriminatory practices will follow suit, paving the way for a future where we reject judging individuals by the color of their skin and once again embrace the principles of merit, excellence, and opportunity.”

    Documents obtained by The Washington Post and a story published by the paper prior to ED’s announcement further reinforced that the terms of the agreement extend well beyond cutting ties with the PhD Project.

    Before the department’s announcement, the Post reported that colleges under investigation had already ended partnerships with “a range of organizations associated with racial minority groups,” showing the broader reach of OCR’s push against the PhD Project.

    For instance, the University of Kentucky flagged more than 1,200 affiliations that could put the state flagship institution at risk, saying they would be canceled or undergo “deeper review.” Ohio State University limited its support for students and faculty members attending the conferences of race-based affinity groups.

    And just a day prior to announcing the PhD Project resolutions, the department agreed to end race-based criteria for the McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, which is part of TRIO and focuses specifically on supporting low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students pursuing doctoral degrees.

    The announcements about McNair and the PhD Project come just weeks after the Education Department announced that it was dropping its appeal in a lawsuit that challenged the regulatory guidance that spurred these investigations. The guidance document, known as a Dear Colleague letter, declared all race-based scholarships, student support services and programming illegal based on a broad interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that banned race-based admissions.

    By withdrawing the appeal, the department essentially agreed to an existing ruling from a lower court that blocked the guidance after a judge found it unconstitutional. But that doesn’t mean the administration has given up on its larger goal of ending all race-based programs.

    Since the appeal was withdrawn, the Trump administration has pointed to other guidance from the Department of Justice and the text of Title VI to justify its ongoing actions.

    “The Department has full authority under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to target impermissible DEI initiatives that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin,” Julie Hartman, press secretary for legal affairs at the Education Department, told K–12 Dive on Feb. 4. “Title VI has always prohibited schools from racial preferencing and stereotyping, and it continues to do so with or without the February 14th Dear Colleague Letter. OCR will continue to vigorously enforce Title VI to protect all students and hold violators accountable.”

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  • How One College Teaches Students Compassion

    How One College Teaches Students Compassion

    Cris Tietsort was invited into a political science course at the University of Denver to talk to students about compassion at a time when political polarization and social isolation are reshaping campus life. He began with a simple question: What are your values in a calm moment?

    “It’s really important for people to clarify their values in a good moment, instead of a heated moment, because that’s when we get really hot, we get emotional, and our brain goes to a different place,” said Tietsort, an assistant professor of organizational communication at the University of Denver.

    The lesson is one of many Tietsort developed through the Compassion Lab, which he launched as a one-time course in fall 2023 to help students respond thoughtfully to disagreement.

    The following year, the lab became a mobile classroom—an opt-in program for faculty and staff who want to bring its lessons into their courses, from political science and business classes to residential assistant training—with the goal of equipping students with skills they can carry into their future professions.

    More than 600 students have participated in the lab, Tietsort said, and over 90 percent reported that they better understood how to put compassion into practice.

    “A lot of undergraduates feel alone and they feel like it’s vulnerable to reach out,” Tietsort said. “How do we help support students having meaningful connections with others? I see compassion as the heart of that.”

    The Compassion Lab is part of the University of Denver’s 4D Experience, a universitywide initiative launched in fall 2022 that aims to help students develop intellectually, socially and emotionally. The 4D Experience includes the lab, peer mentors and immersive experiences such as retreats at the Kennedy Mountain Campus.

    Laura Perille, executive director of the 4D Experience, said the initiative responds directly to what employers say they want in graduates, including strong interpersonal skills, empathy and the ability to navigate conflict.

    “The goal is to really think about how we embed this in both the curriculum and co-curriculum in ways that are better preparing our students for life and workplace success,” Perille said.

    Erin Anderson-Camenzind, a professor and the 4D Experience’s director of faculty innovation, said the foundation Tietsort created through the lab makes that broader integration possible.

    “If we can provide [students] with multiple touch points for building compassion over their time at the University of Denver, then that’s when it becomes part of that identity that we really want for them,” Anderson-Camenzind said.

    Fostering compassion on campus: Tietsort said there are two versions of the Compassion Lab: one more skills-focused and one more knowledge-focused.

    The skills-focused version is typically used when faculty want students to build tangible tools that apply directly to their major or a course they’re taking.

    “If I go into, say, a business class and we’re talking about compassion—not among friends but in the business world—it may need to be more of a motivational conversation,” Tietsort said. “It may need to be ‘How can we help you understand that compassion is actually essential for leadership, and what are the organizational outcomes?’”

    The knowledge-focused version, by contrast, goes deeper into what effective support looks like and the research behind compassion.

    “I had one student who said they leaned too far toward compassion, which resonates with how sometimes we’re overly compassionate and miss an opportunity to challenge someone,” Tietsort said. “They really appreciated talking about the nuts and bolts of that.”

    Ultimately, Tietsort said, the lab’s flexibility is what makes it effective across disciplines.

    “I always adapt to the faculty in the class because I want it to feel personalized to what they’re doing,” Tietsort said. “Some faculty want more engagement; some faculty want it to just be something that’s dropped in.”

    More than 600 students have participated in Tietsort’s Compassion Lab.

    Why compassion matters: Perille said students are entering a world marked by polarization, loneliness and fractured connections—realities she said make the lab and the broader 4D Experience all the more important.

    “It’s really building out a network of curricular and co-curricular strategies, faculty and staff professional development, to make sure that we are collectively creating a culture and an ethos that prioritizes these things,” Perille said. “That’s really critical to how we think about this approach.”

    Anderson-Camenzind echoed that sentiment, noting that cultivating compassion among students requires institutional support.

    “We need to have structures in place that provide faculty and staff with the compassion and support they need, or else they may have a really hard time doing it for our students,” Anderson-Camenzind said.

    For Tietsort, the goal is ultimately to help students see compassion as central to leadership.

    “If you become a better empathic listener, that’s not just going to have a deep impact in your own life and building relationships, but that’s going to impact you in the workplace,” Tietsort said.

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  • Owner Wants to Give Away Green Mountain Campus

    Owner Wants to Give Away Green Mountain Campus

    The former Green Mountain College campus is hitting the market. The price tag? Free.

    Owner Raj Bhakta—who bought the campus for $4.5 million in 2020 after the college closed in 2019—wants to give away the property in rural Vermont, Seven Days reported. Bhakta, a distiller and former contestant on The Apprentice, a reality show that starred Donald Trump, launched a website seeking proposals and is specifically looking to hand the campus over to someone with “a vision aligned with the revival of the United States and Western Civilization.”

    Bhakta specified in a news release he wants it to go to a “Catholic mission-based organization.”

    Interested parties must “recognize this must first begin with the spiritual revival of our Christian faith. It will be upon coherence with this mission that candidates will be judged,” according to the site. While Bhakta is not looking to sell the property, the website notes, “It will cost at least $1 million a year to operate the campus”; it encourages recipients to budget $1.5 million annually to “maintain existing infrastructure” and to “catch up on deferred maintenance.” Potential beneficiaries “must be able to demonstrate sufficient resources to maintain the property.”

    The campus is located in Poultney, Vt., on the western side of the state, and estimated to be worth more than $20 million, according to the news release, which indicates that ideal uses for the property would be for Catholic education, retreats or mission centers. The property includes approximately 115 acres and multiple academic and residential buildings.

    The deadline for interested parties to submit proposals is March 31.

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  • Mott Community College President Accused of Proselytizing

    Mott Community College President Accused of Proselytizing

    Mott Community College is mired in conflict over claims that its president, Shaunda Richardson-Snell, proselytized on campus on multiple occasions, including asking a Native American visitor to campus whether he accepted Jesus as his savior.

    The Michigan college’s Board of Trustees held a special meeting on Wednesday to address the issue, attracting community members who came out in full force for two hours of heated public comment. Some argued Richardson-Snell exercised her right to religious expression while others insisted she crossed the line as the head of a public college. Richardson-Snell wasn’t present at the meeting because of a conference, according to board chair Jeffrey Swanson.

    After coming out of closed session, the board delayed taking any action but agreed to revisit a motion to make a public statement, drafted by trustee Santino Guerra, at a regular meeting on Monday.

    The statement under consideration says the college “affirms the constitutional right to freedom of religion and respects the deeply held beliefs of all individuals.” At the same time, it notes, “as a public institution, the college also has a responsibility to maintain an environment that is inclusive and welcoming to people of all faiths and those with no religious affiliations. Of course, we expect all members of the campus community to exercise their rights in a manner that respects the diversity of beliefs represented at Mott.”

    This week’s special meeting follows a December letter to Richardson-Snell from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in which the nonprofit said it had received a complaint “regarding several occasions” on which she “made proselytizing religious comments in her capacity as President of Mott Community College.” The letter, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, asked for a response within 30 days.

    “Allowing any College employee—but especially an employee as high profile as the President—to use their positions to religiously proselytize students, employees, or visitors conveys disrespect for the beliefs of the community and sends the message that those who do not practice the officially favored faith are unwelcome outsiders who do not belong,” Ian Smith, staff attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, wrote in the letter. “The College has a constitutional duty to ensure that this behavior ends. Please do so.”

    The Concerns

    Celia Perez Booth, a retired Mott Community College professor and a local Native American community advocate, raised concerns about the president proselytizing at an October meeting.

    She told the board that Richardson-Snell asked her son, a Native American visitor to campus who was participating in a peace and dignity ceremony on Indigenous People’s Day, “if he had been saved and accepted by Jesus as his lord and savior.”

    “Other people heard you and were shocked by your repugnant question,” Booth said. “How can we trust you or have respect for you when you use your position to disrespect us?”

    A student also reported having a conversation with Richardson-Snell that had religious undertones, regarding students’ use of artificial intelligence, trustee Art Reyes shared at the October meeting. Reyes told the board the president reportedly asked the student “if he was aware of the ‘one truth’ and that there was only one truth.”

    She “then started espousing her beliefs as it pertained to what that one truth is and then further went on and indicated that there’s a struggle for the world and that the devil was involved in trying to take this over,” Reyes said at the meeting.

    The college’s faculty union, the Mott Community College Education Association, raised similar concerns in an Oct. 16 message to human resources. Brian Littleton, president of the union, wrote that some faculty members “felt uncomfortable with President Richardson-Snell’s outward expression of religious faith during workplace interactions.” He also cited an instance in which Richardson-Snell told him “God was on her side” regarding grievances the union raised over its collective bargaining agreement.

    “It was very off-putting because I had no response for that,” Littleton told Inside Higher Ed. “This is not a religious issue.”

    He emphasized that Richardson-Snell’s personal faith isn’t the problem.

    “We believe people have their right to their beliefs,” he said, and diversity, including religious diversity, is prized at Mott. But “there’s a line when you have a position of authority that you have to be careful that you don’t unduly influence others when you have that leadership.”

    The college’s general counsel, John Gadola, responded to the faculty union in a November message, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, that the U.S. Constitution “protects religious expression” and the college’s employment policies “uphold freedom of speech and expression for all employees.”

    Prompted by the worries others raised, Kathleen Watchorn, an alum of the college whose son ran for a Mott board seat in 2024, filed the complaint with Americans United for Separation of Church and State out of concern for the direction of the college.

    “To criticize religion in any way or to bring it up is almost taboo,” Watchorn told Inside Higher Ed. “But this is a public college. It’s not a Christian university, and the president has no business asking people about religious beliefs in her job as president.”

    At this week’s special board meeting, community members came down on both sides of the issue. Members of local churches argued Richardson-Snell shouldn’t be penalized for expressing religious convictions.

    “There is no separation of faith and self,” Miosha Robinson, a leader of Good Church in Flint, Mich., told the board. “What was done was an expression of who she is. There is no way that she could go through life and not share her faith.”

    Compounding Conflict

    Board attorney Carey DeWitt said at the Wednesday meeting that he investigated complaints about the president “very carefully” when concerns first surfaced in October.

    He provided guidance to the board, “decisions were made about the issue, and they were implemented by the board in December,” he said—before it received the Americans United letter. He didn’t share what decisions the board made or what the resolution of the investigation was.

    DeWitt wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed that he “used as a guide” the U.S. Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the court sided with a high school football coach who prayed with his students on the field, arguing in part that students were not required to participate and he was acting in his capacity as a private citizen.

    “We asked whether either a First Amendment establishment clause or free exercise clause violation was presented and concluded that neither was present,” DeWitt said. “Nonetheless, we chose to re-emphasize the applicable principles of Bremerton so as to ensure future compliance.”

    Trustee Kenyetta Dotson raised concerns that no memo went out to the public regarding an investigation and argued that some form of statement from the board was “well overdue.”

    Littleton similarly expressed disappointment that this Wednesday was the first faculty heard of an investigation, which he believes should have been conducted by a neutral third party. He described the ordeal as an example of broader transparency issues on the board.

    Trustee John H. Daly, who initially called for the special meeting, said he plans to propose the board undertake an independent investigation on Monday. He regrets that the board didn’t respond more quickly and clearly to complaints.

    “An investigatory process, from my perspective, is not punitive,” he said. It’s to determine “what happened and was that a conflict with either the law or the college bylaws.” He stressed that it’s “not about religion,” but about ensuring a higher ed leadership role isn’t being used “to promulgate a personal bias or opinion.”

    The conflict over Richardson-Snell’s religious comments builds on existing tensions at the college surrounding her tenure. The board sparked controversy when a faction voted her in as interim president in July 2024, despite critiques that she lacked higher ed experience. Its decision to permanently hire her six months later without a national search process prompted further backlash. At the time, a local pastor, Christopher Thoma, and other Christian community members came to her defense in board meetings, arguing that Richardson-Snell had valuable corporate leadership experience and was under fire because of her beliefs.

    Watchorn said, beyond her concerns about proselytization, she’s been disturbed by the “partisan” tone of board infighting in recent years and worries the public’s concerns about campus leadership aren’t being sufficiently and transparently addressed.

    “We need some answers,” she said. “Why are you behaving the way you’re behaving?”

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