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  • Why are campuses quiet as democracy is in crisis? (opinion)

    Why are campuses quiet as democracy is in crisis? (opinion)

    A close friend who works at a nearby college asked me why, in 2025, there haven’t been student protests of the kind that we saw during the Vietnam War and after the killing of George Floyd.

    She questioned why campuses seem eerily quiescent as events in Washington, D.C., threaten values essential to the health of higher education, values like diversity, freedom of speech and a commitment to the greater good. We also wondered why most higher education leaders are choosing silence over speech.

    Deans and presidents seem more invested in strategizing about how to respond to executive orders and developing contingency plans to cope with funding cuts than in exerting moral leadership and mounting public criticism of attacks on democratic norms and higher education.

    My students have their own lists of preoccupations. Some are directly threatened and live in fear; some see nothing special about the present moment. “It is just more of the same,” one of them told me.

    And many faculty feel especially vulnerable because of who they are or what they teach. They, too, are staying on the sidelines.

    All of us may be tempted by what a student quoted by the Yale Daily News calls “a quiet acceptance and a quiet grief.” None of us may see a clear path forward; after all, the president won a plurality of the votes in November. How can we save democracy from and for the people themselves?

    I do not mean to judge the goodwill or integrity of anyone in our colleges and universities. There, as elsewhere, people are trying their best to figure out how to live and work under suddenly changed circumstances.

    No choice will be right for everyone, and we need empathy for those who decide to stay out of the fray. But if all of us stay on the sidelines, the collective silence of higher education at a time when democracy is in crisis will not be judged kindly when the history of our era is written.

    Let’s start by considering the role of college and university presidents in times of national crisis. In the past, some have seen themselves as leaders not just of their institutions but, like the clergy and presidents of philanthropic foundations, of civil society.

    Channeling Alexis de Tocqueville, Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld explains that “the voice of leaders in civil society help[s] certify truth,” creating “priceless ‘social capital’ or community trust.” He asks, “If college presidents get a pass, then why shouldn’t all institutional leaders in democratic society shirk their duties?”

    In the 1960s and ’70s, some prominent college presidents refused to take a pass. The University of Notre Dame’s Theodore Hesburgh became a leading voice in the Black civil rights struggle. Amherst College president John William Ward not only spoke out publicly against the Vietnam War, he even undertook an act of civil disobedience to protest it.

    A half century earlier, another Amherst president, Alexander Meiklejohn, embraced the opportunity afforded by his position to speak to a nation trying to recover from World War I and figure out how to deal with mass immigration and the arrival of new ethnic groups.

    At a time of national turmoil, he asked Americans some hard questions: “Are we determined to exalt our culture, to make it sovereign over others, to keep them down, to have them in control? Or will we let our culture take its chance on equal terms … Which shall it be—an Anglo-Saxon aristocracy of culture or a Democracy?”

    Those questions have special resonance in the present moment.

    But, especially after Oct. 7, college presidents have embraced institutional neutrality on controversial social and political issues. That makes sense.

    Yet institutional neutrality does not mean they need to be silent “on the issues of the day when they are relevant to the core mission of our institutions,” to quote Wesleyan University president Michael S. Roth. And, as Sonnenfeld notes, even the University of Chicago’s justly famous 1967 Kalven report, which first urged institutional neutrality, “actually encouraged institutional voice to address situations which ‘threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.’”

    Do attacks on diversity, on international students and faculty, and on the rule of law and democracy itself “threaten the very mission of the university”? If they don’t, I do not know what would.

    As Wesleyan’s Roth reminds his colleagues, “College presidents are not just neutral bureaucrats or referees among competing protesters, faculty and donors.” Roth urges them to speak out.

    But, so far, few others have done so, preferring to keep a low profile.

    The silence of college leaders is matched by the absence of student protests on most of their campuses. Recall that in 2016, when President Trump was first elected, “On many campuses, protests exploded late into election night and lasted several days.”

    Nothing like that is occurring now, even as the Trump administration is carrying out mass deportations, threatening people who protest on college campuses, attacking DEI, calling for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, ending life-saving foreign aid programs and trampling the norms of constitutional democracy.

    Mass protests on campuses can be traced back to 1936, when, as Patricia Smith explains, “college students from coast to coast refused to attend classes to express their opposition to the rise of fascism in Europe and to advocate against the U.S. involvement in foreign wars.”

    They were followed by the University of California at Berkeley’s free speech movement in the 1960s and protests against the Vietnam War, including those that occurred after fatal shootings of student protesters at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard. There were anti-apartheid protests in the 1980s, and, more recently, students across the country organized protests against police brutality and racism after George Floyd’s death and against Israel’s military actions in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

    Though there have been small protests on a few college campuses, nothing like what occurred in response to those events has transpired in 2025.

    Students may have learned a bitter lesson from the crackdowns on protesters engaged in pro-Palestinian activism. And many of them are deeply disillusioned with our democratic institutions. They care more about social justice than preserving democracy and the rule of law.

    Students may not be following events in the nation’s capital or grasping the significance of those events and what they mean for them and their futures.

    It is the job of those of us who teach at colleges and universities to help them see what is happening. This is no time for business as usual. Our students need to understand why democracy matters and how their lives and the lives of their families will be changed if American democracy dies.

    Ultimately, we should remember that the costs of silence may be as great as the costs of speaking out.

    M. Gessen gets it right when they say, “A couple of weeks into Trump’s second term, it can feel as if we are already living in an irreversibly changed country.” Perhaps we are, but Gessen warns that there is worse to come: “Once an autocracy gains power, it will come for many of the people who quite rationally tried to safeguard themselves.”

    Gessen asks us to remember that “The autocracies of the 20th century relied on mass terror. Those of the 21st often don’t need to; their subjects comply willingly.”

    At present, college and university presidents, students and faculty must care about more than protecting ourselves and our institutions. We must speak out and bear witness to what Gessen describes and warn our fellow citizens against compliance.

    This will not be easy at a time when higher education has lost some luster in the public’s eyes. But we have no choice. We have to try.

    Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

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  • Social media can benefit college students with disabilities

    Social media can benefit college students with disabilities

    College students often have a complicated relationship with social media, with a large number of learners active on multiple social media platforms but also aware of the negative mental health consequences social media can have.

    Teens receive hundreds of notifications on their phones every day, with over half of one study’s participants receiving more than 237 notifications per day. Nearly one in five teens say they’re on YouTube or TikTok almost constantly, according to a 2023 survey from Pew Research.

    A May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found one-third of respondents indicated social media was one of the biggest drivers of what many call the college mental health crisis.

    A recent study authored by a group of researchers from Michigan State University and published in the Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education evaluates how students with disabilities interact on social media and build social capital.

    Researchers found disabled students—including those with autism, anxiety, attention-deficit and/or hyperactivity disorder—were more likely to seek out new relationships and engage in active social media posting, which can advance connectedness and relationships among learners.

    The background: While social media can offer users social supports, such as promoting a sense of belonging during times of transition or crisis, it also poses risks for young people, including cyberbullying and online harassment, according to the study.

    Previous studies show youth with disabilities experience higher rates of cyberbullying compared to their peers, but students with disabilities are also more likely to report they receive social support through social media, which could be tied to the social isolation they can experience in person.

    Existing literature often focuses on the negative effects of social media for young adults with disabilities, but it is not known if there are differences between the experiences of those with and without disabilities and their social media habits.

    “Understanding different learners’ experiences with social media could help college faculty, special education professionals, and counselors not only consider using social media to create more welcoming and supportive learning environments but also how they might play a role in building individual learner’s capacity for positive digital participation,” researchers wrote.

    Methodology: Researchers conducted a survey of college undergraduates in the U.S. with and without disabilities in fall 2021, collecting data on social media use, social capital and psychological well-being. In total, 147 students responded to the survey.

    From this sample, researchers selected five individuals with and five individuals without disabilities to participate in semistructured interviews. Participants were matched based on social media habits and demographic factors, such as gender.

    Results: Through postsurvey interviews with 10 students, researchers learned that while both groups of students engage on social media for personal entertainment and to stay connected with people in their social circles, students with disabilities were more likely to say they used social media to initiate and grow relationships.

    All five participants without disabilities used Snapchat to interact with friends or keep in touch with loved ones in an informal manner, and all participants used Instagram to stay up-to-date with their peers.

    Among the five participants with disabilities, students reported using more social media platforms individually, and these learners were more likely to use TikTok (which in fall 2021 first hit one billion monthly active users compared to Instagram’s then-two billion users) compared to their peers. Students reported using TikTok for watching videos, sharing humor with their friends or participating in larger community building, including professional learning networks or cosplaying.

    Students without disabilities were more likely to say social media made no difference on their relationships or that it positively impacted their relationships by allowing them to stay in touch over geographical distances or other barriers.

    Similarly, all students with disabilities said social media assisted with their relationships, allowing them to connect with new people, expand their community and help manage their disabilities by connecting with others.

    Some respondents with disabilities said they felt more confident to engage with strangers in a safe way online and that social media was an avenue to find like-minded people they wouldn’t ordinarily interact with, allowing them to build new relationships. This was a unique trend to students with disabilities; those without were more likely to say they use social media to engage with people they already had relationships with.

    Students with disabilities may have greater challenges with in-person socialization, which researchers theorize makes social media particularly important for these learners, who also said they’re more likely to post on social media versus passively scroll.

    Interacting with others in the disability community and breaking stigma around disability was another theme in conversations with disabled students. These interactions could be with peers who share their disability or from medical professionals or support groups who provide new information.

    One limitation to the research was social desirability bias, or respondents’ tendency to answer questions in a way that would please researchers, meaning students underreport undesirable behaviors. The sample included only female and nonbinary students, which creates further limitations to the data.

    Put in practice: Researchers offered some suggestions for how educators can utilize this data to create a more inclusive learning environment, including:

    • Integrating social media into the classroom. While some digital learning platforms have forums for community building, such as a discussion board, these platforms can be less accessible than traditional social media platforms.
    • Facilitating personalized learning environments. Higher education leaders can consider ways to use social media to create formal and informal learning experiences in and around courses. These learning environments can also include methods for peer communication and connection, helping make learning more collaborative.
    • Engaging on social media themselves. Self-disclosure by professors can help build relationships in the classroom and enhance learning, but instructors must weigh safety, privacy and other legal boundaries in their social media usage. This could be one way to model positive social media usage for students, including how to have productive interactions with others.

    In the future, researchers see opportunities for analysis of design, implementation and evaluation of social media interventions for connection among students with disabilities, such as peer mentoring programs, online support groups or digital storytelling. There should also be consideration of the long-term effects of social media use on students’ mental health and well-being.

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  • The Timpson university – HEPI

    The Timpson university – HEPI

    • By Richard Brabner, Executive chair of the UPP Foundation and Director of ESG at UPP.
    • Richard is a guest on today’s My Imaginary University podcast with Paul Greatrix, in which he cites James Timpson as one of the inspirations behind his imaginary university. To coincide with the podcast, Richard has penned a review of James Timpson’s book, The Happy Index: Lessons in Upside-Down Management.

    You’re not supposed to have heroes at 40, or at least not admit to as much in the august pages of the HEPI blog. But here’s my confession. I have two and they are both called James.

    The first – James (Jimmy) Anderson, England’s greatest living sportsperson – isn’t relevant for the blog (although surely he deserves recognition from our great universities in the North West?). Instead this blog is about the other James – James Timpson – until recently CEO of Timpson Group and now Lord Timpson, Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending.

    James Timpson is best known for the recruitment of former prisoners, with ex-offenders comprising around 10% of his company’s workforce at any one time. As his journey of employing ex-offenders developed, it led him to become a national figure – championing not just jobs for ex-offenders but prison reform. In 2016, he became the chairman of the Prison Reform Trust, founded the Employment Advisory Board network across the prison estate and, after the general election, became one of the Government’s most eye-catching appointments as the Minister of State responsible for all of this.

    It is his approach as a CEO, though, which offers an interesting perspective for higher education leaders. Not only is the business known for its recruitment policies but for many other progressive measures. He wouldn’t describe it as such, but James Timpson is a business leader known for putting social purpose into action.

    He would steer clear from using the term social value, or the increasingly common ‘purpose-led business’, because he finds corporate jargon maddening. This is one of the many lessons he shares in his book, which offers advice to leaders and would-be leaders on how to create a thriving organisation ‘that puts people first.’ The book – published before he became a Minister – is structured in eight chapters (or, as he calls them, lessons) with various interesting observations included in each. For this blog, however, I have pulled out three key themes which permeate through the book and are highly relevant to our sector.

    1. Happy colleagues = happy students

    University-employee relations are often fraught with tensions and have been riddled with industrial action in recent years – so could a key-cutting business offer a better way forward?  

    We’ve seen the transformative power of treating colleagues with kindness and respect, which then extends to how teams interact with customers. It’s a virtuous circle that can make our shops, and indeed all places of customer service, better for everyone involved.

    The quote above might come across a stating the bleeding obvious or even a little saccharine without the rest of the chapter it is written in, but it is important to put cynicism aside here, because throughout the book – and I would argue its number one focus – is to foster the right colleague experience.

    The idea of focussing on the colleague experience in an era of redundancies and ‘cost transformation’ may be too culturally difficult or simply inauthentic for our sector. But I would argue that the present circumstances make it even more important. At the heart of Timpson’s approach is a very human and empathetic one which respects colleagues’ individual circumstances rather than one which relies on policies and processes.

    Timpson has a Director of Happiness (again, please hold off on your cynicism) whose job revolves around providing support to colleagues confronting crises or challenges in their professional or personal lives. This person helps organise funerals, helps colleagues find somewhere to live and can even unlock financial support when necessary. Whether it is physical fitness, financial wellbeing or mental health, Timpson also offers a comprehensive package of welfare support for employees. Shouldn’t we do this too?

    Strong workplace benefits add to the positive colleague experience. This is not unusual for universities; academics and professional services tend to have great annual leave entitlements and exceptional pensions (compared to the private sector), but again, what comes through from reading The Happy Index is the human and empathetic element to their approach. They offer extra days off for milestones – a grandchild’s birthday or a school concert. They provide chauffeur-driven cars for an employee’s wedding, and they own 19 holiday homes dotted across the UK for Timpson’s colleagues to use for free.

    Much of this approach isn’t new or revolutionary, there are clear similarities with the 19th century quaker businesses, or Percival Perry’s policy of ‘high wages, reduced hours, and extensive corporate welfare’[1] for running Ford’s first factories in the UK. Yet, in an era of private equity financialisation, it is all too rare in the modern age. When Governments talk about universities learning from the private sector it is the likes of Timpson they should be referring to.

    2. Focus and simplicity

    Timpson’s human approach to the colleague experience is aided by simplicity – a value which cuts across the eight lessons in the book. When he writes about data, he says that leaders can become overly reliant on it and lose sight of what really matters. There are only four pieces of data James Timpson really cares about. Daily sales figures, customer service scores, cash flow – and what he describes as The Happy Index. This is a survey they regularly run and track with all colleagues, which asks one simple question: ‘On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you with the support you get from your team?’.

    If Timpson is right in his view that ‘the way colleagues feel reflects the way our customers will feel’, wouldn’t it be fascinating to see if this correlates to higher education? Perhaps universities could post this question each Friday via an app (not dissimilar to innovations like Teacher Tapp) to track colleague satisfaction and then correlate it with student experience data.

    Another relevant piece of advice is to avoid ‘entrepreneuritis’. Timpson says this is an area he struggles with as it is common for entrepreneurs to think they can venture into any business and make it thrive. Yet the pitfalls are as large as the opportunities. This reminded me of much of the evidence for the UPP Foundation Civic University Commission, where we found a huge amount of positive activity, but rarely was it strategic and connected to the needs of the city or region.

    The civic arena won’t be the only part of the university where our sector has to grapple with entrepreneuritis, but fortunately, Timpson offers some common-sense advice for how to test whether diversification is worth the investment, time and effort, based on three questions:

    Will it benefit the company, will the company fit into our culture, and is it going to be more work than it’s worth?

    All of these can be adapted for higher education.

    3. Giving back to get more

    The third theme brings us back to what Timpson is best known for. A ‘Timpson University’ would really lean into progressive recruitment for both academics and professional services colleagues, as well as adopt some of the most creative and impactful social value programmes in the private and public sectors. This shouldn’t be regarded as an act of charity. This is very much enlightened self-interest – James Timpson says that ‘returning citizens are often the most dedicated, honest and hardworking colleagues we can find’. A recruitment policy for colleagues which looks at supporting the most disadvantaged – ex-offenders, people who have suffered homelessness or who are care-experienced; alongside local recruitment (as some universities already do), which targets the poorest neighbourhoods in the region, could be transformational. The additional opportunity for a university, unlike a shoe repair shop, is the symbiotic relationship this approach could have with its widening participation strategy.

    Many universities have programmes to support disadvantaged people into employment, but I’m not sure any are as sophisticated or impressive as Timpson’s. There are clearly challenges, but the book is at its best when it details the journey the business has been through and some of the ways to successfully manage ex-offenders – unsurprisingly, the human approach and a culture which embraces kindness and the support and guidance of colleagues is critical.

    James Timpson’s book is a fascinating insight into running a successful business the right way. It really does show the art of the possible in terms of doing good while making a profit. But there are three weaknesses in a largely excellent read. Pulled together from a collection of Sunday Times articles, at times it can suffer from a lack of coherence. It is quite amusing, for example, to read about the importance of returning to the office on page 160 while finding out about the long-term potential of remote work on page 166. There’s also a little too much positive spin throughout the book. In the section about entrepreneuritis and diversifying income streams all of his examples ended up being successful. It would have been an even better read if he offered examples of real failure. I would have also liked to read more about his views on how the nature of business ownership impacts social value, something which should be explored in greater depth.  

    These are minor criticisms, however. The book offers excellent advice for leaders in any sector – even our universities – on the way to run a successful organisation in the 21st Century.

    [1] Kit Kowol: Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War

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  • Motivational Force: Building a Foundation for Student Success – Faculty Focus

    Motivational Force: Building a Foundation for Student Success – Faculty Focus

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  • Workers are cannibalised by the capitalist class (Nancy Fraser)

    Workers are cannibalised by the capitalist class (Nancy Fraser)

    The world is facing multiple crises simultaneously: Climate change, the rise of authoritarian movements, and the exploitation of labor from the Global South, among others. Professor of philosophy and politics at the New School, Nancy Fraser, says “it can’t be a coincidence” – at the root of it all is capitalism.

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  • HEDx Podcast: How many international students does Australia need? – Episode 154

    HEDx Podcast: How many international students does Australia need? – Episode 154

    Abul Rizvi was the deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, then the deputy secretary of the Department of Communication.

    He has a PhD in Immigration Policy from the University of Melbourne, and came to Australia as part of a migrant academic family.

    He argues Australia’s current visa system is unjust, proposes his alternative to student caps, and says we need to change government attitudes to international students.

    Do you have an idea for a story?
    Email [email protected]

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  • Universities Australia wishlist for next election

    Universities Australia wishlist for next election

    Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy. Picture: Supplied



    By: Erin Morley

    in Funding, Policy & Reform, Politics, Top Stories


    February 17, 2025

    The peak body representing universities, Universities Australia (UA), has said the federal government should offer more money and less bureaucracy to the higher education sector ahead of the election due by April.

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  • Competition law is a constraint to collaboration in HE but it need not be an impediment

    Competition law is a constraint to collaboration in HE but it need not be an impediment

    There has been much discussion in recent months about financial pressures in the higher education sector and what could be done by stakeholders in the sector – government, regulators and higher education institutions themselves – to address these.

    One such proposal is a strategy of “radical collaboration” between institutions, ranging from mergers to federations, or shared services and centrally operated services. Indeed, the Office for Students (OfS) has cited radical collaboration as a likely response to the financial challenges in the sector:

    Where necessary, providers will need to prepare for, and deliver in practice, the transformation needed to address the challenges they face. In some cases, this is likely to include looking externally for solutions to secure their financial future, including working with other organisations to reduce costs or identifying potential merger partners or other structural changes.

    This notion of radical collaboration goes beyond the traditional practice of academically driven collaboration. Instead, in this context radical collaboration refers to deeper, more extensive and far-reaching strategic collaboration, involving institutions working together to achieve a strategic shared mission and/or efficiencies. This might include, for example, curriculum sharing, or collaborating on a regional basis where institutions collectively decide which is best placed to deliver particular courses or subject areas.

    While the notion of “radical collaboration” may present a potentially appealing way of responding to the challenges that the sector is facing, there is, however, a significant tension between the principles of such transformational integration and the principles of competition law. As things currently stand, many forms of greater integration between institutions, particularly in relation to curriculum mapping and sharing the provision of courses, would breach the competition rules.

    UK competition law and higher education

    Competition laws seek to safeguard free and fair competition between “undertakings” (ie any entity that is engaged in economic activity) for the benefit of consumers, with the aim of creating competitive markets which benefit from the efficient allocation of resources; innovation; lower prices; increased choice; and better-quality products and services for customers.

    Competition laws therefore prohibit agreements and understandings between independent “undertakings” that have, as their object or effect, the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition. Some agreements are regarded as being so harmful to competition in their nature that they are prohibited outright, for example, agreements between competitors to fix prices, share markets, limit output, or co-ordinate or rig tenders. These types of agreements are highly likely to attract vigorous enforcement action by the competition authorities, including the imposition of substantial fines. A finding that an organisation has breached competition rules (or even an allegation of a breach) would inevitably lead to negative publicity and reputational harm.

    While the higher education sector may not bear all the hallmarks of a traditional, fully competitive market, it does fall within the scope of the UK’s competition law regime. Higher education institutions are “undertakings” for the purposes of competition law because they are engaged in “economic activities”; they provide education and other ancillary services to undergraduate and postgraduate students, create jobs which benefit their local and the national economy, as well as develop new products and services.

    Moreover, higher education institutions have to compete to “win” students, competing to a certain extent on price, in the context of international or postgraduate provision, but primarily on non-price factors of competition, such as choice of course/course content; quality of provision; reputation; and the range and quality of ancillary services, such as sports provision, accommodation and other student services. Higher education institutions also compete in “upstream” labour markets to attract and retain talent (ie teaching and research staff).

    Collaboration between sector participants can undoubtedly be positive and pro-competitive. Such arrangements may be permitted by competition law if (among other things) the collaboration produces efficiencies which benefit consumers. For example, when properly structured, benchmarking exercises or arrangements between institutions to share facilities can lead to the more efficient allocation of resources. However, collaboration between sector participants which dampens or reduces the levels of competition that would otherwise exist between them, and/or which produces no clear benefits for consumers, risks breaching the competition rules.

    A clear understanding of where the line is drawn between collaboration which promotes competition and delivers consumer/student benefits, and collaboration which reduces or distorts competition, is therefore important. If this boundary is not well understood, or the boundary itself is not appropriately drawn, the competition rules could act as a barrier to the very innovation and collaboration which the OfS and the government are relying upon to alleviate some of the pressures facing the sector. Indeed, in an interview last week, vice chancellor of Cardiff University Wendy Larner commented that competition law was preventing the kind of collaboration on course provision that she felt was necessary.

    Competition regulation from OFT to CMA

    More recent regulatory scrutiny of the sector has focused on consumer law aspects. Nonetheless, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and its predecessor, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), have reviewed mergers between higher education institutions – for example, the University of Manchester / Victoria Manchester / University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology merger in 2005. And in 2014, the OFT conducted a call for evidence in order to gain a better understanding of how choice and competition were working in the higher education sector in England in response to policy developments that sought to foster the development of a competitive market.

    The OFT’s report, following the call for evidence, noted that the most “serious and prevalent” concerns raised by stakeholders related to the extent to which fears of breaching competition law might hinder beneficial cooperation between institutions. However, the report also noted that despite “many generic references” by stakeholders to the potential (perceived) tensions between collaboration and competition, “there were no substantive examples that would justify, because of their relevance and/or novel nature, the production of specific OFT guidance beyond that already available.”

    That said, the report also noted that there was scope for the (then incoming) CMA to highlight that:

    • cooperation which delivers countervailing consumer benefits (ie benefits to students) may not pose a problem – examples given included benchmarking data; academic partnerships; sharing facilities; joint procurement activities.
    • where cooperation between higher education institutions can promote efficiencies, collaboration should be allowed to take place.

    The OFT’s report was published a decade ago at a time when the sector was arguably in a different place. The types of collaborative activities identified by the OFT in its report as being beneficial and delivering benefits to students were very much the more traditional forms of cooperation and certainly some way removed from the radical collaboration concepts being discussed at present.

    It also appears to be the case that a lack of concrete examples demonstrating where the competition rules had, in practice, posed a barrier to beneficial collaboration influenced the OFT’s thinking. It is perhaps for this reason that the OFT’s findings were limited to acknowledging that cooperation which results in efficiencies should be allowed to take place and reminding institutions of the possibility of relying on an individual exemption from the competition rules.

    An individual exemption involves the institution(s) in question conducting a self-assessment of whether the proposed agreement restricting competition will benefit consumers to an extent that outweighs the harm to competition. In practical terms the notion of relying on a self-assessed individual exemption may not be attractive to many institutions. Four cumulative criteria must be met for the exemption to apply and, if the agreement is challenged, the party relying on the exemption bears the burden of proof for substantiating, with specific evidence, that the exemption criteria are met.

    Undertaking the self-assessment process in advance of entering into any agreement around radical collaboration would be a significant, evidence driven compliance exercise involving financial and economic modelling. However, even if institutions (and their advisors) were to conclude that it is likely that the exemption criteria are met, there would always be the risk that the CMA or a court might take a different view of the evidence and would disagree. Institutions may not be prepared to proceed with a high-stakes radical collaboration against this backdrop of uncertainty.

    Moreover, the criteria for individual exemption include the requirement that an agreement must improve production or distribution, or promote technical or economic progress, “while allowing consumers a fair share of the resulting benefit.” Consumers in this scenario means students. In other words, to rely on the exemption, any benefits accruing to the participating institutions from the collaboration must be passed on to a sufficient extent to the students. It would have to be demonstrated, with evidence, that the collaboration would result in lower prices, or better choice and quality, for students. It would not be enough for participating institutions to demonstrate that benefits merely accrue to them.

    It is also worth remembering that the CMA may offer non-binding views on the application of the competition rules to “novel” questions. The CMA has in fact expressed that it is open to hearing from the sector, perhaps in response to the vice-chancellor of Cardiff University’s critical comments.

    While seeking a non-binding view on a proposed form of radical collaboration may sound appealing, it is open to debate whether some of the collaboration proposals which have been mooted are genuinely “novel” in competition terms. For example, an agreement between competing institutions about who will offer certain courses would almost certainly be characterised as market sharing, a serious breach of the competition rules.

    What will it take to get things moving

    There’s an argument to be made about whether a wider national agenda from government on driving forward radical collaboration in higher education is needed, which takes into account the competition law issues. Similar questions to those facing higher education were recently debated in the competition law community in the context of how the competition rules apply to sustainability agreements – agreements between industry participants which are aimed at preventing, reducing or mitigating the adverse impact that economic activities have on the environment, or assist with the transition towards environmental sustainability. Specifically, a number of organisations had voiced concerns that the fear of inadvertently breaching the competition rules was preventing beneficial sector and industry collaborations aimed at delivering sustainability goals.

    In response, a number of competition authorities – including the CMA – proactively published guidance to help organisations apply the competition rules to sustainability agreements and collaborations. The CMA published its Green Agreements Guidance in October 2023 containing a clear statement of intent, along with practical and user-friendly guidance, that competition law should not impede legitimate collaboration between businesses that is necessary for the promotion or protection of environmental sustainability.

    The guidance also sets out welcome details of an open-door policy, by which businesses considering entering into an environmental sustainability agreement can approach the CMA for informal guidance on their proposed agreement if there is uncertainty on the application of the guidance. This policy also provides some reassurance that the CMA would not expect to take enforcement action against environmental sustainability agreements that correspond clearly to the principles set out in the guidance.

    To date the CMA has published two opinions under its open-door policy. These in turn form the beginnings of a body of decisional practice which will help inform organisations, as well as advisors, on the CMA’s approach to collaboration in this area, aiding self-assessment and informed decision-making.

    Given the extensive challenges facing the higher education sector, and the passage of time since the OFT’s call for information in 2014, this might be an opportune moment for the CMA to consider the specific issues facing the sector and to engage with the sector more extensively on how the competition rules apply in the sector.

    Taking steps to support a viable, flourishing higher education sector which, among other public goods, boosts economic growth, would undoubtedly be aligned with the government’s growth mission and, in turn, aligned with a key pillar of the CMA’s strategy of driving productive and sustainable growth. To the extent that the competition rules are perceived by institutions as presenting a barrier to collaboration that would deliver benefits to students, and where there are examples which show this, there may now be a case for specific higher education focused guidance, similar to the approach taken to the Green Agreements Guidance. Clear guidance, including worked examples on how the individual exemption should be applied and understood in the context of the higher education sector, could be a positive and welcome step forward.

    In a recent speech interim Executive Director for Competition Enforcement at the CMA Juliet Enser noted the work of the CMA in ensuring that its enforcement activities do not have a chilling effect on pro-competitive collaborations between competitors, referring to the sustainability guidance and the CMA’s work on competitor collaborations in the pharmaceutical sector. Enser said “where we are convinced on the evidence that there is a real risk, that absent our providing appropriate comfort, the economy will lose out on beneficial collaboration then we are prepared to act.”

    This is a positive statement from the CMA, signalling a proactive willingness to engage. In turn, the higher education sector could seize upon this invitation and commence a dialogue with the CMA, providing examples and evidence of where clarity on the application of the competition rules to the sector is needed, so that stakeholders can work towards pro-competitive collaborations which may ultimately benefit students, the higher education sector and the economy at large.

    This article is published in association with Mills & Reeve. Join us on Tuesday 4 March 12.00-1.00pm for Connect more, a free online event exploring the potential for more system-wide collaboration in higher education in England. Find out more and register here.

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  • “Safe rooms” set up for Jewish students at Sydney unis

    “Safe rooms” set up for Jewish students at Sydney unis

    Josh Burns MP led the parliamentary inquiry into campus anti-Semitism. Picture: Martin Ollman



    By: Erin Morley and NCA Newswire

    in On Campus, Top Stories


    February 17, 2025

    A high-security “safe room” has been set up for Jewish ­students at a top Sydney university after some reported feeling at risk due to anti-Semitism on campus, prompting Jewish leaders to say it should “shock us all” when young people “feel they need a sanctuary to escape” from hate.

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  • We are living through the legacy of unrestrained borrowing

    We are living through the legacy of unrestrained borrowing

    On 1 January 2018 the Office for Students took over the regulation of higher education in England from its predecessor (the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)).

    One little discussed impact of this change was an avalanche of university borrowing that has dramatically shifted the priorities and risk profile of English higher education.

    Terms and conditions

    As late as the 2017 memorandum of assurance and accountability between HEFCE and higher education providers, the regulator had the right of veto over university financial commitments over a certain level. If you wanted to borrow money, and you were talking “serious money” in relation to the size of your provider, the regulator needed to sign it off.

    That year written approval was required where total financial commitments exceeded six times the average adjusted net operating cashflow (ANOC) from July – or where the provider was assessed as being “at higher risk”. The year before, it was required when borrowing crept above five times the (six year) average EBITDA. And back in 2006 it was required for borrowing over 4 per cent of income.

    The levels may have shifted over the years but the principles remained the same – to ensure that providers in receipt of public funds offered value for money, and were fully responsible for the use of these funds. These broader requirements were set out in detail:

    HEIs must apply the following principles when entering into any financial commitments:

    a. The risks and affordability of any new on- and off-balance sheet financial commitments must be properly considered.

    b. Financial commitments must be consistent with the HEI’s strategic plan, financial strategy and treasury management policy.

    c. The source of any repayment of a financial commitment must be clearly identified and agreed by the governing body at the point of entering that commitment.

    d. Planned financial commitments must represent value for money.

    e. The risk of triggering immediate default through failure to meet a condition of a financial commitment should be monitored and actively managed

    At some point during the transition from HEFCE to OfS, all this was scrapped.

    The missing consultation

    If “at some point” sounds uncharacteristically vague that’s because the decision was murky even by higher education policy standards. The requirement was in the 2017 memorandum – it wasn’t in the OfS 2018 “terms and conditions” of funding, or any of the registration or information requirements, or the regulatory framework. The shift was never consulted on, it wasn’t in the Green or White paper, it was never discussed in parliament. It just kind of happened.

    In Wales, there are still requirements to get borrowing above a threshold signed off based on the 2017 Financial Management Code – however your (individual provider) threshold is built into the formulae of your financial forecast template. Thresholds are never published, but Medr may occasionally drop you a note to tell you what yours is. Which is nice.

    In Scotland things are (slightly) more straightforward: there is a threshold over which SFC’s formal consent is required. It’s not a concrete figure but a calculation to determine whether the total annualised cost of the borrowing exceeds 4 per cent of total income (according to a university’s last audited statements) or would exceed by 4 percent the estimated total income for the year in which the borrowing begins – whichever one is the lower.

    As things currently stand in England the explanatory sections on the D conditions of registration set up definitions of financial viability and sustainability. Viability is the interesting one here – for OfS purposes it means there is no reason to suppose the provider is at a “material risk of insolvency” (being unable to pay debts as they fall due) for the next three years. This clarifies that OfS does expect to know about borrowing (“have regard to” in fact) – and even suggests OfS would expect to be able to speak directly to lenders:

    It will be for the provider to ensure that the OfS is fully informed as to its financial facilities, and it will be expected to consent to the OfS making direct enquiry of the finance provider if requested to do so. The OfS may draw inferences from a failure to provide such consent.

    This approach to university borrowing can also be seen in the transition provisions that existed as OfS effectively carried on as HEFCE while it began to register existing providers – a commentary to the required audited data included the need for universities to include information on:

    Whether the provider is planning to take any loans from a bank, shareholders, directors or anyone else and, if so, information about these plans (how much is it planning to borrow, when will this be taken out, when will it be paid back, what will it be used for) and whether it will affect the provider’s viability or sustainability.

    A very good year

    This shift did not go unnoticed by universities, so 2017-2018 became a bumper year for university borrowing – with banks, private funds, and the bond markets all displaying an appetite for access to (then) underleveraged, secure, and low risk UK higher education.

    The 2017 HEFCE financial health publication noted that:

    At the end of July 2017, the sector reported borrowing of £9.9 billion (equivalent to 33.1 per cent of income). This is £980 million higher than the level reported at the end of 2015-16, which was £8.9 billion (30.7 per cent of income).

    By 2018 OfS as reporting that borrowing would reach £12bn by “year 2” (2017-18).

    At the end of Year 2, the sector reported aggregate borrowing of £12.0 billion (equivalent to 36.8 per cent of income), a 21 per cent rise of £2.1 billion compared to Year 1. Forecasts show that borrowing is projected to continue to rise in absolute terms over the four forecast years, reaching £13.3 billion by the end of Year 6.

    In the last quote, “year 6” is 2021-22 – the projection of aggregate borrowing was (as usual) on the low side. That year’s financial health report pegged it as just over £14bn.

    OfS, of course, could have decided to apply specific conditions of registration if it was concerned about borrowing at a particular provider. It still gets information on what universities are borrowing, and on what they plan to borrow in future, via the annual financial return (and there have already been rumblings about an increase in the amount and frequency of provided data). It could have stepped in to moderate the boom in borrowing since it took regulatory control of the sector – it did not.

    The morning after

    But the time of plenty has clearly passed – affordable finance is simply harder to come by, and the terms of existing borrowing (set during a more confident era) have often been renegotiated. The 2024-25 aggregate external borrowing is projected to be £13.3bn, and this for a much larger sector. And even the sector’s own (generally optimistic) forecasts suggest that it will drop further in years to come.

    This is very much the hangover after the party. The easy money simply isn’t there for the sector to borrow – all that remains is the improvements it paid for (hopefully in useful, tangible, things like estates and infrastructure), the repayments, and the interest.

    You can see that in the data (Based on what I know about what has happened so far I don’t think this includes stuff like bonds, so the figures are illustrative rather than precise) – the big peak in unsecured loans was in 2017-18, the academic year that restrictions came off (the smaller peak in 2020-21 represents the government backed Covid loans).

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    You can also see a peak in repayments in 2018-19: clearly many providers decided that with the brakes off, the easiest way to proceed was with short-term revolving credit. More worryingly for sector finances, interest repayments remain at 2018-19 levels even though borrowing has declined sharply – an impact of a rise in interest rates following a long period of near zero inflation.

    A legacy of loans

    In essence some of the blame for the current financial crisis faced by the sector can be attributed to this little-scrutinised decision to remove borrowing safeguards. Though estates (especially) benefited from this gold rush, the entry of UK universities into the world of private placements and bonds has left a legacy that will take decades (and hundreds of millions of pounds cut off the top of sector finances, and increasingly arduous restrictions on university activity within covenants) to reckon with.

    And these controls on university activity hit in numerous ways. As Philip Augar’s review noted, way back in 2019:

    Universities’ expansion has been partly funded through debt and financial arrangements known as ‘sale and leaseback’. The former includes bond issues and bank borrowing; the latter involves universities selling student accommodation for cash upfront, sometimes committing to provide specified numbers of rent-paying students to the new owner.

    A failure to meet challenging recruitment targets has a multiplier effect if you factor lender requirements into the equation.

    Was the removal of controls over borrowing the single most important regulatory act of the modern era? For those able to raise money in this way, it supported huge improvements in university estates and infrastructure. It provided the capacity that has underpinned recent growth – though not as much growth as we saw in the 90s and 00s, when a far greater proportion of capital came from the state.

    It’s at least arguable that for many larger and better known providers the amount of indirect control over their actions that has been ceded to investors via covenants linked to borrowing. has driven the dash for growth at all costs. If you’ve worked in a university during this period and feel like things have changed, this could be why.

    And it gets worse if you think about the aggregated risk across the whole sector – not least because the arms race of expansion forced the majority of the sector to seek private finance at roughly the same time. The numbers in the chart above are indicative – but even so show a sizable liability that could have a huge impact on the way providers behave. It’s the roots of the sector-wide dash for growth that the regulators have expressed concern about – but thus far the impression has been given that it is just empire building. It is survival.

    The next few years

    There is no easy fix. Though I think most of us believe that the government would step in in the event of provider failure – to protect the student interest certainly, and possibly to protect the local interest – what would happen to outstanding debts across multiple providers in these circumstances is less clear. It is entirely likely that a loan becoming due for full payment due to a breach in covenant conditions would itself be the cause of provider failure.

    In the bad old days, when the government was a significant source of both capital and recurrent funding for most universities in England, there was a thing called exchequer interest – a complicated and little-discussed aspect of public funding that means that assets purchased with public funds should revert at least in part back to the public. Exchequer interest as a consideration for capital investment has largely been replaced by lender interest – in the event of a provider collapsing large parts of abandoned campuses (which, of course, have been paid for by public funds in the sense that it is income from fees that has funded repayments) would revert to lenders.

    These buildings and this equipment would immediately lose a lot of value, which is one reason why lenders like to renegotiate rather than repossess. If you think about it, a large teaching block in the middle of a thriving campus is a clear asset – without the campus it is a liability that needs to be repurposed and maintained.

    So if you ever see the government stepping in to save an anchor institution, recall that private finance has an interest in seeing campuses continuing to throng with students. It’s a funny way to preserve the future of the sector, but we live in peculiar times.

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