This blog was kindly authored by Lauren Amdor, who graduated from LSE with a BSc in History and International Relations and has recently finished her post as the Activities and Communities Sabbatical Officer at LSE’s Students’ Union.
The 2023 Higher Education (HE) Freedom of Speech Act (the Act) has long been one to watch, especially after Labour paused its implementation last July. As an LSE Students’ Union (LSESU) Sabbatical Officer, the Act raised broader questions around how students’ education would be affected, which I explored in the research project Power to Speak and subsequent focus groups.
With 592 responses across LSE Departments, modes of study and domiciles, students were asked nine quantitative questions in the Power to Speak survey measured on a Likert scale which found that:
One-in-four respondents did not feel comfortable speaking up in class.
75% of respondents agreed that the teacher defines what speech is accepted in the classroom.
45% of respondents felt ill-equipped to encounter/respond to ‘damaging speech’ protected by free speech laws.
Half of the respondents agreed that campus lacked opportunities for groups with opposing views to engage in dialogue.
The tenth qualitative question asked students what they thought ‘promoting freedom of speech should look like’, given the upcoming duty on universities to promote this under the Act.
Student responses were coded into five thematic categories:
A safe environment to express or not express views (26.8%)
Freedom to express views without retaliation or consequences (23.6%)
Promoting and welcoming free speech (22.2%)
Students’ rights to protest (15.3%)
A zero tolerance to hate speech and violence (12.1%)
Two key points emerged, which universities and students’ unions should pay particular attention to:
Why did students report feeling unable to express their views?
Where do students think the line is with free (but offensive) speech, and why?
Institutional ramifications, not strictly legal ones, recurred throughout responses. This included fearing academic repercussions for articulating a converging perspective to their teachers, visa revocation and the social consequences of adopting minority viewpoints including being ‘judged’, ‘ostracised’ or ‘persecuted’. The most cited fear, however, was disciplinary action against students by the University which was also central in the Right to Protest theme. Here, students specifically referenced disciplinaries against those protesting for Palestine across higher education institutions. These various fears contributed to what students considered as ‘a chilling effect on free speech’ despite the high legal threshold for unlawful speech.
Inadequate tools and support systems to engage with conflicting perspectives was a significant issue. Students highlighted difficulties navigating emotionally charged topics, especially as university was the first time many had encountered diametrically opposing views. Shying away from these discussions was partly down to ‘the fear of the first time’ and accidentally causing offense, particularly appearing Islamophobic or Antisemitic. Limited experience in having these conversations exacerbated the individual burden felt and reported by students, as universities had seemingly not supported necessary skill development. Fluctuating stress across the academic year also elevated anxiety around difficult conversations or debates, further reducing the capacity to cope adequately. The demographic breakdown of Question 27 of the National Student Survey (NSS) suggested that minority-group students felt less free to express their views during their studies. A focus group discussing Faith in the Classroom further explored this trend, finding that practising students wanted to avoid dealing with possible arguments around personal beliefs. Departmental colleagues additionally identified how cultural norms regarding debate contributed to an uneven baseline from which students engage (discussed in the case of Chinese international students). Universities should be aware that certain student groups feel less equipped to navigate free speech and should therefore take a tailored approach to upholding it.
Although academic freedom laws ensure academic staff can express their views as they choose, this was considered a barrier to students participating in debate. Students consistently maintained that teachers should not necessarily ‘engineer neutrality for the sake of it’ but should be trained to foster a culture of academic disagreement without discrimination and manage conflicting views constructively and skilfully. Building trust and a positive rapport between students and academics was significant in empowering students to contest presented arguments and approach academic staff to discuss related issues.
Students expressed concern around speech which might harm and negatively impact minority student groups, and how a hostile campus environment impacted their overall education. How potentially harmful (but legal) views were presented was of equal concern, with most students accepting such speech if it was respectful and considerate to diverse and underrepresented experiences. This is effectively the debate around balancing free speech rights with the right to privacy and protection from discrimination under the European Commission of Human Rights. While institutions consult the OfS guidance on interpreting the Act and related questions, institutions also contend with the apparent lack of clarity amongst students, reiterated by consistent calls to draw a clear line and articulate ‘what free speech is not’.
Recommendations Arising from the Research Findings
Clarify how free speech, rights against discrimination and to privacy are practically balanced, and what speech or action might result in institutional disciplinaries, in an understandable way for students.
Create a baseline level of soft skills for respectful disagreement and debate as part of a university education, regardless of a student’s course of study.
Facilitate dialogue spaces ‘across religious, ethnic and ideological boundaries’, to counter polarisation, model respectful discussion of ‘controversial issues’ and assist students with this responsibility.
Equip teachers to facilitate debate across challenging topics while upholding Academic Freedom.
Where Do Students’ Unions Sit?
Students’ Unions (SU) are uniquely positioned to support students and institutions with the realities of the Act. As a student-led organisation, there is a clear opportunity to create student-led dialogue spaces for interested students, as the LSESU Campus Relations Group has done. Working with individual student societies additionally offers a chance to carve out pockets of safety for those encountering especially difficult perspectives at university. As a key liaison between institutions and students, SUs have an explanatory role to ensure students understand their rights related to the Act and university policy. And finally, as an acknowledged student voice mechanism, SUs can lobby their institutions on issues pertaining to students’ free speech or work with larger organising bodies (e.g. the National Union of Students) to lead national policy change.
HEPI Director, Nick Hillman OBE, takes a look at why today’s landmark report on student maintenancefrom HEPI, TechnologyOne and the Centre for Research in Social Policyat Loughborough Universityis so important.
Later today, HEPI will be hosting a free webinar with UCAS on this year’s admissions round – see here for details and to register for a free place.
A recent Wonkhe article by Will Yates of Public First noted, ‘It really was not that long ago that maintenance grants were the norm and student life was cheap and cheerful.’ We probably all know what he means.
When I went to the University of Manchester 35 years ago, I had no tuition fees and got to collect a grant cheque even though my parents were in secure middle-class jobs. Since then, life has become harder financially for students. Costs have gone up and grants have disappeared (in England). Meanwhile, the student body has diversified to include more people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
As if battling with the impact of COVID on their secondary schooling was not enough, today’s students face big financial obstacles. During my nine years as a Trustee of the University of Manchester (which sadly came to an end last month), I regularly ascended those same stairs I used to climb to collect my physical grant cheque in order to attend Board meetings at which we would discuss student poverty and its impact.
Will Yates’s conclusion needs qualifying of course. Just as it is true that there are today many poor pensioners alongside all the well-off ones who have cleaned up thanks to intergenerational inequities, so there have always been some students who struggled to survive on the maintenance support they received. I recently stumbled across the following exchange in Hansard from 1969, for example, on whether parents were making up the income of their student offspring in the way they have long been supposed to:
Mrs. Shirley Williams:I appreciate that students who do not receive the full parental contribution often suffer hardship. My Department recently wrote to local education authorities asking them to ensure that parents were made aware of the importance of making up the student’s grant. But I do not think it would be desirable or practicable to impose a legal obligation on parents to make their contributions. (Source: Hansard, 30 January 1969)
Plus ça change… Aside from the reference to local education authorities (which no longer have a role in student maintenance), the answer could have come from pretty much any one of the last seven decades.
These issues are topical in part because the threshold at which parents are expected to start contributing to their adult student offspring’s living costs has not increased for over 15 years – it was set at £25,000 for England by Gordon Brown (six Prime Ministers ago…). So parents in English households on just over £25,000 a year are expected to cough up – the situation is even worse elsewhere (just over £19,000 in Northern Ireland).
The recent HEPI / Advance HE Student Academic Experience Surveyshows over two-thirds of full-time undergraduates now do paid work during term time, and often at a dangerous number of hours (‘dangerous’ in the sense of impacting their academic work). So what has changed is the proportion of students who feel wickedly under-resourced financially.
The biggest lie told about students today is that they are pathetic ‘snowflakes’ who melt on contact with real life; in fact, when financially challenged, they tend to confront the problem head on by going out and finding paid work. Norman Tebbit would have been proud.
While my generation of students were debating or politicking or going to gigs, today’s students are more often serving those who do have the money to go out. In the UPP Foundation / Public First research that Will Yates was writing about, the students said they thought ‘it was them (rather than the university, the government, the OfS or any other body) who took responsibility for ensuring that they could afford to study and socialise.’
In my view, one of the very best projects we do at HEPI is the HEPI / TechnologyOne Minimum Income Standard. This is completely different to the student money surveys that ask students what their income is and how they spend it. Those are useful but only up to a point because what if the income is not enough? Knowing I have X pounds and spend X pounds is only of modest value if I actually need 2X pounds in order to afford the bus to campus, join my favourite student society and buy personal healthcare items (on this, see HEPI’s recent report by Rose Stephenson on menstruation and learning).
So the Minimum Income Standard starts with a blank sheet of paper plus a tried-and-tested methodology developed by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University to consider how much students really need to live with dignity – the calculation is not for a plush lifestyle nor a monastic one, but rather for a fairly basic-but-safe one and is based on the extensive experience of the research team as well as detailed focus groups with multiple students around the UK.
This year, the second such study dwells upon first-year students in Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (university halls and privately-owned student accommodation blocks). So it supplements last year’s study of second and third-years in shared ‘off-street’ housing. (In my view, it should really be called ‘on-street’ housing as it tends to be on normal residential streets, but I digress.)
While TechnologyOne have generously funded this vitally important work, I must stress that neither they nor HEPI have had any editorial control over the core central numbers, which are entirely Loughborough’s work and based on what students have told them. HEPI’s input has included feeding in supplementary figures for accommodation costs , with the help of Student Crowd and Students, and thinking through the possible policy consequences of the research.
The top-level finding is that first-year students living in halls need £418 a week – over £20,000 a year and double the maximum maintenance support package in England. Even if a student (in England, living away from home and studying outside London) is in receipt of the maximum maintenance loan, they need to work 20 hours a week throughout the year to earn enough money to hit the Minimum Income Standard. Remember, these are people on full-time courses. As a society, we are now expecting people to do full-time study and half-time paid work and then we wonder why young students struggle to feel a sense of belonging to their institution…
People should look carefully at the methodology and conclusions to see if they agree with them. As a think tank, our job is to make people think; we can identify the main challenges and propose solutions but we are not a lobby group, so we would never claim we have all the answers. There may be elements of the Minimum Income Standard for Students that people want to pore over, challenge and improve.
Some of the issues people may want to consider on the back of the MISS include:
As the report makes clear, student life is generally a temporary phase that lasts no more than three or four years. So is it reasonable to apply the same methodology as is used for defining the basic minimum income for someone in work or in retirement? It is valid, in my view, because three years still represents a substantial proportion of a young person’s life up to that point and undergraduate study is often the first period of real independence for people – plus some other phases of life for which the minimum income methodology has been applied are also not always very long term. For example, someone on a ‘living wage’ is likely to hope to rise above it in due course as they gain experience. Besides, in one sense, no phase of life is permanent.
A second important question is whether letting students define their own minimum standard of living via focus groups will always tend towards larger monetary sums. The Minimum Income Standard for Students assumes students are likely to have gym membership, a short UK holiday and other costs (like wireless headphones, a modest alcohol budget and food for takeaways) that some people may deem to be non-essentials or at least not things that should be subsidised by taxpayer-funded income-contingent student loans (though, on the other hand, we only include very small sums for study-related costs). The MISS also includes some costs than some people might deem relevant only to a minority of students (such as paying to store items between terms). But the MISS is about having enough money for every student to live reasonably, with dignity and safety; it is not designed to be a ‘bare minimum’ or to represent the lifestyle of an ascetic. This is one of a number of reasons, further explored below, why we studiously avoid ever saying we think the Government should automatically set the maximum maintenance package at exactly (or even roughly) the level of the MISS. Moreover, students are not spendthrift – one interesting change this year compared to last, for example, is that they no longer deem a TV Licence as a must-have item so it has been removed from the calculation.
What we call a ‘minimum’ is also an ’average’; some cities are notably more expensive than others – London aside, we generally ignore this in the calculation and so the MISS might look too high or too low depending on where someone is studying and their own personal circumstances. For example, this means some of the freebies – such as prescriptions and bus travel – enjoyed by many Scottish students are ignored.
Should we be looking to reduce costs by giving applicants and students better information? A modest amount of the first-year premium (the extra costs that first-years seem to accrue) comes from being unused to budgeting and feeding themselves. The MISS for first-year students even includes a small additional sum for the first 12 weeks while students settle down and get used to things like eating up food before it goes off. Would better information of the students are crying out for fix at least some of the need for this? Similarly, would better information on the different consequences of different accommodation preferences shape better decisions, which in turn could shape the supply of student accommodation, and lead to a reduction in the MISS?
One particular policy challenge is explaining how any extra student maintenance support that could be offered now or later is likely to be spent in practice. Ministers will be less likely to give students improved maintenance packages if they think they will be entirely swallowed up by higher rent levels. One real challenge here, as so often, is that student accommodation tends to fall through the cracks in Whitehall, so it is not always clear who should be approached for these conversations.
Above all, HEPI is a policy body so for us the key question is always: what are the possible policy ramifications? On this, and notwithstanding the important fact that the report gives a clear indication of a preferred direction of travel, we are still working them out.
For example, the report concludes that the maximum maintenance package is only half of what students need to live. It clearly needs to be higher and available to more people. It would be absurd (literally absurd) to think parents could easily fill in the gap from their take-home pay unless they are on very good salaries indeed. It is similarly absurd, however, to think the Government can easily fill the whole gap, given the fiscal situation and the much larger number of students than in the past.
So what level of paid employment is it reasonable to assume students might do (and in holidays or term-time or both)? Or should students opt for a more basic standard of living (no en suite perhaps or more shared rooms, as in the United States)? Or should more students live at home as commuter students but at the cost of experiencing a full traditional student experience? These are difficult questions and, again, the answers will be different in different cases. Nonetheless, we welcome all thoughts in response.
As I sometimes say when speaking in schools, if and when it comes to my own children going to higher education, I will tell them three things:
good social spaces are more important than things like en suite facilities – if you are living a full student lifestyle, you may spend less time in your room than you originally expected;
taking a temporary full-time job in the holidays is generally preferable to doing a high number of hours of paid employment during term time, if you’re lucky enough to have the choice; and
in general, it tends to be better not to be a commuter student, unless there are specific individual reasons for being one.
Yet like most parents, I will also have to accept they will take what I say with a large pinch of salt and then find their own way.
This HEPI blog was authored by Isabelle Bristow, Managing Director UK and Europe at Studiosity.
Studiosity’s ninth annual Student Wellbeing Survey, conducted by YouGov in November 2024, gathered insights from university students on their experiences and concerns, and made recommendations to senior leaders. This global research included panels from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UAE, the UK and the US (see below for the country sample size breakdown).
The report highlights key learning on AI’s rapid integration into higher education and its impact on student wellbeing. The following are the key takeaways, specifically examining country-specific differences in student experiences with AI, alongside broader issues of stress, connection, belonging, and employability.
AI Adoption and Its Impact
AI is now a pervasive tool in higher education, with a significant 79% of all students reporting using AI tools for their studies. While usage is high overall, the proportion of students saying they use AI ‘regularly’ to help with assignments shows interesting variations by country:
UK: 17%
USA: 27%
Singapore: 31%
UAE: 38%
This greater scepticism towards AI among UK students also shows up elsewhere, with students in the UK least likely among the eight countries to expect their university to offer AI tools.
However, the widespread adoption of AI tools is linked to considerable student stress. The survey found that 68% of students report experiencing personal stress as a result of using AI tools for their coursework. From free text comments, this might be for a number of reasons, including the fear they might be unintentionally breaking the rules; there are also concerns that universities are not moving fast enough to provide AI tools, leaving students to work out for themselves how best to use AI tools. This highlights that navigating the effective and appropriate use of AI is a significant challenge that requires support.
Furthermore, the way AI is currently being used appears to be affecting students’ confidence in their own learning. Some 61% feel only ‘moderately’ or less confident that they are genuinely learning and improving their own skills when using generative AI.
Perhaps as a result of this uncertainty, students often seek ‘confidence’ when using university-provided AI support, desiring guided tools that help them check their understanding and validate their genuine learning progress. This motivation was particularly strong in countries like:
New Zealand: 31%
Australia: 25%
UK: 25%
This suggests a tension between unstructured AI use (linked to lower learning confidence) and the student desire for confidence-building support (which AI, when properly designed for learning, offers).
Perceptions of how well universities are adapting to AI also vary globally, with 56% of students overall feeling their institutions are adapting quickly enough. However, scepticism is notably higher in certain regions:
UK: 53% feel institutions are not adapting fast enough
Canada: 52% feel institutions are not adapting fast enough
Conversely, students in other countries feel their university is adapting fast enough to include AI support tools for study:
UAE: 72%
Singapore: 66%
Saudi Arabia: 65%
USA: 58%
Study Stress: Beyond AI
While AI contributes to stress, study stress is a broader, multi-faceted challenge for student wellbeing, with frequency and causes differing significantly across countries. Students reported experiencing stress most commonly on a weekly basis (29% overall), with more students than average in Australia and New Zealand (both 33%) experiencing stress on a weekly basis. However, the intensity increases elsewhere:
Saudi Arabia: 27% felt stressed daily
Canada: 24% felt stressed daily, and a notable 17% felt stressed constantly
USA: 16% felt stressed constantly
The top reasons for general study stress also vary, pointing to the diverse pressures students face:
‘Fear of failing’: significantly higher in the UK (61%) compared with the global average of 52%
‘Not having enough time to balance other life commitments’: significantly higher in the UK (52%) and Australia (48%)
‘Difficult course content’: Singapore (38%)
‘Paying for degree’: Canada (35%) and the USA (31%)
‘Sticking to the rules around integrity and plagiarism’: over-indexed in the UAE (23%) and Saudi Arabia (22%)
Belonging and Connection
A sense of belonging is a crucial component of student wellbeing, and the survey revealed variations across countries. Students in Australia (62%) and the UK (65%) reported lower overall belonging levels compared to the global average. What contributes to belonging also differs:
‘Confidence to reach out to teachers’: significantly higher factor in the UK (64%)
‘A flexible schedule to help balance work and study’: dominated as a top reason in Australia (63%) and Singapore (62%)
‘Ease of connecting with a student mentor’: featured prominently in Saudi Arabia (47%), UAE (48%), and USA (43%)
‘Access to mental health support’: over-indexed as a key reason for belonging in Saudi Arabia (47%) and Canada (44%)
The study also explored direct connections, addressing concerns that AI might reduce human interaction. Students were largely neutral or unsure if generative AI impacted their interactions with peers and teachers (including 63% of students in the UK and 55% in New Zealand). In contrast, students in Saudi Arabia (64%) and the UAE (61%) were most likely to report more interaction due to AI use, followed by Singapore (42%) and the USA (41%).
Beyond AI’s influence on connection, the survey found that four in ten students (42%) were not provided a mentor in their first year, although over half (55%) would have liked one. Difficulty asking questions of other students was also mentioned by one in ten (13%) students overall. This difficulty was reported more by:
Female students: 14% vs 10% for males
Older cohorts (50+ year olds): 18% vs 13% for 18-25 year olds
Students in the UK (17%), Australia (17%), and New Zealand (16%) compared to other regions.
Employability Confidence
Employability is another key area impacting student confidence and overall wellbeing as they look towards the future. The survey found that 59% of students are confident in securing a job within six months of graduation, an increase from 55% in 2024, though concerns remain higher in Canada and the UK. Overall, 74% agree their degree is developing necessary future job skills, although Canadian students were less confident here (68%). Specific concerns about the relevance of a job within six months were more pronounced among:
UK students: 20% disagree they will get a related job
Canadian students: 14% disagree
Conclusion
The YouGov-Studiosity survey provides valuable data highlighting the complex reality of student wellbeing in the current higher education landscape. Rapid AI adoption brings new sources of stress and impacts confidence in learning, adding to existing pressures from general study demands, financial concerns, belonging, connection, and employability anxieties. These challenges, and what supports students most effectively, vary significantly by country. Universities must respond to this complex picture by developing tailored support frameworks that guide students in navigating AI effectively, while also bolstering their sense of belonging, facilitating connections, addressing mental health needs, and supporting their confidence in future careers, in ways responsive to diverse national contexts.
By country totals: Australia n= 1,234: Canada n= 1,042: New Zealand n= 528: Saudi Arabia n= 511: Singapore n= 1,027: United Arab Emirates n=554: United Kingdom n= 2,328: United States n= 3,000
You can download further Global Student Wellbeing reports by country here.
Studiosity is a HEPI Partner. Studiosity is AI-for-Learning, not corrections – to scale student success, empower educators, and improve retention with a proven 4.4x ROI, while ensuring integrity and reducing institutional risk.
This HEPI Blog post was kindly authored by Huw Morris, Honorary Professor of Tertiary Education, IoE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and Richard Watermeyer, Professor of Education, University of Bristol.
Introduction
It is a year since the Labour Government was elected with a commitment to produce a post-16 skills and higher education White Paper by Summer 2025. In this article, we look at how changes in the UK’s economy and politics since July 2024 have altered what is likely to be in this policy statement and what might happen despite it.
What has happened over the last twelve months?
Last September, the Minister of State for Skills, Jacqui Smith, drew attention to the enormous economic challenges and tough choices facing the Government, but stressed the administration’s commitment to a mission-led approach to create a new era of opportunity and economic growth within a fairer society for everyone. Two months later the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, wrote to vice chancellors outlining the Government’s expectation that universities will:
expand access and improve outcomes for disadvantaged students;
make a stronger contribution to economic growth;
play a greater civic role in local communities;
raise teaching standards; and
deliver sustained efficiency and reform.
There were also subsequent calls for more effective higher education leadership, strong governance and a new business model for the sector. To support these changes, ministers provided an increase in the undergraduate home tuition fee of £285/year and an uplift to the maximum maintenance loan support of £414. For those concerned with institutional finances, this uplift in income was more than matched by higher costs due to increases in employers’ national insurance contributions, reductions in foundation year fees, withdrawal of level 7 apprenticeship funding and reduced capital allocations, among other things. To deal with these changes, most universities have sought to increase their international student recruitment and classroom-based home undergraduate students, as well as higher margin postgraduate provision. For some of the institutions denied these opportunities because of their market position the alternative has been to expand their franchise operations and transnational education and/or to reduce costs. As figure 1 illustrates, these changes in funding and activity have produced some significant changes in forecasts for the money flowing to colleges, independent training providers and universities.
Figure 1: Funding and Orientation Matrix
Looking at the balance between areas of activity which enhance prestige and those that support widening participation, when combined with those that are funded publicly or privately, reveals some big changes. The increase in undergraduate home student tuition fees has not been enough to stem the decline of overall funding from foundation years, postgraduate courses and research grants. The balance in government funding has shifted from these areas of activity towards schools, further education and apprenticeship provision. Meanwhile, although funding from private sources for international students taught in the UK and for transnational education overseas has expanded, UKRI funding for individual institutions has declined due to increases in the number of grant applications from a wider range of institutions and a larger number of researchers leading to a halving of the success rate compounded by changes to the treatment of what was and is now again EU research funding.
Meanwhile, the impact of universities and colleges on local communities has been a tale in two parts. The annual Higher Education / Business Community Interaction survey reveals small increases in business start-ups and spinouts as well as partnerships with small firms, but measures of the impact on local economies is more difficult to demonstrate. These issues are less pronounced with apprenticeship providers and further education colleges where local community engagements are key to engaging adult part-time learners.
The Government has fared poorly in opinion polls over the last twelve months due to concern about the cost of living, immigration and the state of public services. This has prompted challenges from the political right and left. This is not confined to questions about tax, immigration and public spending, it has also extended to concerns about the role of universities and support for other forms of post-16 education. Across the voting population, recent private opinion polling has revealed that just over half of the electorate are questioning, sceptical or openly hostile to the role of universities in their communities. University research as an area of activity is poorly understood and where there is an appreciation of this activity, it is not automatically seen as meeting real-world needs. Meanwhile, among the leadership of many major civic and corporate organisations, universities are seen as profit-driven and not working in the public interest. In short, there is a lack of an emotional and relational connection between universities, local communities and national leaders.
It has been argued that university leaders need to respond to these adverse public perceptions by stating the virtues of higher education and research more clearly and advocating for universities more often. Pursuing this approach, it is argued, will open the door to greater trust, less regulation and improved funding. More recently, it has been argued that public opinion has changed to such an extent since the Covid pandemic that this approach will not work and there is now a need, quoting Robbie Burns, for university staff “to see ourselves as others see us”, before considering how best to respond. The priorities of these others are likely to become more visible over the summer months as they question the evidence of university contribution and those who champion the current arrangements in the wake of this year’s home and international student recruitment rounds.
The Autumn party conference season begins with the Liberal Democrats in Bournemouth (20 to 23 September), Labour in Liverpool (27 to 1 October), the Green Party in Bournemouth (3 to 5 October) and the Conservatives in Manchester (5 to 8 October). In today’s world of multi-party politics and jostling to define the public policy agenda, it is also important to note that the Reform Party conference will take place in Birmingham (5 to 6 September). Meanwhile, “Your Party”, the new left-wing party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, has not given a formal indication of its plans for an inaugural conference, but it seems likely that there will be events in early Autumn..
The conference season is normally a time when parties outline what is planned or hoped for in the future. Governments are not supposed to announce new initiatives outside of the House of Commons, and although they occasionally do, they are rebuked by the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the Secretary of State for Education and Chancellor of the Exchequer have found out in recent months. This year is likely to be more difficult than usual as pressures on the public purse raise questions about tax changes in the Autumn budget and raise the spectre of changes to expenditure plans to meet the Government’s spending rules and to provide for defence, health and welfare commitments.
Any post-16 education announcements are likely to be especially difficult because of the competition with other parties. The Reform party has promised to eliminate interest on student loans and to extend loan repayment periods (a graduate tax in all but name), as well as removing student loans for medical and STEM students and writing off the loans of long-serving NHS workers. There are also proposals to invest more in apprenticeships and technical education with an increase in publicly funded training courses.
Similar proposals were made by the Green Party in their 2024 General election manifesto with commitments echoing the 2019 Labour Party manifesto to scrap tuition fees, restore maintenance grants and increase investment in skills and lifelong learning. Meanwhile, for completeness, the Liberal Democrats pledged to improve financial support for disadvantaged students by reintroducing maintenance grants, in part modelled on the arrangements introduced by the Liberal Democrat minister, Kirsty Williams, while she oversaw higher education for the Welsh Government (2016-2021). These promises of increased spending on student maintenance are likely to be attractive to many young voters and particularly newly enfranchised 16–18-year-olds. These promises can also be made by parties that believe they are unlikely to find themselves in government in 2026. The problem for university leaders and staff with these proposals is that while they will help students, they won’t help institutions to pay their bills, except perhaps for students’ halls of residence.
What could possibly go wrong?
Increased strain on university finances and growing pressure on the public purse, combined with demands for improved student maintenance funding, create a difficult context if anything unexpected goes wrong with the income and expenditure of individual institutions. These challenges have been added to by the publication of nine major Government strategy and policy papers with implications for post-16 education and training.
The five missions that the Government was elected to pursue have been added to by a plan for the NHS, an Immigration White Paper, five critical technologies, six milestones, seven chapters in the Get Britain Working white paper, the eight priority sectors in the industrial strategy white paper, the nine regions identified in the national infrastructure plan and 10 priority skills sectors identified by Skills England. All of these plans have local dimensions that are being developed with the 12 established Mayoral Strategic Authorities and 12 new regional bodies outlined in plans for devolution to 44 English regions which will combine with 38 Local Skills and Improvement Plans (LSIPs). The complexity associated with these arrangements means that there will, in practice, have to be some simplification.
It is reassuring to see this energy and commitment to change, but it is also a cause of concern that it is not clear how the various plans and governance arrangements will join up within Whitehall and across the regions. This may not be a problem in the largest city regions of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, London, North East, West Midlands and West Yorkshire. However, it is likely to be more of an issue in the less developed Mayoral regions of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, the East Midlands, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, Tees Valle and West of England, not to mention the other 22 yet to be reorganised regions of the UK covering 50% of the population.
The challenges of developing joined-up plans are likely to become problems if the reputational and financial risks being experienced by cash-strapped colleges, independent training providers and universities materialise. Among universities 43% are currently forecasting a deficit and the most recent published figures for further education colleges in 2022/3 revealed a figure of 37%. As recent experience with the University of Dundee has illustrated, the short-term direct costs can exceed £100m, and the longer-term indirect costs are even greater. These additional costs are likely to be substantial as national regulators, regional officials and local providers wrestle with the challenge of developing the capacity, capability and courage needed to align provision with employer demand as well as student interest.
With low economic growth, high inflation and challenges to reductions in government expenditure and without additional funding for student maintenance and living expenses, it is difficult to see how universities will widen participation for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Without more funding for courses in the areas of skill shortage that underpin the eight industrial sectors and the requirements of the NHS and National Infrastructure Plan, it is difficult to see how local skills needs will be met and the improvements in productivity and economic growth achieved. Teaching quality might be maintained by a lower-paid and increasingly casualised workforce, but will the efficiency and effectiveness of institutions improve without support for the local coordination and rationalisation of activity?
What might be in the Post-16 and Higher Education White Paper?
Now that the anticipated publication of the Post-16 and Higher Education White Paper has been delayed until the Autumn it seems likely that it will be timed to coincide with the Budget in November. This Indian Summer schedule is needed to gain some certainty about the future funding position and associated changes to tax and spending decisions. So, what might be in the White paper? At present the following five strands of activity seem most likely.
Widening participation and progression
Proposals for the development of regional education and skills pathways to support the introduction of the credit and modular funding arrangements that will be needed with the Lifelong Learning Entitlement in January 2027. Proposals for consultation on how institutions could be required to introduce bursary and scholarship arrangements if they fail to meet regionally agreed targets for widening participation and progression.
International students
Proposals for consultation on how the 6% international student levy will be used to pay for the upskilling of domestic learners, rebalancing of funding towards institutions that have not recruited international students and underwriting of the costs of structural adjustments.
Local Skills and Productivity
Outline of how Local Skills Improvement Plans will be developed by Skills England to ensure that Mayoral Strategic Authorities and other regional bodies have tools to influence education provision to respond to the 10 skills priorities and 5 critical technologies while meeting the needs of local employers and communities. This might include local independent careers, advice and guidance arrangements of the sort developed in Greater Manchester.
Quality and Standards
Announcement of the provisional findings from an internal review of the standards and regulations applied by the Office for Students including tightened controls over franchise and transnational education arrangements.
Efficiency, effectiveness and exit
Changes to Competition and Market Authority guidance on regional institutional cooperation. The introduction of an insolvency and regime for higher education institutions to parallel arrangements for further education colleges and independent apprenticeship providers. This to include formal mechanisms for restructuring loans or similar transitional finance arrangements.
What is currently missing from these arrangements is a multi-year agreement on fees and funding or a plan for supporting English regions that are not part of the current plans for devolution. All major post-16 White papers in the past have included an explicit or tacit exchange of support for the UK economy locally and nationally with an agreement on longer-term funding and finance. To achieve this realistically in the future will require guidance on how regional and institutional leadership and governance will be aligned with national plans. The UK’s devolved governments and a few established Mayoral Strategic Authorities have mechanisms to bring colleges and universities together to discuss their plans and the opportunities for alignment. In many instances these arrangements span more than one MSA or its equivalent. Most of the other regions lack these arrangements and will need support to develop local officials, senior managers and governing bodies. Most importantly what should these groupings do if one or more institutions in their patch fail?
There is little appetite among the UK’s political parties and government departments for an independent review of higher education because of concern about the time this would take and the loss of control it would entail. However, the risks associated with current economic constraints and political polarisation pose substantial risks for local communities and regional economies in general and for the students and staff in individual institutions in particular. The summer months provide a useful time to reflect on these challenges and to consider how genuinely transformational change can be led and managed within city regions and rural combined authorities. For universities, further education providers and independent training providers and their representatives, this should involve more than improving their public affairs and relations and should consider how local and regional forms of organisation can be developed.
This HEPI guest blog was kindly authored by Fred Jacques, a Year 12 student who recently completed a week of work experience at HEPI.
(Have you completed the HEPI survey? If not, time is running out! It will only take a few minutes and will help inform our future output. You can access the survey here.)
With Reform UK gaining significant ground in recent elections and opinion polls, the prospect of a future Reform government is now plausible. The party discusses education very little, instead focusing on their big, vote-winning issues such as opposing immigration and net zero. But what are Reform’s plans for higher education and what impact would these have? Their 2024 manifesto is lacking in detail, but it outlines a handful of proposals that suggest the direction a Reform government might take. They promised to:
bar international student dependents
make universities provide two-year undergraduate courses
cut funding for universities that undermine free speech; and
scrap interest on student loans.
Scrapping tuition fees for STEM degrees
Additionally, in an interview with ITV following the release of the manifesto, Nigel Farage stated that he would abolish tuition fees for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees while maintaining them for all other courses. Although this policy was not included in the 2024 manifesto, it did appear in Farage’s 2015 UKIP manifesto, suggesting it is a long-standing idea of his and therefore one that could be implemented if Reform were to win power.
While this proposal is intended to attract more students into these fields, it may not be effective. In his HEPI report, Peter Mandler argues that the current increase in the uptake of STEM degrees (the ‘swing to science’) is due to numerous factors: demographic and cultural changes, perceptions of future job prospects and subject choice at A level primarily. Government policy is less influential than these factors. Therefore, given that the swing to science is happening of its own accord because of high student demand, this policy is not even necessary, especially considering the enormous cost. If Reform do want to accelerate this trend, though, then removing the barrier of poor A level results by improving attainment in secondary schools may be more effective than targeting STEM at degree level.
Despite its possible shortcomings in attracting more students to STEM courses, the policy could still accelerate the decline in the popularity of arts and humanities degrees. While those with arts or humanities A levels are unlikely (and probably unable) to switch to a completely different field purely for financial reasons, the disparity in fee structure may discourage them from pursuing a university degree altogether. This appears to be Farage’s intention: he suggests that arts and humanities degrees are not worthwhile and ’[students would] have been better off learning trades and skills’. If this aspect of the policy is successful, then it would negatively impact students, institutions and the country. Humanities degrees are incredibly valuable: they help students develop transferable skills like communication and critical thinking that are needed in any workplace and they are a pathway into careers in law, business, or media. And without humanities degrees, who will teach Reform’s ‘patriotic’ curriculum in primary and secondary schools? The arts, meanwhile, are also valuable to the economy and positively impact culture and society.
Overall, while efforts to increase the number of students pursuing STEM degrees are commendable, this should not come at the expense of arts and humanities students. Higher education institutions should work with Reform to ensure that the contributions of these subjects are properly recognised and supported by the party, should they win power.
Two-year undergraduate courses
Reform’s policy of expanding two-year undergraduate courses to all universities across the UK would be beneficial to higher education, provided they do not replace the typical three-year degrees. These accelerated degrees are already offered by universities like Buckingham and Northumbria and have many benefits, such as allowing students to enter into work sooner and reducing the amount of debt they incur. Furthermore, students on accelerated courses are generally more focused and motivated and the more intensive nature of the courses prepares students for the workplace. These degrees are well suited to subjects like law or business and could therefore act as an alternative to some arts and humanities students who feel discouraged by Reform’s tuition fee policy.
But although these courses are a good idea in theory, there is little evidence to suggest that there is a high demand for them. Slightly older students entering higher education for the first time and wanting to progress into the workplace faster may find these courses appealing, but most typical 18-year-old undergraduates prefer the more flexible three or four-year courses. Perhaps this is due to a lack of awareness, which Reform could work to correct, but as it stands, it is unrealistic for them to expect all universities to provide these accelerated programmes, given the low demand.
Conclusion
This blog has not covered the entirety of Reform’s higher education policy, and some proposals, such as cutting funding for universities that undermine free speech, raise challenges of their own. Nonetheless, the policies discussed here do show some promise: expanding the availability of two-year undergraduate courses and encouraging more people into STEM degrees could be beneficial to the country. However, the apparent lack of regard for arts and humanities degrees is concerning and the effectiveness of the tuition fee policy is debatable, as is the achievability of the accelerated degree policy.
Perhaps the greatest flaw with Reform’s education policy, and wider policy platform, is the achievability. The party’s plans to scrap tuition fees on STEM degrees and encourage all universities to provide two-year undergraduate programmes will all come at a massive cost to the government and institutions. Reform’s policy of barring international student dependents (presumably beyond current restrictions) will also worsen the issue, as this could lead to lower numbers of international students, meaning that universities’ incomes are significantly reduced. Reform need a way to fund their policies, but according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Reform’s proposed savings did not add up in 2024, and they remain vague today.
With this unrealistic funding, it is debatable whether these policies would be implemented, even if Reform do win power. And with the unpredictability of modern politics, who knows if they will even get to that stage. Regardless, universities have the opportunity to work with this emerging party to challenge and shape their policy proposals to produce the best outcomes for students and the nation as a whole.
Your website is no longer just a digital brochure. It’s the heart of your institution’s marketing, recruitment, and student engagement efforts. For most prospective students, it’s the very first touchpoint, and their decision to inquire, apply, or move on often hinges on what they find there.
More than 90% of students visit a college or university website during their school search. That means your site must not only attract attention but deliver a seamless experience that inspires trust and action.
What does that look like? It’s a blend of smart navigation, compelling visuals, personalized content, and performance that works flawlessly across all devices. It’s also about serving many different audiences, students, parents, alumni, and staff, without sacrificing clarity or focus.
In this article, we break down the 7 best practicesfor higher education websites, with examples from institutions putting them into action. These proven strategies will help your school build a web presence that engages users and drives real results, from exploration to enrollment.
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1. Ensure a Mobile-Responsive, Mobile-First Design
Smartphones are the default browsing tool for most prospective students and their parents. If your institution’s website doesn’t offer a seamless mobile experience, you’re not just frustrating users; you’re losing them.
Why is mobile responsiveness crucial for higher education websites? Most students browse on mobile devices. A mobile-responsive site ensures readability, easy navigation, and fast loading, key for user experience and search rankings. Without it, your site could rank lower on Google and lose over half of the visitors who abandon slow or poorly displayed pages.
Mobile responsiveness means your content adjusts fluidly to any screen size, from smartphones to tablets. This isn’t a nice-to-have feature; it’s a necessity. Google now uses your site’s mobile version to determine how it ranks in search results (a process known as mobile-first indexing). If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, both your visibility and your credibility take a hit.
Use a responsive design that automatically adjusts layouts for smaller screens
Collapse navigation into a clean, mobile-friendly format
Display readable text without requiring zoom
Feature buttons and links that are easy to tap
Example:California Baptist University delivers a standout mobile experience. Its responsive design stacks content cleanly for smaller screens, while large, tappable calls-to-action make it easy for prospective students to explore programs or request information. The site balances function and aesthetics, showing that CBU understands what mobile users need and delivers it.
How can improving website speed benefit my higher education institution? Faster websites reduce bounce rates and keep users engaged longer. Prospects find what they need quickly, improving their impression of your institution. Speed also boosts SEO rankings and increases the chances of conversions like form submissions or brochure downloads.
A smooth mobile journey doesn’t just meet expectations, it sends a clear message: your institution is accessible, student-focused, and ready to meet users where they are.
2. Optimize Your Site’s Speed and Performance
Speed matters. Gen Z users expect instant access, and if your pages lag, they’ll bounce, sometimes before they’ve even seen your programs.
Beyond user frustration, slow sites impact your visibility. Google uses page speed as a ranking factor, so sluggish load times can tank your SEO and conversions.
To keep your site performing at its best, follow these key practices:
Compress images and media. Use modern formats like WebP and apply compression tools to reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality.
Minify code and enable caching. Clean up your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and use browser caching to speed up page loads for returning visitors.
Implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN). CDNs serve content from servers closest to the user, minimizing delays caused by physical distance.
Limit heavy third-party scripts. Only use plugins and scripts that are essential—too many can drag your site’s performance down.
Test regularly. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Lighthouse help you spot bottlenecks like oversized images or slow server response.
Example:University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA Little Rock): In March 2025, UA Little Rock rolled out a major website overhaul that improved both user experience and performance speed. A key move was transitioning to modern cloud hosting, which “ensures greater reliability, multiple backups, and improved site performance,” especially during peak or emergency periods. The web team also streamlined the site’s content (trimming 8,000+ pages down by 30%) and modernized the codebase, which reduces load times by eliminating bloat.
Why this matters for higher ed: Even a one-second improvement in page load time can make a measurable difference in how long users stay and what actions they take. A fast website tells students you’re efficient, professional, and respectful of their time, a small detail that leaves a big impression.
If your site is slow, it’s time to speed things up.
3. Implement Strong SEO to Boost Search Visibility
You can have the most beautifully designed website in the world, but if prospective students can’t find it, it won’t deliver results.
That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) becomes critical. Most college students rely on search engines to explore programs, compare schools, and research next steps. If your institution doesn’t appear in those search results, you risk missing out on a massive share of qualified leads.
Think about the intent behind queries like:
“Best MBA programs in Canada”
“Colleges in Toronto for computer science”
“Online diploma in healthcare administration”
If your pages don’t show up, students won’t even know to consider you.
Here’s how to strengthen your SEO strategy and stay visible throughout the student journey:
Keyword Optimization
Start with the language students use. Research long-tail keywords that reflect real queries (e.g., “online MBA in finance” or “career college digital marketing course”). Then, use those terms naturally in your:
Program page titles and H1 headers
Metadata and image alt text
Body content and subheadings
This improves your rankings and helps students quickly identify whether your offerings match their needs.
High-Quality, Student-Centric Content
Search engines prioritize helpful content. So do students. Build rich pages and blog posts that answer common questions about admissions, tuition, career outcomes, or student life. Content that educates, informs, and reassures will keep users engaged and build trust.
Gen Z doesn’t want to dig for answers. Make them easy to find, and you’ll win the click.
On-Page SEO Basics
Each page on your site should have:
A unique meta title and description featuring relevant keywords
Structured headings (H1, H2, H3…)
Descriptive image alt text for both accessibility and SEO
These basic elements are easy to overlook, but they make a real difference in how Google interprets and ranks your content.
Technical SEO and User Experience
Your site’s infrastructure plays a big role in search visibility. Prioritize:
Mobile-friendliness (as covered in Section 1)
Fast page load times
Secure browsing (HTTPS)
Logical, crawlable URLs
Fixes for broken links and outdated pages
Google rewards user-friendly experiences. So do your prospective students.
Local and International SEO
Have a physical campus? Make sure your Google Business Profile is claimed and accurate. Serving international audiences? Offer multilingual content or geo-targeted landing pages to attract global prospects.
Example: When ENSR partnered with Higher Education Marketing (HEM) in 2019, the school sought to improve its online visibility and attract more qualified leads. HEM implemented a comprehensive SEO strategy that included technical website improvements, bilingual content creation, and targeted Google Ads campaigns. These efforts significantly enhanced ENSR’s search rankings and increased high-quality inquiries from families seeking international education in Switzerland.
Why this matters: SEO isn’t a quick win; it’s a long-term strategy. But done right, it builds sustained visibility across every stage of the student journey.
A prospect might first find your blog post about how to choose a business school. Weeks later, they search for [Your University] campus life. Eventually, they return to your site to click Apply Now. SEO ensures you’re present at each step.
And since over 90% of students visit your website before applying, showing up in search isn’t just a marketing boost, it’s mission-critical.
What role does SEO play in the success of a higher education website?
SEO helps your site appear in search results when students research programs. Strong SEO brings qualified traffic, builds credibility, and ensures your programs are seen, without relying solely on paid ads.
SEO brings it all together. A fast, accessible, content-rich, and mobile-optimized site naturally ranks better. That means more visibility, more engagement, and more students taking the next step with you.
4. Make Your Content Accessible and Inclusive to All Users
Accessibility is now a fundamental expectation. Your website should serve everyone, including users with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities.
In the U.S., more than 61 million adults live with a disability, and in Canada are more than 27 million. Globally, the number reaches into the hundreds of millions. If your website isn’t accessible, you may be shutting out prospective students, parents, or staff who are eager to connect but simply can’t.
Beyond ethics, it’s also the law. New ADA Title II regulations in the U.S. now require public colleges and universities to comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards. Similarly, Canada’s AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) sets a comparable benchmark for accessibility. Failure to comply with these standards can result in lawsuits, financial penalties, loss of federal funding, and significant reputational damage.
An inclusive website is no longer optional. It’s a legal, ethical, and strategic imperative.
Best practices for accessible higher education websites:
Follow WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. This includes alt text for images, captions or transcripts for videos, strong color contrast, and keyboard-friendly navigation.
Use semantic HTML. Headings, lists, and ARIA landmarks help users navigate with screen readers and assistive tech. Avoid flashy layouts that confuse accessibility tools.
Write descriptive link text. Replace vague links like “click here” with actionable, informative phrasing: Download the admissions brochure, for example.
Test with real users. Use accessibility checkers and consult individuals who rely on screen readers or other assistive devices; automated tools often miss real-world issues.
Why this benefits everyone: Captions aren’t just for deaf users; they help second-language learners, mobile viewers, and anyone watching a video in a noisy space. High-contrast design improves readability in bright light or on low-quality screens. And clean navigation benefits all users, whether or not they rely on assistive technology.
Accessibility makes your site better for everyone and signals your commitment to equity and inclusion.
Example:Otis College of Art and Design proves that accessible websites don’t have to be boring. Their visually bold, design-forward site includes thoughtful accessibility features, like the ability to pause animated content and high-contrast elements that enhance readability. It’s proof that inclusive design and creativity can go hand in hand.
By prioritizing accessibility from the start, your institution not only meets regulatory standards, but it also opens the door to more prospects and strengthens its reputation as a place where everyone belongs.
5. Design Intuitive Navigation and User-Friendly Interfaces
Higher education websites often contain a massive amount of information, program details, admissions requirements, campus services, student life, alumni resources, and more. Without clear navigation, this wealth of content can quickly become overwhelming.
If prospective students can’t find basic information like how to apply, what programs you offer, or where to request info, they won’t stick around. They’ll simply move on to another institution that makes things easier.
Your goal? Make exploration effortless: Navigation should be clean, logical, and centered around user needs, not internal structures or department silos. Every menu, page layout, and search function should guide visitors toward their goals with clarity and speed.
Tips for intuitive higher ed site navigation:
Use simple, student-focused labels. Stick to clear menu items like “Programs,” “Admissions,” “About Us,” and “Contact.” Avoid institutional jargon. Limit top-level menu items to avoid overload, and organize deeper pages using dropdowns or mega menus.
Design for user journeys, not just departments. Group content around tasks or audience needs. Instead of listing academic departments, consider categories like Plan, Start, Succeed, or even Explore Programs and Find Support.
Create clear user paths for different audiences. Persona-based navigation (e.g., Prospective Students, Current Students, Parents, Alumni) lets visitors self-identify and jump directly to what matters to them. This reduces cognitive load and improves time-to-information.
Make CTAs impossible to miss. Buttons like Apply Now, Request Info, and Visit Campus should be visually distinct and consistently visible across key pages.
Maintain styling and structural consistency. Don’t make users relearn how to navigate with every new section. Ensure the styling, placement, and behavior of menus remain predictable and responsive for mobile users.
Example: Eastern Iowa Community Colleges: EICC structures its top-level navigation around the student journey with three clear categories: Plan, Start, and Succeed. This not only simplifies decision-making but also shows a deep understanding of student concerns. The site also includes an “I’m most concerned about…” section: addressing common hesitations head-on, with empathy and clarity.
A user-friendly website doesn’t just look polished; it feels helpful. Smart navigation says, “We understand your needs, and we’ve made it easy to find what you’re looking for.” Higher education website design can be the difference between a visitor who bounces and one who applies.
6. Provide Engaging Content and Clear Calls-To-Action
Content is what transforms a higher ed website from a digital brochure into a dynamic recruitment tool. Prospective students don’t just want information; they want answers, inspiration, and a glimpse of what their future might look like at your institution.
They’re searching for:
Program details
Admission requirements
Tuition costs
Campus life
Career outcomes
Student experiences
Your job is to deliver that content in a way that’s clear, engaging, and actionable.
Best Practices for Content That Drives Enrollment:
Showcase your academic programs clearly. Each program should have a dedicated page that covers curriculum highlights, faculty expertise, admissions requirements, and career prospects. Schools should prioritize program-level content because it’s the first place prospects look.
Use rich media to bring your campus to life. Photos, videos, virtual tours, and infographics add emotional and visual depth that text alone can’t match. Consider a homepage hero video, a student life highlight reel, or virtual walkthroughs of your campus and classrooms.
Incorporate authentic student voices. Today’s students want real stories. Feature testimonials, student spotlights, or day-in-the-life content that reflects your community’s diversity and vibrancy. Whether it’s a video diary from a nursing student or a blog from an international applicant, authenticity builds trust.
Keep your content fresh. Outdated information erodes credibility. Make it a priority to update admissions deadlines, program details, and tuition info regularly. Maintain a blog or news section to show your campus is active, but don’t let fresh content bury essential evergreen pages like Programs or How to Apply.
Guide users with clear, strategic CTAs. Every important page should ask: What’s the next step? Then answer it with a bold, well-placed button. Whether it’s “Apply Now,” “Download a Program Brochure,” or “Book a Virtual Tour,” your CTAs should stand out visually and match the context of the page.
Example: OCAD University (Canada) redesigned its admissions website with a bold visual identity, simplified navigation, and CTAs tailored to the user journey, like “Get Portfolio Help” or “Start Your Application.” The results? Within weeks of launch, the site saw a 21% increase in visits and a 15% increase in applicants. The combination of user-first content and clear actions paid off.
Content also reinforces every other best practice:
Accessible content means adding alt text and transcripts.
SEO-optimized content means using keywords that align with search intent.
Fast-loading content means using lightweight visuals and optimized media.
When your content delivers real value and your calls-to-action guide users clearly, you don’t just inform; you inspire. And that’s what drives conversions.
7. Integrate With a CRM for Lead Management and Personalization
A well-designed website gets visitors. A strategically integrated website gets conversions.
One of the most powerful ways to level up your higher ed site is by connecting it to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. CRMs are central hubs for capturing, organizing, and nurturing prospective students through the enrollment journey.
When your website and CRM are integrated, lead data flows automatically from inquiry forms, newsletter signups, and event registrations into a centralized system, no more manual data wrangling, missed follow-ups, or siloed information.
Why CRM Integration Matters:
Instant lead capture and time savings Every time a prospect fills out a form, to download a course brochure or RSVP to an open house, their information is logged automatically in your CRM. This eliminates the need for staff to transfer spreadsheets or copy-paste emails. The result? Less administrative busywork and fewer mistakes, giving your admissions team more time to focus on real engagement.
Faster, personalized follow-up CRM integration lets you respond in real time. Someone requests info? They get a tailored email within minutes. And your recruiters are instantly notified with the lead’s details, so they can follow up while your institution is still top of mind. Prompt follow-up, especially within 24 hours, greatly increases contact and conversion rates. A connected CRM makes that speed possible.
Personalized web experiences Advanced CRMs like HubSpot or Mautic allow you to show smart CTAs and dynamic content based on the visitor’s behavior. If someone has already attended a webinar, your site might offer “Schedule a One-on-One Consultation” instead of “Register for Info Session.” Personalization like this increases engagement and accelerates movement through the funnel.
One institution used smart CTAs to tailor messaging for return visitors. New users saw English test prep offers, while returning prospects saw “Start Your Application” prompts, resulting in higher click-through and application rates.
Full visibility into the student journey Every interaction, form fill, email open, and event attendance is tracked in the CRM. Your team gets a 360° view of each lead’s engagement, helping them tailor conversations and prioritize follow-ups. You can also track which web pages and campaigns are driving the most conversions, helping you optimize over time.
For example, CRM data may reveal that campus tour sign-ups convert at twice the rate of general inquiries. Insights like these help you double down on what works.
A seamless, consistent user experience From a student’s perspective, CRM integration reduces friction. They won’t have to fill in the same information twice. Communications feel timely and relevant. Even if a staff member changes, the CRM ensures continuity, so the conversation picks up where it left off.
Behind the scenes, your team gains confidence that every lead is being handled properly, with full history and context at their fingertips.
The tools and payoff
Higher education institutions are increasingly using education-focused CRMs like HubSpot or HEM’s Mautic CRM. These tools enable automation at every stage, from capturing leads to triggering nurture emails to customizing website CTAs.
Example: Griffith College, Ireland’s largest independent college, partnered with Higher Education Marketing (HEM) to implement HubSpot CRM for more efficient lead management and personalized student recruitment. Through a comprehensive strategy that included conversion funnel audits, CRM staff training, automated workflows, and segmented lead nurturing, HEM helped Griffith streamline communications and improve follow-up with prospective students. As a result, the college achieved a 20% year-over-year increase in registered learners for its Spring 2023 intake.
CRM integration does require some technical setup and cross-department coordination. But the payoff is immense: your website becomes a two-way communication platform, collecting insights, responding to actions, and guiding visitors toward enrollment with relevance and precision.
For institutions serious about scaling recruitment and deepening personalization, connecting your CRM to your website is no longer optional. It’s a modern best practice and a clear path to smarter, more successful digital engagement.
Build a Website That Drives Enrollment
Your website isn’t just a marketing asset; it’s your institution’s top recruiter. Every click, scroll, and form fill is a chance to move a prospective student closer to enrollment.
By applying these best practices for higher education websites, from mobile-first design and fast performance to SEO, accessibility, and CRM integration, you create more than just a polished digital presence. You build a site that informs, inspires, and converts.
In a crowded higher ed market, the schools that win are the ones that treat their website like the powerful recruitment engine it is. Make yours work harder, smarter, and more strategically, starting now.
Struggling with enrollment?
Our expert digital marketing services can help you attract and enroll more students!
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Why is mobile responsiveness crucial for higher education websites? Answer: Most students browse on mobile devices. A mobile-responsive site ensures readability, easy navigation, and fast loading, key for user experience and search rankings. Without it, your site could rank lower on Google and lose over half of the visitors who abandon slow or poorly displayed pages.
Question: How can improving website speed benefit my higher education institution? Answer: Faster websites reduce bounce rates and keep users engaged longer. Prospects find what they need quickly, improving their impression of your institution. Speed also boosts SEO rankings and increases the chances of conversions like form submissions or brochure downloads.
Question: What role does SEO play in the success of a higher education website? Answer: SEO helps your site appear in search results when students research programs. Strong SEO brings qualified traffic, builds credibility, and ensures your programs are seen, without relying solely on paid ads.
In July, HEPI, with support from the publisher Taylor & Francis, hosted a roundtable dinner to discuss harnessing AI to advance translational research and impact. This blog considers some of the themes that emerged from the discussion
Travel through a major railway station in the near future and you may see, alongside the boards giving train times, a video of someone using British sign language. This could be an AI-generated signer, turning the often difficult-to-hear station announcements into sign language so that deaf people can understand what is being said. It is just one example of how artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the real world.
The question this roundtable focused on was how AI could be used to advance translational research. That is, taking curiosity-driven research and turning it into a real-world application. What role can academic leaders and publishers play in shaping ethical, inclusive and innovative uses of AI in such research? How can AI enhance collaboration across disciplines, and what are the potential barriers, ethical dilemmas and risks involved in the process?
The discussion, attended by senior university and research leaders, publishers and funders, was held under the Chatham House rule, by which speakers express views on the understanding they will be unattributed.
Advantages and risks
Speakers agreed that AI has huge potential to allow researchers to analyse large datasets cheaply, quickly, and accurately, turning research into real-world applications, as well as improving accessibility to scientific knowledge. They noted that AI can help provide plain language summaries of research and present them in different formats, including multilingual or multimedia content, while also opening useful ways for learned societies to disseminate research findings among their member practitioners.
But risks were identified too. How could the use of AI affect creativity and critical thinking among researchers? How can academics guard against bias and ensure transparency in the data on which AI tools are based? And what about environmental concerns – in terms of maintaining the energy-guzzling AI system and managing electronic waste? Most worryingly, when AI is involved in research and its application, who is ultimately accountable if something goes wrong?
Delegates at the roundtable were told that one message to draw from this guide was that researchers using AI should be asking themselves three essential questions:
Who owns the information being inputted into the AI?
Who owns the information once it is in the AI?
Who owns the output?
Working together
Collaboration is key, said one speaker. That means breaking down existing academic silos and inviting in the experts who will be responsible for applying AI-driven research. It is also crucial to consider the broader picture and the kind of future society we want to be.
One concern the roundtable identified was that power over AI systems is concentrated in the hands of just a few people, which means that rather than addressing societal problems, it is creating divides in terms of access to information and resources.
‘We are not in the age of AI we actually want’, said one speaker. ‘We are in the age of the AI that has been given to us by Big Tech.’
Tackling this issue is likely to involve the development of new regulatory and legal frameworks, particularly to establish accountability. Medical practitioners are particularly concerned about ‘where the buck stops’ and how, for example, potentially transformative AI diagnosis tools can be used in a safe manner.
Others at the roundtable were concerned that placing the bulk of ethical responsibility for AI on researchers might discourage them from testing boundaries.
‘When you do research, you can never have that control completely or you will never do novel things’, said one. Responsibility must therefore be shared between the researcher, implementer and user. That means everyone needs education in AI so they understand the tools they have been given and how to use them effectively.
There was a difference, it was agreed, between research driven by commercially available AI tools when it was not possible to see ‘inside the black box’ and research based on AI tools in which the datasets and algorithms were reliable and transparent. The former was like presenting a research paper that provided the introduction, results, and analysis without explaining the methodology; it was suggested.
Educating users
Yet AI is not just about the data on which it is based but also about the competence of the people using it. How can higher education institutions ensure that students and researchers, particularly early career researchers, have the know-how they need to use AI correctly? (The Taylor and Francis AI Policy may be of interest here.)
It was pointed out that the independent review of the curriculum and assessment system in schools in England, due to publish its recommendations later this year, is likely to be a missed opportunity when it comes to ensuring that pupils enter university with AI skills.
Meanwhile, politicians are struggling to establish the right framework for AI research, as they often lack expertise in this field.
This is a problem since the field is moving so fast. It was suggested that rather than wait for action from policymakers and a regulatory framework, researchers should get on with using AI or risk the UK being left behind.
Social vision
The roundtable agreed that making decisions on all this was not just the responsibility of academia. But where academic research could be useful was in filling the gaps in AI development that big commercial companies neglected because they prioritised business models.
Here, researchers, including in the arts and humanities, could be important in deciding what society ultimately wants AI to achieve. Otherwise, one speaker suggested, it would be driven by the ‘art of the possible’.
Meanwhile, what skills do universities want researchers to have? Some raised the fear that outsourcing work to AI could mean researchers being deskilled. Evidence already suggests that the use of AI can reduce students’ metacognition – the understanding of their own thought processes.
‘If we think it’s important for researchers to be able to translate their findings, don’t let a machine do it’, said one speaker. Another questioned whether researchers should ever be using tools they do not understand.
Artificial colleagues
One suggestion was that rather than outsourcing their work to AI, researchers should be using it to enhance their existing practices.
And while some were concerned about the effect AI could have on creativity, one speaker suggested that, by calibrating AI tools to investigate concepts at the edge of scientific consensus, they could be used to spark more original approaches than a human group would achieve alone.
Another positive identified was that while biases in AI can be a problem, they can also be easier to identify than human biases.
The roundtable heard that successfully accommodating AI should be about teamwork, with AI seen as another colleague – there to advise and reason but not do all the work.
‘The AI will be the thing that detects your biases, it will be the thing that reviews your work, and it will support that process, but it shouldn’t do the thinking, ’ was the message from one speaker. ‘Ultimately, that should come back to humans. ’
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We will be working together to develop a HEPI Policy Note on the use of AI in advancing translational research. If you have a fantastic case study or AI-related translational approach at your institution, we would love to hear from you. To tell us more about your work, please email [email protected].
This HEPI guest blog was kindly authored by Cheryl Watson, VP of Education, UK at TechnologyOne
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Why we need to redesign student life around inclusion, access and equity
There’s no such thing as a typical student anymore. Today’s students are more diverse, stretched, and balancing financial pressures alongside study, care, and work responsibilities.
Yet many university systems still assume a narrow definition of who students are and how they live. As participation widens, institutions face a challenge: equity of access no longer guarantees equity of experience.
Universities have made real progress in widening access, but many aspects of student life are still designed around an outdated, one-size-fits-all model. For non-traditional students, the cost of that mismatch can be significant.
The Minimum Income Standard for Students 2024 (MISS24) report, developed by the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough University and published by HEPI and TechnologyOne, revealed that students under financial stress or managing additional responsibilities are more likely to struggle with engagement, persistence, and success.
The myth of the ‘traditional student experience’
The image of the ‘traditional’ student – financially supported, living on campus, and attending in person full-time – is increasingly out of step with reality. According to HEPI and Advance HE, 68% of students now work part-time to support themselves.
Others commute long distances, care for family members or study while managing health conditions. Yet academic and campus life often centres around those with time, money and flexibility, creating barriers for others.
Who are non-traditional students?
‘Non-traditional’ students are those whose lives don’t neatly align with the structures of traditional university study. This includes:
commuters who travel in from home each day, often at significant personal cost;
students from low-income households, for whom maintenance loans fall well short;
mature-age students, carers, or those with parenting responsibilities;
students living with disabilities or chronic health conditions; and
first-in-family students, navigating systems and expectations without precedent.
These students comprise a significant portion of the sector. Meeting their needs should not be seen as an add-on, but as essential to building a fairer system.
The hidden barriers reshaping student life
Rigid timetables, inflexible systems, and unclear support structures can turn everyday aspects of student life into barriers. For students juggling work, care or long commutes, these barriers can add stress and negatively impact attendance, engagement, and overall well-being.
The people I know that commute, it’s mostly because they couldn’t afford to live or it would be way more expensive for them to live in student accommodation because they live so close.
I worked with someone, and she’d be in Uni all day from 9 am to 5 pm because she might have something that started at 9am and then finished at 6pm, because the timetable is not synced up.
Accommodation contracts and payment schedules often clash with student loan timings, leaving some students short on essentials or reliant on overdrafts and food banks. These are not isolated challenges but systemic issues that call for sector-wide solutions.
Building a fairer future for higher education
To build a fairer, more inclusive higher education system, universities and policymakers need clear evidence on what effective support looks like.
The upcoming Minimum Income Standard for Students 2025 (MISS25) report – a follow-up to MISS24 with HEPI – will provide that evidence, offering the most detailed picture yet of the true cost of participating in university life for first-year students living in purpose-built accommodation.
It will help the sector understand what it takes for students to stay afloat, take part fully, and succeed, particularly for those managing disabilities, low incomes, or additional responsibilities.
What students say they need to succeed
Focus groups from the MISS25 research highlight that students need time, flexibility and support that reflects their real lives. Financial pressure and scheduling conflicts can limit their ability to join societies, attend events, or fully participate in academic life.
‘We just need time and space to breathe’
Many students described university life as overwhelming, mostly because of how tightly packed, inflexible, and unsupported it can feel. Rigid schedules and disconnected systems create extra strain, especially for students who need to manage work, transport, or health appointments.
As the report will show, even students receiving the maximum maintenance loan must work long hours every week just to meet a minimum standard of living.
‘It’s hard to join in when you’re just trying to survive’
Participating in societies, sports, and social life is a vital part of the university experience. But for many, the rising cost of living means opting out is the only option.
This impacts wellbeing, confidence, and the chance to build networks that support success.
These challenges are often most acute in the first year, when students are building social connections and learning to navigate university systems for the first time.
‘Uni should be built around real students, not ideal ones’
Students shared how university systems don’t match their realities. Timetables that assume all-day availability, unclear payment schedules, and expectations around placements can all create friction for students managing extra responsibilities or financial pressures.
To support success, universities need to understand and address these gaps.
Why inclusive design must be the next priority
The barriers many students face are design challenges, not a matter of individual resilience. Inclusive design means creating flexible timetables, accessible learning environments, and clear, consistent support structures that work for all learners.
When these systems are in place, students can focus on learning and contributing to their communities, rather than constantly navigating obstacles.
Rethinking support beyond financial aid
While financial support is still crucial, students need systems that align with their lives to reduce unnecessary stress and uncertainty. Predictable processes, transparent communication, and flexible learning options are all part of enabling participation and success.
Explore the full MISS25 report
The upcoming Minimum Income Standard for Students 2025 report (MISS25) offers a data-driven roadmap for a more inclusive student experience. Sign up to receive a copy of the report to explore the findings and discover how better insight can drive better outcomes across your institution.
TechnologyOne is a Partner of HEPI. TechnologyOne is a global Software as a Service (SaaS) company. Their enterprise SaaS solution transforms business and makes life simple for universities by providing powerful, deeply integrated enterprise software that is incredibly easy to use. The company takes complete responsibility to market, sell, implement, support and run solutions for customers, which reduce time, cost and risk.
This blog is a review by HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman, of Storming the Ivory Tower: How a Florida College Became Ground Zero in the Struggle to Take Back Our Campuses
The tone of this new book by Richard Corcoran on ‘Florida’s most left-wing public university’ is set at the very start with a tribute to the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers for their ‘unshakeable commitment to ignoring any fact that does not support their predetermined narrative’. It continues into the Foreword, contributed by the US conservative Christopher Rufo, which argues for ‘institutional recapture’ and ‘reconquest’.
The main text begins, however, with a paean to ‘liberal education’, a defining feature of western education but also a particularly good way of describing some higher education in the US. It then recounts how, in early 2023, the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, appointed six new trustees (including Rufo) to oversee the New College of Florida, which is the smallest institution in the State University System of Florida. The institution had only a few hundred students but was also a place that the American right thought had lost its way and needed saving.
Oversight versus autonomy
It is easy to forget on the UK side of the Atlantic, where we tend to associate university success with university autonomy, how much power state governors have over university systems in the US. The American model is akin to letting Andy Burnham decide who should govern the various universities in Greater Manchester. Or more pertinently perhaps, given the politics of the people involved, letting Andrea Jenkyns, the Reform mayor of Lincolnshire and former Minister for Universities, choose the board members of Lincoln University and Bishop Grosseteste University (soon to be renamed Lincoln Bishop University).
Those who choose the trustees of an institution indirectly choose who should manage that institution as it is trustees who hire and fire leaders and hold them to account. And in the case of the New College of Florida, DeSantis’s six new trustees helped to install the author of this book, Richard Corcoran, as the institution’s President in 2023.
Corcoran’s core argument is that the changes wrought by DeSantis were necessary to rescue a failing institution to which those students who did enrol struggled to feel a sense of belonging. Admitted students (some of whom never actually enrolled) told researchers that the New College of Florida’s social culture was ‘politically correct’ and shaped by ‘druggies’ and ‘weirdoes’. Corcoran (rightly) points out this is ‘the exact opposite’ characterisation that ‘any rational organisation would adopt if it was trying to appeal to a broad swath of students and parents.’
At just 650 students, the New College of Florida was only around half the size the local legislature had expected and, indeed, was smaller than the average secondary school in either the UK (1,000+ pupils) or the US (c.850), rather than boasting the typical enrolment of a higher education institution. That made a quick turnaround more feasible and Corcoran claims victory near the end of the book, arguing that, ‘In a mere 10 months, New College of Florida went from one of the most progressively captured universities in the country to the freest university in the nation.’ (This claim is caveated a little though, when Corcoran takes a dig at some of New College’s longer-serving staff: ‘I still have a small handful of faculty members who believe in leftist indoctrination.’)
DEI, gender studies and 7 October
The story of the takeover / recovery of New College is told via chapters looking at:
DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), which we are told was costly and ineffectual or even counter-productive;
gender studies, which we are told has no place within the liberal arts; and
the campus battles after the 7 October attack by Hamas, which we are told exposed the power of ‘unseen, unknown, unelected people who reside in large part in and around academia.’
The chapter on gender studies looks at the growth of the discipline and its arguably un-evidenced approach – especially towards the treatment of children with gender dysphoria. A succinct way to summarise it would be to say JK Rowling would likely approve of the chapter. But Corcoran ends with an important thought about why the way such issues are treated in academia matters: ‘The real concern is not just the suppression of free speech, but what happens in society when dialogue around important issues is summarily dismissed.’
A later chapter focuses on the changes wrought Corcoran and his allies, such as changing curricula, adding sports and improving campus facilities. He and his team clearly have the institution’s and its students’ interests at heart. But the level of public expenditure for such a small college seems extraordinary and some of it seems to have been spent unnecessarily. For example, some neglected student dorms were renovated at large expense only to be declared still unfit for humans to live in, meaning hotel beds had to be requisitioned.
It is striking that the reconquest of the institution was done via the actions of the state governor, the spending of considerable public money and the enforcement of strict rules. In other words, the tactics were interventionist rather than libertarian, even if the agenda was right-wing rather than left-wing. This helps explain why Corcoran is, unlike some other Republicans, opposed to abolishing the Department of Education, urging the American right to copy the left by using federal bodies to effect real change.
The other thing that really sticks out is how big a battle was fought over a college that educates something like 0.003% of America’s college students (or 0.15% of Florida’s). In terms of size relative to the rest of the higher education sector, the New College of Florida is the US equivalent of something like the Dyson Institute here in the UK. So it is worth asking whether the campus battles are a trailblazer akin to Ronald Reagan taking on the University of California or whether they are more like the skirmishes seen here in the UK over institutions like Regent’s University London, the New College of the Humanities (now Northeastern University London) and Buckingham (where, to declare an interest, I sit on the Council). Corcoran himself seems unsure which they will turn out to be.
I. Did. Not. Give. A. F***.
At one point, Corcoran tells a story about his negotiations to eject a car museum which was on the New College campus and occupying much-needed space at a rent level that was far below the market value. This leads to some negative media coverage about which Corcoran writes, ‘As to the press: I. Did. Not. Give. A. F***.’ But there is an element of protesting too much here as there is page after page of settling scores and putting the record straight after numerous attacks on New College from many sides (including some parts of the media, staff and students and the Governor of another state [California]).
While it makes sense to discuss the media attacks on the New College of Florida’s leaders in a book on the institution, the author can’t resist the temptation to broaden his text out to include earlier battles he fought with the media about COVID during his previous job as Education Commissioner of Florida, before delving even further back to recount his time as the 100th Speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives. It is all diverting and somewhat interesting as a study of state-level politics, but it is not really on what the book professes to be about.
I don’t blame the author for responding to the attacks; educational institutions that profess to be objective can sometimes struggle to accommodate members that hold anything other than the standard left-wing views that predominate in education. But as a reader on this other side of the Atlantic, I’d have preferred more higher education strategy and less tittle-tattle. When you’re trying to work out what lessons the battles over New College might hold for higher education outside the US, the settling of old scores with various local, national and specialist media outlets is less interesting.
Nonetheless, the book ends with a nine-point ‘roadmap’ for transformation, from ‘Leadership is everything’, through ‘Litigate, litigate, litigate’ to ‘Presidents should have CEO capabilities’. Given it is so hard to find out what a Farage Government might mean for higher education over here, then this book may provide a bigger hint than Reform’s last manifesto.
Parting thought
When I’ve previously posted my assessment of books that are relevant to higher education and written from a right-of-centre perspective, I’ve received pushback. My far-from-adulatory review of one of Matt Goodwin’s books, for example, won an excoriating comment from a former vice-chancellor: ‘HEPI was set up as a serious evidence based think tank. It was not set up to dabble in phoney party political “culture wars”.’
It is hard to disagree with the general sentiment on HEPI’s purpose, but I do disagree with the notion that we should ignore books written from the right. It is important to understand the right’s approach to higher education (on both sides of the Atlantic). If you draw a thick boundary around those books that are deemed acceptable to read and review and if that line excludes books like Corcoran’s, there are two problems.
First, you play into the hands of – and give succour to – those who regard higher education as both insufficiently ideologically diverse and unwilling to engage with the full range of mainstream ideas.
Secondly, you fail to draw a distinction between a right-wing stance, like Corocran’s, which (whether you agree with it or not) is aimed at raising educational standards, and other right-wing educational escapades that are much less clearly about improving education.
Having also just finished reading Trump U: The Inside Story of Trump University by Stephen Gilpin, which lays bare the horror that was ‘Trump University’ and its get-rich-quick-at-the-expense-of-the-poor schemes which have nothing to do with academia, I am reinforced in my view that we should engage with all mainstream educational ideas irrespective of whether they emerge from potentially divisive Republicans such as Corcoran or somewhere else.
This HEPI guest blog was kindly authored by John Goddard OBE, Emeritus Professor of Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University.
In a HEPI note prompted by a Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) conference, Nick Hillman asked: Should the seminal Robbins report inform the forthcoming post-16 strategy? He referenced the point made by Professor Robson of SKOPE about the need ‘to encourage place-based approaches … and replace competition with coordination.’ As Nick points out, the challenge of place and coordination are not new, but as I will argue, these are not being confronted by policymakers right now.
The Robbins’ report led to new universities being established. But these were in county towns and as we observe in our volume on The University and the City, overlook the growing urban crisis of that period. The Education Reform Act of 1988 severed the link between polytechnics and local government. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which allowed polytechnics to apply for university status, had the Government’s desired impact of reducing the unit cost of higher education and moving the UK instantly up the OECD rankings in terms of participation in higher education. But it also signalled a further disconnection with cities. The creation of new universities in the 1970s to meet a 50% participation rate was also unplanned in geographical terms. So, unlike many countries, the UK has not had a plan for the geography of higher let alone further education.
Indeed, UK higher education policy and practice has ignored the lessons of history as well as being geographically blind. It has not been sensitive to the different local contexts where universities operate and the evolution of these institutions and places through time.
It is important to remember that locally endowed proto-universities like Newcastle, Sheffield and Birmingham supported late 19th-century urban industrialisation and the health of the workforce. They also played a role in building local soft infrastructure, including facilitating discourse around the role of science and the arts in business and society. This was also a time in which new municipal government structures were being formed. In short, universities helped build the local state and create what the British Academy now calls social and cultural infrastructure, in which universities play a key role
These founding principles became embedded in the DNA of some institutions. For example, in 1943, the Earl Grey Memorial lecturer in King’s College Newcastle noted,
Ideal Universities… should be an organic part of regional existence in its public aspects, and a pervading influence in its private life. …Universities to be thus integrated in the community, must be sensitive to what is going on in the realm of business and industry, of practical local affairs, of social adaptation and development, as well as in the realm of speculative thought and abstract research.
In the later 20th century, most so-called redbrick universities turned their back on place as the central state took on direct funding of higher education and research and did not prioritise the local role of universities. But this was challenged by the Royal Commission on the Future of Higher Education in 1997, chaired by Lord Dearing. He noted that: ‘As part of the compact we envisage between HE and society, each institution should be clear about its mission in relation to local communities and regions.’ For him, this ‘compact’ was wide-ranging, had a strong local dimension and was one where the university’s contribution to ‘the economy’ could not be separated from the wider society in which it was embedded.
Many of Dearing’s ideas were subsequently incorporated into the work of Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) that were established in 1989 to promote economic development and regeneration, improve business competitiveness, and reduce regional disparities. This included investment, (matched by European regional funds ) into university-related research and cultural facilities. These capital and recurrent investments contributed to ‘place making’ and university links with business and the arts. For example, the former Newcastle brewery site was purchased by Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council and RDA, which they named ‘Science Central’. The partnership was incorporated as Newcastle Science City Ltd., a company limited by guarantee with its own CEO and independent board. The organisation’s portfolio included:
Support for business, facilitating the creation of new enterprises drawing on the scientific capabilities of the region’s universities and work with local schools and communities, particularly focussed on promoting science education in deprived areas.
The initiatives recognised the role that universities could play in their places by building ‘quadruple helix partnerships’ between universities, business, local and central government and the community and voluntary sectors.
But from 2008, with the onset of public austerity, a focus on national competitiveness and a rolling back of the boundaries of the state, we saw the abolition of the RDAs in 2012, the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships with more limited powers and resources and a cutting back on non-statutory local government activities, notably for economic development. My 2009 NESTA provocation Reinventing the Civic University was a reminder that universities had to go back to their roots and challenge broader geo-political trends, including globalisation and the creation of university research excellence hierarchies that mirrored city hierarchies.
Marketisation was subsequently embedded into law in the 2017 Higher Education Act. This abolished the Higher Education Funding Council for England and its network of regional consultants working with formal university associations. The act unleashed competition regulated via the Office for Students (OfS) and supported by an enhanced discipline-based research excellence funding scheme. Both were place blind. Some of us raised the possibility of the financial collapse of universities in less prosperous places where they were so-called ‘anchor institutions’
It was a recognition of this place blindness that contributed to the case for the establishment of the Civic University Commission, chaired by the late Lord Kerslake. The Commission argued that the public – nationally and locally – needed to understand better the specific benefits that universities can bring in response to the question: ‘We have a university here, but what is it doing for us? Institutions that were ultimately publicly funded needed to be locally accountable given our place-based system of governance – parliamentary constituencies and local authorities.
For the Commission, accountability meant something different from a top-down compliance regime. Rather, sensitive and voluntary commitments made between a diverse set of actors to one another, whose collective powers and resources could impact local economic and social deficiencies
The Commission therefore proposed that universities wishing to play a civic role should prepare Civic University Agreements, co-created and signed by other key partners and embracing local accountability. Strategic analysis to shape agreements should lead to a financial plan that brings together locally the many top-down and geographically blind funding streams that universities receive from across Whitehall – for quality research, for health and wellbeing, for business support, for higher-level skills and for culture.
Some of these national funds now need to be ring-fenced to help universities work with partners to meet local needs and opportunities, including building capacity for collaborative working within an area. As the Secretary of State for Education has suggested in her letter to VCs, this might include a slice of core formulaic Quality Research (QR) funding. Such processes would be preferable to the ad-hoc interventions that have hitherto failed to establish long-term trust between universities and the community. At the same time, a place dimension could be included in the regulation of the domestic student marketplace. This could all form part of a compact or contract between universities and the state which enshrined a responsibility to serve the local public good.
Going forward, I would argue that the coincidence of multiple crises across the world has far-reaching implications that universities cannot ignore. Indeed, if they do not step up to the plate and assert their civic role as anchor institutions in their places, their very existence may be at stake. The issues are well set out in this Learning Planet Institute Manifesto for the Planetary Mission of the University.
Reading this Manifesto should help policy makers and institutional leaders in the UK recognise that the current financial crisis facing universities is an outward and visible sign of deeper threats, not least those arising from popularism and being fanned by Donald Trump. And popularism has its roots in the experience of people in left behind places.
Therefore, Government support for the role of universities in their communities is not only beneficial to them but also to society at large. To respect institutional autonomy, this requires the right incentives (sticks and carrots). For example, universities throughout England could be required to support the Government’s plans for devolution as part of the compact I suggest. Questions to be answered by the Departments for Education; for Housing, Communities and Local Government and for Science, Innovation and Technology working TOGETHER could include:
What structures need to be put in place inside and outside of universities to facilitate joint working between universities and Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs)?
How should universities be included in upcoming Devolution Deals?
How might these differ between MCAs at different stages of development and different levels of prosperity?
How should universities link their work with business, with the community and the priorities of MCAs for inclusive growth and with the Industrial Strategy White paper?
How should Combined Authorities work with different universities and colleges in their area to meet skills gaps?
How can areas without MCAs work with universities to deliver equivalent outcomes?
In summary, universities must recognise that they are part of the problem identified by populism, but can contribute to solutions through purposive local actions supported by the government.
