Category: Policy and HE

  • The disruptive idea of the university

    The disruptive idea of the university

    by Rob Cuthbert

    “Ideas of the university in the public domain are hopelessly impoverished. ‘Impoverished’ because they are unduly confined to a small range of possible conceptions of the university; and ‘hopelessly’ because they are too often without hope, taking the form of either a hand-wringing over the current state of the university or merely offering a defence of the emerging nature of ‘the entrepreneurial university’.”

    Fifty years on from the Robbins Report, that was how Ron Barnett began Imagining the University in 2013, and it seems that nothing much has changed since then. Stefan Collini had written a much-cited book, What are universities for?, in 2012, which as the Guardian review said (Conrad, 2012) was “heavy on hand-wringing and light on real answers”. Tom Sperlinger, Josie McLellan and Richard Pettigrew wrote Who are universities for? Remaking higher education in 2018, which despite its respectable intentions was more akin to what Barnett called a ‘defence of the emerging nature of the entrepreneurial university’, aiming in the authors’ words to “make UK universities more accessible and responsive to a changing economy.”

    By 2019 Raewyn Connell was taking a rather different tack in The Good University: What Universities Actually Do and Why It’s Time for Radical Change:

    “… what should a ‘good university’ look like? … Raewyn Connell asks us to consider just that, challenging us to rethink the fundamentals of what universities do. Drawing on the examples offered by pioneering universities and educational reformers around the world, Connell outlines a practical vision for how our universities can become both more engaging and more productive places, driven by social good rather than profit, helping to build fairer societies.”

    Simon Marginson and his colleagues in the Centre for Global Higher Education have pursued a broad programme to conceptualise and promote the idea of the public good of higher education, but in his interviews with English university leaders:

    “Nearly all advocated a broad public good role … and provided examples of public outcomes in higher education. However, these concepts lacked clarity, while at the same time the shaping effects of the market were sharply understood.”

    His sad conclusion was that:

    “English policy on the public good outcomes of higher education has been hi-jacked, reworked, and emptied out in Treasury’s long successful drive to implement a fee-based market.”

    This means that everyday pressures too often drive us back to either handwringing or apologetic entrepreneurialism, or some mixture of the two. Even Colin Riordan, one of the most thoughtful of VCs during his tenure at Cardiff, could not break the mould:

    “What are universities for? Everybody knows that universities exist to educate students and help to create a highly educated workforce. Most people know they’re also the place where research is done that ends up in technologies like smartphones, fuel-efficient cars and advanced medical care. That means universities are a critical part of the innovation process.”

    These ideas sell the university short, and leave their leaders and managers ill-equipped to live the values they need to protect.

    We are entering an era when Donald Trump and Elon Musk seem determined to ‘move fast and break things’, as the Facebook motto once had it. Mark Zuckerberg tried to move on ten years ago to “Move fast with stable infrastructure”, but it seems that Elon Musk didn’t get the memo, as the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ cuts huge swathes through and – as it presumably hopes – out of US government. Whether or not DOGE succeeds we will soon discover, but the disregard for stable infrastructure may well prove fatal to its own efforts.

    People would not normally accuse a university of moving fast, but what some might see as an excessive concern for stable infrastructure perhaps conceals the speed at which universities move to break existing ideas and understandings. The pursuit of truth may be an imperfect way to describe the aim of the university, but as an academic motivation it suffices to explain how one way of understanding will sometimes rapidly give way to another. Yes, we know that some paradigms hang on doggedly, often supported long past their sell-by date by academics with too much invested in them. But usually and eventually, often more suddenly, the truth will out.

    How can universities best protect their distinctive quality, of encouraging open-minded teaching and research which will create the most favourable conditions for learning, individually and collectively? Strategies and academic values have their place, they might even constitute the stable infrastructure that is needed for a university to flourish. But the infrastructure needs to be built on a simple idea which everyone can comprehend. And that simple idea has to be infinitely flexible while staying perpetually relevant – here is one I prepared earlier:

    “Many people can’t shake off the idea that management in higher education is or at least it should be about having clear objectives, and working out what to do through systematic analysis and ‘cascading’ objectives down through the organisation. They want to see the university as a rational machine, and the manager as a production controller, because Western scientistic culture has encouraged them to think that way.

    The best way to deal with that way of thinking is to agree with it. You say: yes, we must focus on our key objective. In teaching our key objective is personal learning, development and growth for students, a process which cannot be well specified in advance. In research our key objective is the generation of new knowledge. So in higher education the key objective in each of our two main activities is the generation of unpredictable outcomes. Now please tell me what your key performance indicators will be.”[1]

    The fundamental test of performance for a university is that it generates unpredictable outcomes. An infinitely flexible, endlessly relevant idea that everyone can understand – and always disruptive. That is why higher education matters – not just training students for the economy, not just innovation in research for economic growth. Universities need to keep generating unpredictable outcomes because that is their unique function as open public institutions, and that is what their wider society needs and deserves.

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

    [1] Text taken from inaugural professorial lecture; Rob Cuthbert, 7 November 2007

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • Open universities: between radical promise and market reality

    Open universities: between radical promise and market reality

    by Ourania Filippakou

    Open universities have long symbolised a radical departure from the exclusivity of conventional universities. Conceived as institutions of access, intellectual emancipation, and social transformation, they promised to disrupt rigid academic hierarchies and democratise knowledge. Yet, as higher education is increasingly reshaped by market logics, can open universities still claim to be engines of social progress, or have they become institutions that now reproduce the very inequalities they sought to dismantle?

    This question is not merely academic; it is profoundly political. Across the globe, democratic institutions are under siege, and the erosion of democracy is no longer an abstraction – it is unfolding in real time (cf EIU, 2024; Jones, 2025). The rise of far-right ideologies, resurgent racism, intensified attacks on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, and the erosion of protections for migrants and marginalised communities all point to a crisis of democracy that cannot be separated from the crisis of education (Giroux, 2025). As Giroux (1984) argues, education is never neutral; it can operate as both a potential site for fostering critical consciousness and resistance and a mechanism for reproducing systems of social control and domination. Similarly, Butler (2005) reminds us that the very categories of who counts as human, who is deemed grievable, and whose knowledge is legitimised are deeply political struggles.

    Open universities, once heralded as radical interventions in knowledge production, now find themselves entangled in these struggles. Increasingly, they are forced to reconcile their egalitarian aspirations with the ruthless pressures of neoliberalism and market-driven reforms. The challenge they face is no less than existential: to what extent can they uphold their role as spaces of intellectual and social transformation, or will they become further absorbed into the logics of commodification and control?

    My article (Filippakou, 2025) in Policy Reviews in Higher Education, ‘Two ideologies of openness: a comparative analysis of the Open Universities in the UK and Greece’, foregrounds a crucial but often overlooked dimension: the ideological battles that have shaped open universities over time. The UK Open University (OU) and the Hellenic Open University (HOU) exemplify two distinct yet converging trajectories. The UK OU, founded in the 1960s as part of a broader post-war commitment to social mobility, was a political project – an experiment in making university education available to those long excluded from elite institutions. The HOU, by contrast, emerged in the late 1990s within the European Union’s push for a knowledge economy, where lifelong learning was increasingly framed primarily in terms of workforce development. While both institutions embraced ‘openness’ as a defining principle, the meaning of that openness has shifted – from an egalitarian vision of education as a public good to a model struggling to reconcile social inclusion with neoliberal imperatives.

    A key insight of this analysis is that open universities do not merely widen participation; they reflect deeper contestations over the purpose of higher education itself. The UK OU’s early success inspired similar models worldwide, but today, relentless marketisation – rising tuition fees, budget cuts, and the growing encroachment of corporate interests – threatens to erode its founding ethos.

    Meanwhile, the HOU was shaped by a European policy landscape that framed openness not merely as intellectual emancipation but as economic necessity. Both cases illustrate the paradox of open universities: they continue to expand access, yet their structural constraints increasingly align them with the logic of precarity, credentialism, and market-driven efficiency.

    This struggle over education is central to the survival of democracy. Arendt (1961, 2005) warned that democracy is not self-sustaining; it depends on an informed citizenry capable of judgment, debate, and resistance. Higher education, in this sense, is not simply about skills or employability – it is about cultivating the capacity to think critically, to challenge authority, and to hold power to account (Giroux, 2019). Open universities were once at the forefront of this democratic mission. But as universities in general, and open universities in particular, become increasingly instrumentalised – shaped by political forces intent on suppressing dissent, commodifying learning, and hollowing out universities’ transformative potential – their role in sustaining democratic publics is under threat.

    The real question, then, is not simply whether open universities remain ‘open’ but how they define and enact this openness. To what extent do they serve as institutions of intellectual and civic transformation, or have they primarily been reduced to flexible degree factories, catering to market demands under the guise of accessibility? By comparing the UK and Greek experiences, this article aims to challenge readers to rethink the ideological stakes of openness in higher education today. The implications extend far beyond open universities themselves. The broader appeal of this analysis lies in its relevance to anyone interested in universities as sites of social change. Open universities are not just alternatives to conventional universities – they represent larger struggles over knowledge, democracy, and economic power. The creeping normalisation of authoritarian politics, the suppression of academic freedom, and the assault on marginalised voices in public discourse demand that we reclaim higher education as a site of resistance.

    Can open universities reclaim their radical promise? If higher education is to resist the encroachment of neoliberalism and reactionary politics, we must actively defend institutions that prioritise intellectual freedom, civic literacy, and higher education for the public good. The future of open universities – and higher education itself – depends not only on institutional policies but on whether scholars, educators, and students collectively resist these forces. The battle for openness is not just about access; it is about the kind of society we choose to build – for ourselves and the generations to come.

    Ourania Filippakou is a Professor of Education at Brunel University of London. Her research interrogates the politics of higher education, examining universities as contested spaces where power, inequality, and resistance intersect. Rooted in critical traditions, she explores how higher education can foster social justice, equity, and transformative change.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • What’s in a name? That which we call a university…

    What’s in a name? That which we call a university…

    by Rob Cuthbert

    In England the use of the title ‘university’ is regulated by law, a duty which now lies with the regulator, the Office for Students (OfS). When a new institution is created, or when an existing institution wishes to change its name, the OfS must consult on the proposed new name and may or may not approve it after consideration of responses to the consultation. The responsible agency for naming was once simply the Privy Council, a responsibility transferred to the OfS with the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. For existing older universities where legislative change is needed, the Privy Council must also still approve, but will only do so with a letter of support from the OfS. The arrangements were helpfully summarised in a blog by David Kernohan and Michael Salmon of Wonkhe on 8 April 2024, before most of the recent changes had been decided.

    That which we call a university would probably not smell quite as sweet if it could not use the university title, and with its new power the OfS has made a series of decisions which risk putting it in bad odour. In July 2024 it allowed AECC University College to call itself the Health Sciences University. Although AECC University College was a perfectly respectable provider of health-related courses, this name change surely flew in the face of the many larger and prestigious universities which had an apparently greater claim to expertise in both teaching and research in health sciences. The criteria for name changes are set out by the OfS: “The OfS will assess whether the provider meets the criteria for university college or university title and will, in particular: …  Determine whether the provider’s chosen title may be, or may have the potential to be, confusing.” It is hard to see how that criterion was satisfied in the case of the Health Sciences University.

    Even worse was to come. In 2024 Bolton University applied to use the title University of Greater Manchester, despite the large and looming presence of both Manchester University and Manchester Metropolitan University. And the OfS said yes. If you google the names Bolton or Greater Manchester University you may even find the University of Bolton Manchester, which is neither the University of Bolton nor the University of Manchester, but is “Partnered with the University of Bolton and situated within the centre of Manchester” – indeed, very near the Oxford Road heartland location of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan universities.

    This is rather more confusing and misleading than University Academy 92, founded by a group of famous football team-mates at Manchester United, formed in August 2017 and based near Old Trafford. Wikipedia says that “the approval by the Department of Education (DoE) to allow UA92 the use of ‘University Academy 92’ was questioned with critics claiming the decision to approve the use of the name makes it ‘too easy’ for new providers to use ‘university’ in a new institution’s name”. This criticism continues to have some merit, but a high-profile football-related initiative, now broadened, is perhaps less likely to cause any confusion in the minds of its potential students. It may be significant that it was created at the same time as the HERA legislation was enacted, with government perhaps relaxing its grip in the last exercise of university title approval powers before the Privy Council handed over to the OfS. UA92 was and continues to be a deliverer of degrees validated by Lancaster University. In 2024 the OfS the University of Central Lancashire applied to be renamed the University of Lancashire, despite the obvious potential confusion with Lancaster University. And the OfS said yes.

    It was not ever thus. The Privy Council would consult and take serious account of responses to consultation, especially from existing universities, as it did after the Further and Higher Education 1992 when 30 or so polytechnics were granted university title. A massive renaming exercise was carefully managed under the Privy Council’s watchful eye. As someone centrally involved in one such exercise, at Bristol Polytechnic, I know that the Privy Council would not allow liberties to be taken. The renaming exercise naturally stretched over many months; the Polytechnic conducted its own consultations both among its staff and students, but also much more widely in schools and other agencies across the South West region. Throughout that period, in a longstanding joke, the Polytechnic Director playfully mocked the Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University by suggesting that the polytechnic might seek to become the ‘Greater Bristol University’. It was a joke because all parties knew that the Privy Council, quite properly, would never countenance such a confusing and misleading proposal.

    How would that name change play out now? In the words (almost) of Cole Porter: “In olden days a glimpse of mocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.”

    Rob Cuthbert is the editor of SRHE News and Blog, and a partner in the Practical Academics consultancy. He was previously Deputy Vice-Chancellor and professor of higher education management at the University of the West of England.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • Second-generation student borrowers | SRHE Blog

    Second-generation student borrowers | SRHE Blog

    by Ariane de Gayardon

    Since the 1980s, massification, policy shifts, and changing ideas about who benefits from higher education have led to the expansion of national student loan schemes globally. For instance, student loans were introduced in England in 1990 and generalized in 1998. Australia introduced income-contingent student loans in the late 1980s. While federal student loans were introduced in the US in 1958, their number and the amount of individual student loan debt ramped up in the 1990s.

    A lot of academic research has analysed this trend, evaluating the effect of student loans on access, retention, success, the student experience, and even graduate outcomes. Yet, this research is based on the choices and experiences of first-generation student borrowers and might not apply to current and future students.

    First-generation borrowers enter higher education with parents who have either not been to higher education, or who have a tertiary degree that pre-dates the expansion of student loans. The parents of first-generation borrowers therefore did not take up loans to pay for their higher education and had no associated repayment burden in adulthood. Any cost associated with these parents’ studies will likely have been shouldered by their families or through grants.

    Second-generation borrowers are the offspring of first-generation borrowers. Their parents took out student loans to pay for their own higher education. The choices made by second-generation borrowers when it comes to higher education and its funding could significantly differ from first-generation borrowers, because they are impacted by their parents’ own experience with student loans.

    Parents and parental experience indeed play an important role in children’s higher education choices and financial decisions. On the one hand, parents can provide financial or in-kind support for higher education. This is most evident in the design of student funding policies which often integrate parental income and financial contributions. In many countries, eligibility for financial aid is means-tested and based on family income (Williams & Usher, 2022). Examples include the US where an Expected Family Contribution is calculated upon assessment of financial need, or Germany where the financial aid system is based on a legal obligation for parents to contribute to their children’s study costs. Indeed, evidence shows that parents do contribute to students’ income. In Europe, family contributions make up nearly half of students’ income (Hauschildt et al, 2018). But the role of parents also extends to decisions about student loans: parents tend to try and shield their children from student debt, helping them financially when possible or encouraging cost-saving behaviour (West et al, 2015).

    On the other hand, parents transmit financial values to their children, which might play a role in their higher education decisions. Family financial socialization theory states that children learn their financial attitudes and behaviour from their parents, through direct teaching and via family interactions and relationships (Gudmunson & Danes, 2011). Studies indeed show the intergenerational transmission of social norms and economic preferences (Maccoby, 1992), including attitudes towards general debt (Almenberg et al, 2021). Continuity of financial values over generations has been observed in the specific case of higher education. Parents who received parental financial support for their own studies are more likely to contribute toward their children’s studies (Steelman & Powell, 1991). For some students, negative parental experiences with general debt can lead to extreme student debt aversion (Zerquera et al,2016).

    As countries globally rely increasingly on student loans to fund higher education, many more students will become second-generation borrowers. Because their parents had to repay their own student debt, the family’s financial assets may be depleted, potentially leading to reduced levels of parental financial support for higher education. This is likely to be even worse for students whose parents are still repaying their loans. In addition, parental experiences of student debt could influence the advice they give their children with regard to higher education financial decisions. As a result, this new generation of student borrowers will face challenges that their predecessors did not, fuelled by the transmitted experience of student loans from their parents (Figure 1).

    Figure 1 – Parental influence on second-generation borrowers

    As the share of second-generation borrowers in the student body increases, the need to understand the decision-making process of these students when it comes to (financial) higher education choices is essential. Although the challenges faced by borrowers will emerge at different times and with varying intensity across countries — depending in part on loan repayment formats — we have an opportunity now to be ahead of the curve. By researching this new generation of student borrowers and their parents, we can better assess their financial dilemmas and the support they need, providing further evidence to design future-proof equitable student funding policies.

    Ariane de Gayardon is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) based at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • Invisible labour: visible activism | SRHE Blog

    Invisible labour: visible activism | SRHE Blog

    by Sarah Montano, Inci Toral and Sarah Percy

    Behind many academic success stories lies an untold narrative of invisible labour – a hidden force driving progress but often overlooked or undervalued. From providing emotional support to sitting on committees, the silent effort sustains institutions yet leaves many working tirelessly in the background on non-promotable tasks. Only when invisible labour is met with visible activism, can change begin.

    As a group of academics over the years we became conscious of a phenomenon that affected not only ourselves but many of our colleagues. We particularly noticed that women* were increasingly being asked to take on emotional labour and tasks that, when it came to promotions were classified as “Non-Promotable Tasks” yet were essential to institutional practices. We concluded that this form of emotional labour was a form of wife work, work that is essential to the running of the home (aka Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)) yet often undervalued and the person carries the mental load. We use the term wife work due to the pejorative nature of wife work in the media and the value placed on such work in wider society. Using a feminist collaborative autoethnographic approach we explored invisible and emotional labour among female academics. Therefore, at the 2024 SRHE conference we delivered our paper on ‘Invisible Labour: Visible Activism’ and argued that it is only such activism that will help to end the inequities in HEIs.

    *we acknowledge that invisible and emotional labour can affect any academic of any gender, particularly those on education/ teaching focussed contracts.

    Shining a light on invisible labour

    Despite the increase in women’s participation in the workforce and in academia, there is still a significant gender pay gap and to compound the issue, this gap widened in 2021 and 2022 in 20/33 OECD countries. As noted by Stephenson (2023), in HE only 28% of professors are female despite women making up 43% of the academic workforce leading to a pay gap of 11.9%. We acknowledge that the reason for such pay gaps and gender biases are complex and multi-factorial (Westoby 2021), thus we focus specifically on the issue of the “gender unequal distribution” of academic labour (Järvinen and Mik-Mayer 2024:1).

    There is much discussion on the mental load outside the workplace; therefore, our focus is on the unpaid or unrewarded workload inside the workplace. As universities have new developed pathways to promotion (e.g. education or impact), citizenship has become less important, yet it is critical work that still needs to be done. However, the result of shifting paths to tenure/promotion means that women are carrying out “Non-Promotable Tasks” (Babcock et al, 2022: 15), which are institutionally important yet will not help career success.

    Wife work defined

    Wife work tasks include: writing references for students; mentoring; assisting students with emotional problems or recruitment; careers advice; taking on someone’s admin work whilst they gain awards; and committee work, effectively comprising what is known as service work. Importantly, a significant component of wife work is emotional labour. Emotional labour involves managing emotions and interactions in the academic setting without formal recognition or workload compensation. These emotional labour tasks may include student emotional support, listening, supporting colleagues, helping people or just always being nice. Such wife work occurs due to societal and institutional expectations that prompt women to take on such wife work, yet this labour whilst maintaining the organisation’s reputation and can lead to emotional dissonance and burnout (Grandey, 2013).

    Making the invisible visible

    Drawing on institutional theory​, feminist theory and theory of gendered organizations we explore how universities, embedded in social norms and values, perpetuate traditional gender roles and expectations. Our research specifically focuses on the “Non-Promotable Tasks,” which are essential for institutional functioning but do not contribute to career success and are undervalued and unrecognised. We highlight patterns about gender distinctions that lead to advantages or exploitations of academics and how these create differing identities and expectations within academia.​

    How we uncovered the invisible

    Our research has two stages. In the first stage, we used a feminist collaborative autoethnographic approach to explore invisible and emotional labour among female academics (Rutter et al, 2021)​. This method allowed for an in-depth examination of personal and shared experiences within our academic community (Akehurst and Scott, 2021)​. As the research subjects, we are comprised of female academics from the same department across international campuses, reflecting on our experiences with non-promotable tasks, emotional dissonance, mental load, and burnout (Grandey, 2013; Lapadat, 2017; Babcock et al, 2022)​. We go beyond individual experiences to co-construct the meaning of invisible and emotional labour collectively​.

    Findings that shape our understanding of invisible labour

    We identified the following categories of “wife-work”:​

    • Mentoring support (outside normal expectations or workload) ​
    • Administrative and Logistical Tasks/ Roles​
    • Recruitment and Outreach ​
    • Committee Work
    • Supporting Career Development
    • Academic and Professional Development​
    • Volunteering and Institutional Presence​
    • Helping people​
    • Taking on someone else’s role while they work on “important stuff”​
    • Listening​
    • Being kind ​

    Using the institutional framework, in which the institutional norms shape the undervaluation of service work (Palthe, 2014), we argue that the regulative, normative, and cognitive-cultural elements of institutional theory contribute to the gendered division of labour.  Through the application of these key dimensions, our findings can be categorised under three dimensions:

    1. Institutional Dimension, underpinned by the explicit rules, laws, and regulations that constrain and guide behaviour such as academic quality assurance and behavioural expectations within HEIs.

    2. Social Dimension, encompassing implicit values, norms, and expectations that define acceptable behaviour within a society or organization such as social expectations around punctuality, dress codes, and academic etiquettes in HEIs.

    3. Individual Dimension, which involves implicit but shared beliefs and mental models shaping how individuals perceive and interpret their environments. These are often taken for granted and operate at a subconscious level.

    Using this framework our findings are categorised accordingly to these elements outlined in Figure 1 below.  

    Figure 1:  Invisible Labour: Visible Activism Findings. Source: Developed by the authors

    It’s time for change

    We recognise that the critical issue is, as Domingo et al (2022) highlighted, the significance of recognising and valuing women’s work within institutions, and stress that the real issue lies within organisational practices rather than women themselves. Addressing emotional labour is vital for a supportive and equitable work environment. The burden of responsibility is deeply embedded into the societal norms and often acts as a catalyser for such responses by female academics (Andersen et al, 2022). ​As organisations shift their focus towards formal progress procedures that undervalue volunteerism and emotional labour (Albia and Cheng, 2023), there is a pressing need for activism to ensure equitable recognition and valuation of women’s contributions within academia.

    A path forward – from silence to solidarity

    Invisible labour has long been an unseen and unrecognised necessity in academia, but we argue that it need not, and should not be this way. Acknowledging and recognising the existence and value of invisible and emotional labour will ensure these ‘non-promotable’ tasks become more visible.  Therefore, there is a pressing need for activism to ensure equitable recognition and valuation of women’s contributions within academia. We emphasise the necessity of addressing these systemic issues to foster a more inclusive and supportive academic environment for all individuals involved. Change starts with awareness, so we hope this is a step in the right direction.

    Professor Sarah Montano is a Professor of Retail Marketing at Birmingham Business School. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2023. Her research interests are primarily authentic assessments, digital education and retail as a place of community. She is an engaging and skilled communicator and regularly appears in the media on the subject of retail industry change.

    Dr Inci Toral is an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham, Business School and she is the Business Education Research and Scholarship (BERS) Convenor at Birmingham Business School. Her work revolves around digital marketing, retailing, creativity and innovation in retail education and authentic assessments. 

    Dr Sarah Percy is an Assistant Professor in Marketing at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, with a special interest in authentic assessments.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • What does it mean to be political for today’s students?

    What does it mean to be political for today’s students?

    When we think about student politics, it is inevitable that the images of student protest and rebellion come to mind. These views of what counts as student politics have been shaped by rather romantic ideals of what it meant to be a student and do politics in 1960s, or perhaps even in 2010-2011 when we witnessed the last large scale student rebellion in England, but also more globally. When we stretch our imagination, perhaps we can also see students engaging with electoral politics, and them being stereotypically more left leaning compared to the general population – or ‘woke’ as portrayed by many right-wing media outlets today. In cases where students do not meet these expectations of political activity, they are often derogatively called ‘snowflakes’: a fragile generation of apolitical students. While there may be some truth in students becoming less politically active, it is important to question why this might be the case, but also to consider the extent to which our own understandings of student politics are perhaps outdated and need changing.

    The cost of student protest

    In contexts where higher education is marketed as an investment into one’s future, the student-as-consumer positioning becomes unavoidable. Consumerism in our universities may be brutally explicit as in the UK where students are protected by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or more subtle in systems where laws and regulations do not treat students as consumers, but the transactional idea of higher education and human capital development still imply similar understandings. As students are constantly reminded to prioritise ‘value for money’ and question their investment into successful graduate employment, deviating from such a mindset and standing out as a disruptive or disobedient student cannot be a preferred or safe option. This was evident with the recent pro-Palestinian encampments which on British campuses were rather short-lived, often adopted around the exam periods and ending with the closure of the academic year 2023/2024. The cost of non-compliance is very high for our students: how could a student who has accumulated an average of £45k student debt with already insecure graduate employment trajectory drop everything and revolt? My recent book Student Identity and Political Agency: Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights deals with these dilemmas and argues that the modes of student politics have had to change alongside the generational pressures that contemporary students face. In other words, the form that student politics takes is intertwined with what it means to be a student today.

    Alternative forms of political agency

    To counteract the view that students have become apolitical or snowflakes, we need to imagine student politics as more fluid and situational: something that gets embedded within the everyday practices of being a student.

    First, this revisioning invites us to be more open-minded about what counts as student protest. For example, it is evident that when today’s students do protest, their actions tend to be more short-lived while triggered by identity-based issues that matter to them personally. We should also look at the new and alternative spaces that activism takes place within, eg digital platforms. The latter could of course relate to generational shifts and students being more digitally adept, but also to the fact that the university campuses have become heavily regulated by timetabling pressures and health and safety rules, making it difficult for students to socialise, let alone organise on campus.

    Second, our universities have never emphasised student voice as much as they do today. In addition to students’ unions, there is a wide range of new representative roles on university committees and working groups. While there are questions about tokenism and the effectiveness of these roles – and perhaps fairly so – one cannot deny that there is an incredible infrastructure emerging for students to (peacefully) exercise their interest. This could also be politically motivated, and we should not underestimate the power that students as collectives hold through such representative roles.

    Finally and perhaps most importantly, I invite us to consider the power that the student-as-consumer holds. In the age of marketised universities, we need to ask some uncomfortable questions related to the extent to which student-as-consumer positioning itself empowers students with new types of political agency. We know that an increasing number of students are exercising their right to complain, and they often do this to call out universities for their wrongdoings. These wrongdoings may relate to consumer rights and personal grievances, but often they also reflect wider structural inequalities. It could therefore be argued that consumer rights have granted students new tools to exercise their interest. There is a tendency for the sector to view student complaints as something negative and unreasonable, and none of us would want to be the subject of one. However, it is likely that if students are increasingly treated as consumers, it is also this consumer positioning that offers new opportunities for political agency to be exercised. In today’s highly pressurised university environments, consumer complaints might be a more effective way to make oneself heard: making complaints is a legal right for our students, and the potential reputational damage to universities makes complaints high stakes.

    In summary, I argue that the market forces and consumerist discourses that brutally shape students are also what trigger, enable and disable certain new and altered forms of political agency. Such understanding invites us to shift away from the prevailing assumption that contemporary students are becoming apolitical and instead to rethink our normative understanding of what counts as political agency.

    For more details, please see my book published as part of the SRHE and Routledge book series Research into Higher Education:

    Raaper, R (2024). Student Identity and Political Agency. Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights Oxon: Routledge

    Rille Raaper is Associate Professor at Durham University. Rille’s research interests lie in the sociology of higher education with a particular focus on student identity, experience and political agency in a variety of higher education settings. Her research is primarily concerned with how universities organise their work in competitive higher education markets, and the implications market forces have on current and future students. The two particular strands of Rille’s research relate to: a) student identity and experience in consumerist higher education; b) student agency, citizenship and political activism.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • Bridging borders in knowledge: the internationalisation of Chinese social sciences

    Bridging borders in knowledge: the internationalisation of Chinese social sciences

    by Márton Demeter, Manuel Goyanes, Gergő Háló and Xin Xu

    The dynamics of Chinese social sciences are shifting rapidly. As policies aim to balance domestic priorities with global integration, the interplay between China’s academic output and its international reception highlights critical challenges and opportunities. In a recent study published in Policy Reviews in Higher Education, we analyzed 8,962 publications by the top 500 most productive China-affiliated scholars in Economics, Education, and Political Science between 2016 and 2020.

    Uneven impacts across disciplines

    Our analysis reveals that most Chinese-authored works in these disciplines are published in Western-edited journals. Political Science publications often focus on China-specific topics, creating what may be interpreted as intellectual silos.

    By contrast, Economics stands out for its significant global impact, with Chinese scholars’ publications frequently outpacing the citation rates of their Western peers. Meanwhile, Education and Political Science publications from China generally attract fewer citations compared to those from the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

    Why does Economics perform so well? The field’s emphasis on data-driven, globally relevant research – addressing topics like economic policy, market dynamics, and financial crises – positions it effectively within international discourse. Substantial funding and resources further strengthen Economics’ visibility and impact.

    In contrast, Education often highlights region-specific practices that may resonate less with a global audience, while Political Science is constrained by political sensitivities and limited opportunities for broad international collaboration.

    Patterns of collaboration

    Collaboration offers another perspective of Chinese academia’s strengths and limitations. Scholars in Economics and Education often engage in diverse partnerships, with strong connections to both Western and Asian institutions. In contrast, Political Science remains more insular, with most co-authorships occurring within mainland China. This inward focus may restrict the field’s integration into global academic conversations.

    At an institutional level, hybrid collaborations – combining domestic and international partnerships – highlight China’s strategic approach to bridging local and global aspirations. However, the predominance of Western collaborators, particularly from the United States, underscores a continued reliance on established academic hubs.

    The duality of “siloed internationalisation”

    A significant finding of our study is the duality evident in Political Science research: while these publications often appear in international journals, their focus on China-specific issues reflects a form of “scientific nationalism”. This approach limits their global engagement, confining them to niche scholarly communities rather than positioning them as contributors to broader, international dialogues.

    The “international in format but national in essence” approach underscores a broader challenge for Chinese academia. It must navigate the tension between adhering to global visibility standards while championing non-Western perspectives and priorities.

    Policy and practical implications

    Our findings also carry critical implications for policymakers, institutions, and global academic networks. For China, fostering more diverse collaborations – beyond traditional Western partners – can reduce overreliance on dominant paradigms and contribute to a more equitable global knowledge production system. Initiatives with an emphasis on partnerships with Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Eastern Europe, could play a key role in reshaping these dynamics.

    We believe that, for the global academic community, greater inclusivity requires deliberate efforts to decenter Western paradigms. Platforms that ensure equitable participation and strategies to protect collaborations from geopolitical tensions are vital for sustaining open and impactful scientific exchange.

    Looking forward

    The field of Economics exemplifies how targeted investment and international integration can amplify visibility and impact. To replicate this success in Education and Political Science, expanding international collaboration and addressing thematic silos are essential. At the same time, global academic networks must also embrace diverse perspectives to ensure that voices from regions like China enrich rather than merely adapt to dominant discourses.

    Importantly, in an era of geopolitical uncertainty, research can serve as a vital conduit for mutual understanding and collaboration. By prioritising equitable partnerships and sustaining global dialogue, we can work toward a more inclusive and, therefore, more resilient academic ecosystem.

    Our study offers practical guidance for addressing the challenges of internationalization in Chinese social sciences, providing valuable tools for scholars, institutions, and policymakers working to advance global knowledge production.

    For more details, explore our full paper:

    Demeter, M, Goyanes, M. Háló, G and Xu, X (2024) ‘The Internationalisation of Chinese Social Sciences Research: Publication, Collaboration, and Citation Patterns in Economics, Education, and Political Science’ https://doi.org/10.1080/23322969.2024.2438240.

    Márton Demeter is a Full Professor at the University of Public Service, Budapest at the Department of Social Communication, and he is the Head of Department for Science Strategy. He has extensively published on academic knowledge production in communication studies and beyond.

    Manuel Goyanes serves as Associate Professor of Research Methods at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His interdisciplinary work revolves around theoretically designing, and empirically testing, cutting-edge quantitative and qualitative methodological procedures to scientifically address challenging aspects of social science inquiry 

    Gergő Háló, an assistant professor at the National University of Public Service Budapest, specialises in socio-critical studies of geopolitical and gender inequalities in science, academic performance, research assessment frameworks, and higher education policies.

    Xin Xu is a Departmental Lecturer in Higher/Tertiary Education at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and the deputy director of the Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE). Her research focuses on tertiary education and the research on research.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • University autonomy and government control by funding

    University autonomy and government control by funding

    by GR Evans

    A change of government has not changed the government’s power to intrude upon the autonomy of providers of higher education, which is constrained chiefly by its being limited to the financial. Government can also issue guidance to the regulator, the Office for Students, and that guidance may be detailed. Recent exchanges give a flavour of the kind of control which politicians may seek, but this may be at odds with the current statutory framework.

    As Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan sent a Letter of Guidance to the Office for Students on 4 April 2024. She stated her priorities, first that ‘students pursue HE studies that enable them to progress into employment, thereby benefitting them as well as the wider economy’. She also thought it ‘important to provide students with different high-quality pathways in HE, notably through higher technical qualifications (HTQs), and degree apprenticeships’ at Levels 4 and 5. These ‘alternatives to three-year degrees’, she said, ‘provide valuable opportunities to progress up the ladder of opportunity’. As a condition of funding providers were to ‘build capacity’ with ‘eligible learners on Level 4 and 5 qualifications via a formula allocation’.  The new Higher Technical Qualifications were to attract ‘an uplift within this formula for learners on HTQ courses’. ‘World leading specialist providers’ were to be encouraged and funded ‘up to a limit’ of £58.1m for FY24/25.

    The change of Government in July 2024 brought a new Secretary of State in the person of Bridget Phillipson but no fresh Letter of Guidance before she spoke in the Commons in a Higher Education debate on 4 November, 2024. Recognising that many universities were in dire financial straits, she  suggested that there should be ‘reform’ in exchange for a rise in tuition fees for undergraduates which had just been announced. That, she suggested, would be needed to ensure that universities would be ‘there for them to attend’ in future.

    However, commentators quickly pointed out that Phillipson’s announcement that there would be a small rise in undergraduate tuition fees from £9,250 to £9,535 a year would not be anywhere near enough to fill the gap in higher education funding. The resulting risks were recognised. When the Office for Students reviewed the Financial sustainability of higher education  providers in England in 2024 in May 2024 it had looked at the ‘risks relating to student recruitment’ by providers in relation to the income from their tuition fees.

    Phillipson was ‘determined to reform the sector’. She called for ‘tough decisions to restore stability to higher education, to fix the foundations and to deliver change’ with a key role for Government.  Ministers across Government must work together, she said, especially the Secretary for Education and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in order to ‘deliver a reformed and strengthened higher education system’. This would be ‘rooted in partnership’ between the DfE, the Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation’.

    “… greater work around economic growth, around spin-offs and much more besides—I will be working with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology on precisely those questions.”

    In the debate it was commented that she was ‘light on the details’ of the Government’s role’.  She promised those for the future, ‘To build a higher education system fit for the challenges not just of today but of tomorrow’. She undertook to publish proposals for ‘major reform’.  There were some hints at what those might include. She saw benefits in providers ‘sharing support services with other universities and colleges’. Governing bodies, she said, should be asking ‘difficult strategic questions’, given the population ‘changing patterns of learning’ of their prospective students. The ‘optimistic bias’ she believed, needed to be ‘replaced by hard-headed realism’. ‘Some institutions that may need to shrink or partner, but is a price worth paying as part of a properly funded, coherent tertiary education system.’ She saw a considerable role for Government. ‘The government has started that job – it should now finish it.’

    Like her predecessor she wanted ‘courses’ to provide individual students as well as the nation with ‘an economic return’. She expected providers to ‘ensure that all students get good value for money’. Other MPs speaking in the debate pressed the same link. Vikki Slade too defined economic benefit in terms of the ‘value for money’ the individual student got for the fee paid.  Laura Trott was another who wanted ‘courses’ to provide individual students as well as the nation with ‘an economic return’. Shaun Davies asked for ‘a bit more detail’ on ‘the accountability’ to which ‘these university vice-chancellors’ were to be held in delivering ‘teaching contact time, helping vulnerable students and ensuring that universities play a huge part in the wider communities of the towns and cities in which they are anchor institutions’.

    Government enforcement sits uncomfortably with the autonomy of higher education providers insisted on by the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act. This Act created the Office for Students as ‘a non-departmental public body’, ‘accountable to Parliament’ and receiving ‘guidance on strategic priorities from the Department for Education’. Its ‘operations are independent of government’, but its ‘guidance’ to providers as Regulator is also heavily restricted at s.2 (5) which prevents intrusion on teaching and research. That guidance may not relate to ‘particular parts of courses of study’; ‘the content of such courses’; ’the manner in which they are taught, supervised or assessed’; ‘the criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied’; or ‘the criteria for the admission of students, or how they are applied’.

    This leaves the Office for Students responsible only for monitoring the financial sustainability of higher education providers ‘to identify those that may be exposed to material financial risks’. Again its powers of enforcement are limited. If it finds such a case it ‘works with’ the provider in a manner respecting its autonomy, namely ‘to understand and assess the extent of the issues’ and seek to help.

    Listed in providers’ annual Financial Statements may be a number of sources of funding to which universities may look. These chiefly aim to fund research rather than teaching and include: grants and contracts for research projects; investment income; donations and endowments. The Government has a funding relationship with Research England within UKRI (UK Research and Innovation). UKRI is another Government-funded non-departmental public body, though it is subject to some Government policy shifts in the scale of the funding it provides through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

    Donations and endowments may come with conditions attached by the funder, limiting them for example to named scholarships or professorships or specific new buildings. However  they may provide a considerable degree of financial security which is not under Government control. The endowments of Oxford and Cambridge Universities are substantial. Those made separately for their Colleges. may be very large, partly as a result of the growth in value of land given to them centuries ago. Oxford University has endowments of £1.3 billion and its colleges taken together have endowments of £5.06 billion. Cambridge University has a published endowment of  £2.47 billion, though Cambridge’s Statement for the Knowledge Exchange Framework puts ‘the university’s endowment ‘at nearly £6 billion’.  Cambridge’s richest College, Trinity, declares endowments of £2.19 billion.

    The big city universities created at the end of the nineteenth century are far less well-endowed.  Birmingham had an endowment of £142.5 million in 2023, Bristol of £86 million. Of the twentieth and twenty-first century foundations, Oxford Brookes University notes donations and endowments of £385,000 and Anglia Ruskin University of £335,300. The private ‘alternative’ providers of higher multiplying in recent decades have tended to have a variety of business and commercial partnerships supporting their funding. Categories of funding provided by such gifting remain independent of Government interference.

    The Review of Post-18 Education and Funding (May 2019) chaired by Philip Augur stated ‘Principles’ including that ‘organisations providing education and training must be accountable for the public subsidy they receive’, and that ‘Government has a responsibility to ensure that its investment in tertiary education is appropriately spent and directed’. ‘Universities must do more to raise their impact beyond their gates’, Phillipson said, so as ‘to drive the growth that this country sorely needs’ including by ‘joining with Skills England, employers and partners in further education to deliver the skills that people and businesses need’.

    In the same Commons debate of 4 November Ian Roome, MP for North Devon, was confident that in his constituency ‘universities work in collaboration with FE sector institutions such as Petroc college’. Petroc College offers qualifications from Level 3 upwards, including HNCs, higher-level apprenticeships, Access to HE diplomas, foundation degrees and honours degrees (validated by the University of Plymouth) and ‘in subjects that meet the demands of industry – both locally and nationally’. Roome saw this (HC 4 November 2024) as meeting a need for ‘a viable and accessible option, particularly in rural areas such as mine, for people to access university courses?’ Phillipson took up his point, to urge such ‘collaboration between further education and higher education providers’. Shaun Davies spoke of the £300 million the Government had put into further education, ‘alongside a £300 million capital allocation’, invested in further education colleges’.  

    However in an article in the Guardian on 4 November 2024,Philip Augur recognised that ‘the systems used by government to finance higher and further education are very different’. ‘Universities are funded largely through fees which follow enrolments’, in the form of student loans of £9,250, now raised to £9,535. ‘Unpaid loans are written off against the Department for Education’s balance sheet’. At first that would not be visible in the full  government accounts until 30 years after the loan was taken out. Government steering had become more visible following the Augur Report, with the cost of student loans being recorded ‘in the period loans are issued to students’, rather than after 30 years.  

    By contrast the funding of individual FE colleges is based on annual contracts from the Education and Skills Funding Agency, an executive agency of the DFE for post-18 education. They may then spend only within the terms of the contract and up to its limit. The full cost of such contracts is recorded immediately in the public accounts. This makes a flexible response to demand by FE colleges far from easy. Colleges may find they cannot afford to run even popular courses such as construction, engineering, digital, health and social care, without waiting lists for places. The HE reform Phillipson considered in return for a rise in tuition fees had no immediate place in FE.

    Government funding control maintains a pragmatic but very limited means of means of giving orders to universities. This depends on regulating access to taxpayer-funded student loans. The Office for Students measures a provider’s teaching in terms of its ‘positive outcomes’. These are set out in the OfS ‘Conditions’ for its Registration, which are required to make a provider’s students eligible for loans from the Student Loans Company. Condition B3 requires that a provider’s ‘outcomes’ meet ‘numerical thresholds’ measured against ‘indicators’: whether students continue in a course after their first year of study; complete their studies and progress into managerial or professional employment.

    An Independent Review of the Office for Students: Fit for the Future: Higher Education Regulation towards 2035 appeared in July 2024. The Review relies on ‘positive outcomes’ as defined by the OfS’s ‘judgement’,  that ‘the outcome data for each of the indicators and split indicators are at or above the relevant numerical thresholds’. When such data are not available the OfS itself ‘otherwise judges’.

    The government’s power to intrude upon the autonomy of providers of higher education continues to be constrained, but chiefly by its being limited to the financial, with many providers potentially at risk from their dependence on government permitting a level of tuition fee high enough to sustain them.

    GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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