Tag: Universities

The era of hyper competition between universities needs to end

When the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) closed in 2018 and its duties were carved up and distributed between the Office for Students and Research England, we have inadvertently wound up the very function that the sector and the government now need most.

As the sector struggles to find genuinely collaborative solutions to a perfect storm, we are weaker for not having the brokerage that HEFCE once provided between institutions themselves, and also between the sector and government.

We miss working closely with an organisation that understood the sector and its individual institutions intimately, so that it could both provide useful evidence and insight to shape government policy and corral us to develop and deliver new innovative approaches to programme delivery, technological developments or systems-level challenges.

The introduction of HERA 2017 exacerbated what competitive threads already existed in the sector, threads HEFCE often helped to overcome through its stewardship.

We are now confronted by the genuine problem of trying to identify opportunities for collaboration from within a formal and competitive marketplace, forces within which have been intensifying more recently due to volatile immigration policy, rising operational costs and reduced student demand in some areas, to name a few challenges currently around.

It’s a problem that the Department for Education’s HE Reform package should actively seek to resolve to usher in a new era that moves the sector towards greater collaboration in the national interest.

Defining the problem

In September 2015, then Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson, delivered a speech proudly talking about a record number of students accepted into the UK’s universities, stating “we have no target” for “the right” size of the higher education system, but believe it should evolve in response to demand from students and employers, reflecting the needs of the economy’.

He went on to talk up the level of demand and credited the 2012 reforms as being a key driver of change:

This government values competition. We want a diverse, competitive system that can offer different types of higher education so that students can choose freely between a range of providers. Competition not for its own sake, but because it empowers students and creates a strong incentive for providers to innovate and improve the quality of the education they are offering.”

In many ways, those reforms and that competitive market led to growth in tuition fee income and student numbers, which contributed to investment in our facilities, community and civic agendas, mental health and student support.

There are of course some restrictions placed on that market by government to temper it (not least price caps), though there remain many ways in which it is expected to compete, perhaps particularly as institutions seek to attract students.

So, when a competitive market starts to falter, perhaps because of restrictions to a key source of demand (like international students) or funding (like a frozen tuition fee), government should consider interventions to address market failure.

Indeed, HERA2017 allows scope for even the regulator to address market failure, so it’s not a lack of imagination on the part of the founding legislation preventing this course of action.

The role of the Office for Students

Amongst its general duties, as set out in the HERA, OFS is intended to have regard to:

The need to encourage competition between English higher education providers in connection with the provision of higher education where that competition is in the interests of students and employers, while also having regard to the benefits for students and employers resulting from collaboration between such providers.

OFS was created to regulate the competitive market. The nod to “having regard to the benefits from collaboration” is difficult to administer in the current regulatory approach.

There is certainly plenty of evidence of how the OfS has invested in regulatory strategies and compliance, but much less of how it has used its scope to intervene where competitive barriers are too great to achieve a necessary goal like securing the sector’s financial footing.

It could be argued this approach reflects an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of the powers and duties put forward in HERA 2017.

Collaboration

OfS could do more to align its relationships and approaches with a collaboration agenda. The burden of regulation could be reduced. Its focus could shift to fostering creative and collective thinking about responses to the vulnerabilities mentioned previously, alongside monitoring regulatory compliance in a risk-based, outcomes-oriented way.

Indeed, the UK’s own Regulator’s Code steers regulators to prioritise both ensuring compliance and providing support to grow. Given the current state of finances, highlighted just last week in OFS’s Financial Sustainability Report, it would be very welcome and appropriate for a rethink on how and what OFS could be doing to work purposefully with institutions to design responses to these critical risks.

Where competition divides, we convene

It is not down to OFS to solve this crisis, though we see a major role for them to play if we could reimagine a more effective regulatory approach for the sector. The reason we’ve author this as sector body leaders is because we recognise that our organisations may also have a role to play in this work.

Sector organisations like GuildHE, AHUA and others are well-placed to convene a wide variety of colleagues to help carve solution-oriented paths forward on behalf of the sector while navigating political sensitivities and delivering broader public benefits.

Rocks and hard places

The government now finds itself wedged between the desire to drive economic growth and the prospect that parts of the HE sector are weakening under the strain of protracted under-funding, with many already closing courses and actively shrinking their institutions, which will themselves deliver increased levels of unemployment and lower numbers of the types of skills graduates the economy will increasingly demand in the years ahead.

UUK’s Blueprint, and the follow-on Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce, has done a good deal of the mental heavy-lifting for us all, exploring what steps the sector can take together, beyond or without an increase in teaching funding or tuition fee levels.

But there is so much more to do – more thinking, more activating, and more effort to ensure that those beyond UUK’s membership are included and considered in any reimagining or business case developments that may provide useful paths forward. To be effective and complementary to the work UUK have done so far, we must be inclusive and expansive in what we consider possible.

Many of us have experience in securing benefits through collaborative solutions. Joint procurement initiatives have been successful, as shown by the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium (SUPC).

Their 2023/23 impact statement shows they spent £2.4b through their agreements last year, generating £116.1m in cashable savings while embedding sustainability, ethics and innovation in their collaborative procurements.

GuildHE’s Research consortium demonstrates the tangible benefits of collective purchasing by providing services such as an open-access research repository and HIVVE impact tracker, which not only offers services at discounted rates, but also extends access to smaller institutions that would otherwise be unable to afford them.

Eating the elephant one bite at a time

We can build on these efforts to inform the art of the possible. Brokerage efforts, designed and delivered by our organisations working in partnership, could facilitate opportunities to reduce the risk of market failure or the need for acquisitions.

If successful, those efforts could give rise to collaborative initiatives that deliver real national and regional impacts, thereby underpinning the value of HE to local communities and, increasingly important, local politicians, some of whom not only reflect a laissez-faire attitude towards university closure, but also make statements about immigration and international students that courts further damage to us all.

The growing concern about the financial state of our sector has led the OFS to recommend recently that a special administration regime for HE institutions be established, building (unknowingly or otherwise) on arguments that have been swirling for years about the need to establish a restructuring fund or regime to support institutions at risk of failure. The time is now to help create solutions to avoid needing such a regime, but to support those going through it if we can.

We put our heads together and share this thinking outward as a call to arms for all those working on behalf of our higher education institutions.

We also make clear that the anticipated HE Reform package must acknowledge the tensions created and fostered by the current competitive market if it intends to plot a practical path forward towards prosperity.

Like OFS, we are not the whole solution, but we can be an important part of a vision which reinvests in higher education as the most impactful force within our democratic society to foster economic growth, deliver improved outcomes for society, and secure a legacy as global leaders – one we can all be proud of.

Source link

May 16, 2025
The era of hyper competition between universities needs to end

When the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) closed in 2018 and its duties were carved up and distributed between the Office for Students and Research England, we have inadvertently wound up the very function that the sector and the government now need most.

As the sector struggles to find genuinely collaborative solutions to a perfect storm, we are weaker for not having the brokerage that HEFCE once provided between institutions themselves, and also between the sector and government.

We miss working closely with an organisation that understood the sector and its individual institutions intimately, so that it could both provide useful evidence and insight to shape government policy and corral us to develop and deliver new innovative approaches to programme delivery, technological developments or systems-level challenges.

The introduction of HERA 2017 exacerbated what competitive threads already existed in the sector, threads HEFCE often helped to overcome through its stewardship.

We are now confronted by the genuine problem of trying to identify opportunities for collaboration from within a formal and competitive marketplace, forces within which have been intensifying more recently due to volatile immigration policy, rising operational costs and reduced student demand in some areas, to name a few challenges currently around.

It’s a problem that the Department for Education’s HE Reform package should actively seek to resolve to usher in a new era that moves the sector towards greater collaboration in the national interest.

Defining the problem

In September 2015, then Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson, delivered a speech proudly talking about a record number of students accepted into the UK’s universities, stating “we have no target” for “the right” size of the higher education system, but believe it should evolve in response to demand from students and employers, reflecting the needs of the economy’.

He went on to talk up the level of demand and credited the 2012 reforms as being a key driver of change:

This government values competition. We want a diverse, competitive system that can offer different types of higher education so that students can choose freely between a range of providers. Competition not for its own sake, but because it empowers students and creates a strong incentive for providers to innovate and improve the quality of the education they are offering.”

In many ways, those reforms and that competitive market led to growth in tuition fee income and student numbers, which contributed to investment in our facilities, community and civic agendas, mental health and student support.

There are of course some restrictions placed on that market by government to temper it (not least price caps), though there remain many ways in which it is expected to compete, perhaps particularly as institutions seek to attract students.

So, when a competitive market starts to falter, perhaps because of restrictions to a key source of demand (like international students) or funding (like a frozen tuition fee), government should consider interventions to address market failure.

Indeed, HERA2017 allows scope for even the regulator to address market failure, so it’s not a lack of imagination on the part of the founding legislation preventing this course of action.

The role of the Office for Students

Amongst its general duties, as set out in the HERA, OFS is intended to have regard to:

The need to encourage competition between English higher education providers in connection with the provision of higher education where that competition is in the interests of students and employers, while also having regard to the benefits for students and employers resulting from collaboration between such providers.

OFS was created to regulate the competitive market. The nod to “having regard to the benefits from collaboration” is difficult to administer in the current regulatory approach.

There is certainly plenty of evidence of how the OfS has invested in regulatory strategies and compliance, but much less of how it has used its scope to intervene where competitive barriers are too great to achieve a necessary goal like securing the sector’s financial footing.

It could be argued this approach reflects an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of the powers and duties put forward in HERA 2017.

Collaboration

OfS could do more to align its relationships and approaches with a collaboration agenda. The burden of regulation could be reduced. Its focus could shift to fostering creative and collective thinking about responses to the vulnerabilities mentioned previously, alongside monitoring regulatory compliance in a risk-based, outcomes-oriented way.

Indeed, the UK’s own Regulator’s Code steers regulators to prioritise both ensuring compliance and providing support to grow. Given the current state of finances, highlighted just last week in OFS’s Financial Sustainability Report, it would be very welcome and appropriate for a rethink on how and what OFS could be doing to work purposefully with institutions to design responses to these critical risks.

Where competition divides, we convene

It is not down to OFS to solve this crisis, though we see a major role for them to play if we could reimagine a more effective regulatory approach for the sector. The reason we’ve author this as sector body leaders is because we recognise that our organisations may also have a role to play in this work.

Sector organisations like GuildHE, AHUA and others are well-placed to convene a wide variety of colleagues to help carve solution-oriented paths forward on behalf of the sector while navigating political sensitivities and delivering broader public benefits.

Rocks and hard places

The government now finds itself wedged between the desire to drive economic growth and the prospect that parts of the HE sector are weakening under the strain of protracted under-funding, with many already closing courses and actively shrinking their institutions, which will themselves deliver increased levels of unemployment and lower numbers of the types of skills graduates the economy will increasingly demand in the years ahead.

UUK’s Blueprint, and the follow-on Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce, has done a good deal of the mental heavy-lifting for us all, exploring what steps the sector can take together, beyond or without an increase in teaching funding or tuition fee levels.

But there is so much more to do – more thinking, more activating, and more effort to ensure that those beyond UUK’s membership are included and considered in any reimagining or business case developments that may provide useful paths forward. To be effective and complementary to the work UUK have done so far, we must be inclusive and expansive in what we consider possible.

Many of us have experience in securing benefits through collaborative solutions. Joint procurement initiatives have been successful, as shown by the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium (SUPC).

Their 2023/23 impact statement shows they spent £2.4b through their agreements last year, generating £116.1m in cashable savings while embedding sustainability, ethics and innovation in their collaborative procurements.

GuildHE’s Research consortium demonstrates the tangible benefits of collective purchasing by providing services such as an open-access research repository and HIVVE impact tracker, which not only offers services at discounted rates, but also extends access to smaller institutions that would otherwise be unable to afford them.

Eating the elephant one bite at a time

We can build on these efforts to inform the art of the possible. Brokerage efforts, designed and delivered by our organisations working in partnership, could facilitate opportunities to reduce the risk of market failure or the need for acquisitions.

If successful, those efforts could give rise to collaborative initiatives that deliver real national and regional impacts, thereby underpinning the value of HE to local communities and, increasingly important, local politicians, some of whom not only reflect a laissez-faire attitude towards university closure, but also make statements about immigration and international students that courts further damage to us all.

The growing concern about the financial state of our sector has led the OFS to recommend recently that a special administration regime for HE institutions be established, building (unknowingly or otherwise) on arguments that have been swirling for years about the need to establish a restructuring fund or regime to support institutions at risk of failure. The time is now to help create solutions to avoid needing such a regime, but to support those going through it if we can.

We put our heads together and share this thinking outward as a call to arms for all those working on behalf of our higher education institutions.

We also make clear that the anticipated HE Reform package must acknowledge the tensions created and fostered by the current competitive market if it intends to plot a practical path forward towards prosperity.

Like OFS, we are not the whole solution, but we can be an important part of a vision which reinvests in higher education as the most impactful force within our democratic society to foster economic growth, deliver improved outcomes for society, and secure a legacy as global leaders – one we can all be proud of.

Source link

May 15, 2025
Victorian universities table 2024 financial results – Campus Review

A majority of Victorian universities posted operating losses in 2024 but continued to boost the salaries of their vice-chancellors, annual reports reveal.

Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

Membership Login

Source link

May 14, 2025
43% of England’s universities face deficits

The latest report from the Office for Students (OfS) paints a stark picture of mounting financial pressures across the higher education sector.

The analysis suggests that 43% of institutions now forecast a deficit for 2024/25, in contrast with optimistic projections made by institutions that had looked to an improvement in financial performance for the year.

The key driver is lower-than-expected international student recruitment, according to Philippa Pickford, director of regulation at the OfS.

“Our independent analysis, drawn from data institutions have submitted, once again starkly sets out the challenges facing the sector. The sector is forecasting a third consecutive year of decline in financial performance, with more than four in ten institutions expecting a deficit this year,” she said.

“We remain concerned that predictions of future growth are often based on ambitious student recruitment that cannot be achieved for every institution. Our analysis shows that if the number of student entrants is lower than forecast in the coming years, the sector’s financial performance could continue to deteriorate, leaving more institutions facing significant financial challenges,” said Pickford.

We remain concerned that predictions of future growth are often based on ambitious student recruitment that cannot be achieved for every institution
^{_{Philippa Pickford, Office for Students}}

Total forecasts continue to predict growth of 26% in UK student entrants and 19.5% in international student entrants between 2023/24 and 2027/28. However, in its report, the OfS said that “at an aggregate level, providers’ forecasts for recruitment growth continue to be too ambitious”.

Speaking to The PIE News on the topic, David Pilsbury, secretary to the International Higher Education Commission (IHEC), said that university target setting is, and has been for many years, “disconnected from reality”.

“There are not enough people that really know what their recruitment potential really is and how to deliver it, not enough people who push back on finance directors and university executive groups that see overseas recruitment as a tap that can simply be turned on to fill the funding gap, and not enough people developing the compelling business cases that put in place the infrastructure necessary to deliver outcomes,” he said.

IHEC recently released a landmark report urging action across several areas of UK higher education, including international student recruitment.

Pilsbury described the need to build “coalitions of the willing” between universities and with private providers – of data, admissions services, recruitment and beyond – to drive innovation, execute new models and establish different outcomes for the UK sector. The IHEC report warned that “failing to secure the future of international higher education in the UK would be an act of national self-harm”.

Data for 2023/24 from the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) reflects the uncertain environment for international students lately, caused by tightened dependant rules, uncertainty about the UK’s Graduate Route and unwelcoming messaging from the previous Conservative government.

Total international student enrolment in the UK fell from 760,000 in 2022/23 to 730,000 last year. Currency devaluations in markets such as Nigeria and Ghana contributed to the decline, with Nigerian student levels dropping most dramatically by 23%.

Pickford does not expect to see multiple university closures in the short-term, but said that the “medium-term pressures are significant, complex and ongoing”.

“Many institutions are working hard to reduce costs. This often requires taking difficult decisions, but doing so now will help secure institutions’ financial health for the long term. This work should continue to be done in a way that maintains course quality and ensures effective support for students,” she said.

“Universities and colleges should also continue to explore opportunities for growth to achieve long-term sustainability. But some superficially attractive options, such as rapid growth in subcontractual partnerships, require caution,” Pickford warned.

Against a challenging operating environment, the OfS said it welcomes the work of Universities UK’s taskforce on efficiency and transformation.

The taskforce was announced earlier this year and was set up to drive efficiency and cost-saving across universities in England through collaborative solutions, including the exploration of mergers and acquisitions.

The report comes as UK stakeholders brace for the government’s imminent immigration white paper which is expected to include restrictions on visas from some countries and also changes to the Graduate Route.

Source link

May 9, 2025
Ripple effects of US DEI backlash: What should UK universities do?
- By Stephanie Marshall, Vice Principal (Education), Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of the forthcoming Strategic Leadership of Change in Higher Education (3rd edition, Routledge).
Warner Bros., Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Disney, Deloitte, Amazon, and Google – these are just some of the companies that have scaled back their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives or changed their language around such programs since Trump’s inauguration. This list, as we know, continues to grow more than three months into his administration. Meanwhile, universities around the world have anxiously watched the US Department of Education threaten to withdraw funding from institutions that consider race in their decision-making, with institutions like Columbia University under the axe.

Universities in the UK are not immune to the ideological shifts across the Atlantic. The Daily Mail, for example, has already drawn attention to DEI spending in UK higher education, with attention-grabbing headlines such as: ‘Spending on university campus diversity staff skyrockets to massive £28 million a year – with one boss on an eye-watering six-figure sum’.

Advocates of DEI have argued against such sentiments, emphasising that ethnic minorities are not the only ones to benefit from equitable and fair workplace policies and practices. The advantages of inclusion spread to first-generation learners, individuals with disabilities and others from underrepresented backgrounds. Proponents also remind us that social justice has a compelling business case. Yet even where a business case for DEI exists, it appears that ideological pressures are beginning to outweigh even commercial logic, let alone basic fairness.

The bigger picture

This pushback against DEI does not occur in isolation. It is part of a broader challenge to the values of openness, inclusion and global cooperation that have long underpinned and defined higher education. And as we have seen in the last few years in the UK, international students have become part of this debate.

The pressing question for university leadership is whether these trends will gain further traction in the UK. If so, what implications will they hold for the future of UK higher education – a sector that has prided itself on the collective efforts and advances made towards a more representative, inclusive offer?

‘The UK is not the US. That is a critical starting point for any approach we have’, Professor Tim Soutphommasane, Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Oxford, recently pointed out at a seminar hosted by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

This distinction is important, yet ongoing political developments suggest that the UK remains susceptible to US influence while facing similar pressures against openness from within its own borders. So, what are some of the risks and opportunities?

On the one hand, growing anti-DEI and anti-immigration sentiment poses a shared risk to universities worldwide.

Leading study destinations such as the US, Canada, the UK and Australia often have an interdependent, shared approach to international student policy. To elaborate, in 2021 – four years ago – fears over declining international student numbers led the UK and Canada to implement measures that attracted more applicants, ultimately allowing them to surpass pre-pandemic enrolment figures. Meanwhile, Australia struggled and lagged behind until it lifted its cap on working hours, offered visa refunds and extended post-study work permits. (I discuss these trends and their implications in greater detail in my forthcoming book, Strategic Leadership of Change in Higher Education, 3rd edition, Taylor & Francis.)

Roll forward four years, and we can see that restrictive policies in one country create lucrative opportunities for others.

With Australia now tightening visa rules, Canada reducing student permits, and the US signalling an ‘immigration crackdown’, the UK government has a unique opportunity – perhaps even a responsibility – to assert its stance on cross-border education and research while strengthening its position as a preferred destination. The British Council’s Annual Five Trends to Watch 2025 report highlights how Trump’s first term (2017-21) saw consecutive declines in international student enrolment in US universities, and it would come as no surprise to anyone if enrolment were to drop again during his second term in office.

Way forward

As global uncertainties persist, it is more important than ever for the UK to demonstrate its commitment to diversity and inclusivity, both domestically and internationally. From an economic perspective, and contrary to popular rhetoric, it is worth remembering, as Dr. Gavan Conlon of London School of Economics stated:,

International students contribute nearly ten times more to the economy than they take out, boosting both local and national economic well-being.

Education is indeed one of the UK’s greatest exports.

But continuing to attract international students is not just a pragmatic move for financial sustainability – it is also a powerful statement of the values of collaboration, inclusivity, and global engagement that define UK higher education. Moreover, if there are financial gains brought by international students, they must be utilised to strengthen our ability to protect institutional autonomy and uphold our principles in these difficult times. As culture wars intensify, UK universities must stand firm as internationally highly respected centres of partnership and exchange.
Source link
May 8, 2025
Universities Sue NSF Over Indirect Research Cost Policy

A coalition of universities and trade groups is suing the National Science Foundation over the independent federal agency’s plan to cap higher education institutions’ indirect research cost reimbursement rates at 15 percent.

In the lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the same day the NSF’s new policy went into effect, the coalition argued that a cut would risk the country’s standing “as a world leader in scientific discovery” and “the amount and scope of future research by universities will decline precipitously.”

It warned that “vital scientific work will come to a halt, training will be stifled, and the pace of scientific discoveries will slow” and that “progress on national security objectives, such as maintaining strategic advantages in areas like AI and quantum computing, will falter.”

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and 13 universities, including Arizona State University, the University of Chicago and Princeton University.

They attest that the NSF violated numerous aspects of the Administrative Procedure Act, including bypassing Congress to unilaterally institute an “arbitrary and capricious” 15 percent rate cap and failing to explain why it’s only imposing the policy on universities.

The NSF awarded $6.7 billion to some 621 universities in 2023.

Indirect costs fund research expenses that support multiple grant-funded projects, including computer systems to analyze enormous volumes of data, building maintenance and waste-management systems. In 1965 Congress enacted regulations that allow each university to negotiate a bespoke reimbursement rate with the government that reflects institutional differences in geographic inflation, research types and other variable costs.

Typical negotiated NSF indirect cost rates for universities range between 50 and 65 percent, according to the lawsuit.

And while the Trump administration has claimed that indirect cost reimbursements enable wasteful spending by universities, the plaintiffs note that an existing cap on administrative costs means that universities already contribute their own funds to cover indirect costs, “thereby subsidizing the work funded by grants and cooperative agreements.” In the 2023 fiscal year, universities paid $6.8 billion in unrecovered indirect costs, the lawsuit read.

The NSF is the third federal agency that has moved to cap indirect research costs since President Donald Trump took office in January; federal judges have already blocked similar plans from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy.

“NSF’s action is unlawful for most of the same reasons,” the lawsuit read, “and it is especially arbitrary because NSF has not even attempted to address many of the flaws the district courts found with NIH’s and DOE’s unlawful policies.”

Source link

May 7, 2025
How Labor can use its strong majority to support universities – Campus Review

The higher education sector is craving stability and investment after the policy changes, regulation warnings and instability of Labor’s last term.

Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

Membership Login

Source link

May 7, 2025
As universities embrace the civic, they must transcend activist/academic binaries

Everyone has their own expertise. For academics, that expertise leads to intellectual authority. Some happily choose to use that authority in the cause of activism. Others cringe at the thought, fearing the overtly political and a loss of actual or perceived objectivity.

The debate as to whether academics can be or should be activists is alive and well. But, as universities across the UK (re)discover their civic purpose, institutional spaces for overtly activist academic work are emerging.

One such space is that offered through activist-in-residence (AiR) schemes. Typically hosted by university research centres, these programmes invite activists to work alongside academics and students on projects with a social justice focus. The activists gain access to institutional resources, collaborating with their hosts through a wealth of mutually transformative and enriching encounters that may challenge traditional academic practices. Such schemes are relatively rare in the UK but more common in North American higher education institutions.

Oppositional or diplomatic activism?

Ronald Barnett has said that academic activism can lend itself to an array of stances. He suggests that activism in universities may be situated along two sliding axes – diplomatic/oppositional and individual/collective actions. Oppositional to the state, to the status quo, versus a diplomatic willingness to engage with powerful institutions.

But let’s face it, universities often are powerful institutions perpetuating the status quo. And anyway, can you really be activist within institutional structures? For some, it’s a clear “no”. When our Queer@King’s research centre at King’s College London launched a call for activists to join a pilot AiR scheme, several rejected the invite, concerned to connect their queer activism to oppressive institutional structures.

However, for those willing to accept such an invite, there’s the potential to become a (diplomatic) institutional irritant. Here, we view the work of AiR schemes as that of “collective diplomacy”. Residencies carve out institutional spaces for academics and activists to unite around a social justice cause, practising theory-informed activism and activism-informed theory.

Those engaged in AiR schemes might act as tempered radicals, working subtly to forge change, both within and beyond institutions. Quiet acts of rebellion, compared to the vocal stridency of their oppositional cousins.

Transcending the binary

Back in 2023, we launched four new AiR schemes in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London. Since then, we’ve followed the journeys of the activists and academics involved as they walk the tightrope between conformity and rebellion.

The schemes, which involved four discrete research centres, have recently concluded. They spanned diverse areas – from decolonising wellness practices to challenging media narratives on race and migration, from reclaiming language justice to reframing the lived expertise of women with HIV. The communities engaged were equally diverse – French anti-racists, diaspora communities from East and Southeast Asia, movement artists, radical translators, poets, community organisers, a charity supporting women with HIV.

Despite thematic differences, what united the schemes was a commitment to co-creation, disrupting institutional norms, and centring knowledge that often remains undervalued or excluded from academia.

Activists have, quite rightly, long been wary of universities’ historical tendencies to extract knowledge without genuine reciprocity. Our AiR schemes attempt to shift this, striving for shared authorship and long-term relationship-building over transactional engagements. Academics, meanwhile, began questioning their own positionality. Several noted how the process helped them to see the activist within. Someone who takes a different approach from big marches or picket lines. Someone who instead, operates in a different sphere, with different tools from conventional protest.

A core element of the schemes involved deep conversations in which participants explored different ways of “being”, “doing”, and “knowing”, navigating creative tensions that ignited activist potential. Engagement in transformational dialogue demanded a rethinking of traditional academic hierarchies.

A striking outcome was the impact on identity. Many participants shifted from seeing themselves as strictly ‘academic’ or ‘activist’ to occupying a hybrid space—the activist-academic or the academic-activist. As one participant put it:

I’ve learned to see myself as an academic-activist, rather than assuming that activism is something distinct from what I do as a researcher.

Others reflected on how their roles had become more fluid, disrupting rigid institutional scripts about who generates knowledge, and how.

The schemes were not without tension. Bureaucratic barriers, power imbalances, and institutional inertia were recurrent frustrations. Activists were often faced with institutional red tape, while academics navigated the challenge of validating non-traditional forms of knowledge in spaces structured around rigid frameworks. Yet, the schemes demonstrated that universities could serve as incubators for new forms of activism and collaboration – if they are willing to do the hard work of structural change.

The future of AiR schemes

AiR schemes must be more than symbolic gestures. Universities must actively dismantle the barriers that limit their potential: from rethinking funding structures that exclude grassroots activists to challenging rigid research output models that fail to recognise activist knowledge production. And of course, always ensuring that sustained funding is made available.

As universities embrace their civic role, they should go beyond the activist/academic binary. The most powerful insights from AiR schemes come not from forcing these categories into opposition, but from allowing them to blur, evolve, and co-exist.

For the academic hesitant to embrace activism, AiR schemes provide a pathway for engaged scholarship. For the activist wary of academia, they offer a chance to disrupt from within. And for the university itself, they provide a critical mirror, one that reveals its complicity, its contradictions – but also, its potential as a site of radical possibility.

Source link

May 5, 2025
What are professors of practice, and why are universities hiring more of them? – Campus Review

/Workforce/What are professors of practice, and why are universities hiring more of them?

Workforce

Stuart Orr explains how the Professor of Practice role is changing in the higher education sector

Professors of Practice have featured in Australian universities for nearly three decades, drawing on models developed earlier in Europe, the UK and the US.

Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

Membership Login

Source link

May 5, 2025
How does UK research support Government’s five missions, and should universities align with them?

Earlier this year, HEPI, with support from global information analytics company Elsevier, hosted a roundtable dinner on how UK research and innovation should support the government’s five missions.

This blog considers some of the themes that emerged from that discussion.

The Labour government has made clear that five missions drive its decisions on policy. These are: kickstarting economic growth, an NHS fit for the future, safer streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity and making Britain a clean energy superpower. In October 2024, it announced a £25 million R&D Missions Programme to address specific challenges involved in meeting these missions and to help turn scientific advances into real-world benefits.

How well do the UK’s research strengths already map to the missions, and how much capacity exists to do more? For global information analytics company Elsevier, this was worth interrogating. It set to work, drawing on its Scopus database of research publications and the Overton index of policy documents, clustering papers into topics and using artificial intelligence and large language models to link them to the missions.

This allowed it to track what share of UK research carried out between 2019 and 2023 relates to the missions the government has identified and how this compares to other policy areas, including how it has varied over time. Elsevier has also been able to make comparisons with the research strengths of other countries in these areas. The process involved developing a methodology that matched huge datasets to the narrative national goals set out in Labour’s manifesto.

The role of R&D in supporting government priorities was the subject of a roundtable dinner, informed by this analysis, hosted by HEPI in February and attended by policymakers and senior leaders from across the higher education sector. The discussion was held under the Chatham House rule, by which speakers express views on the understanding that they will be unattributed.

Useful information

Sarah Main, vice-president, academic and government relations at Elsevier, told participants that the aim of the analysis was to be useful, for the research community and policymakers, in making the case for continued investment in R&D in the lead up to a tight spending review.

The work shows that a significant share of the UK’s published research relates to government priorities: for example, 11% relates to growth and around 35% to its aims around health. By making comparisons with research outputs in other countries, it also identifies possible future partnerships and collaborations.

But she pointed out that research output is only one way in which research and innovation supports the government’s missions; people, skills and infrastructure also play a part. Further work, she said, could help identify the key people, institutions and areas in which the UK has relevant strengths, as well as suggest emerging questions and themes.

Many of those attending the roundtable felt that it was useful to see how far universities are producing research that supports government priorities and to be able to demonstrate this to policymakers – and the Treasury. They particularly welcomed the chance to identify where relevant research was taking place internationally.

It was suggested that the tool would be useful in maintaining a dialogue between research and government priorities, identifying quickly the kind of work taking place and who was doing it and helping to build communities around research areas.

Potential problems

But there were reservations about aligning research too closely with specific policy areas. The fear was that what could be lost in the process was curiosity-driven work, which was a feature of the UK system and which could lead to valuable nuggets of knowledge that could go on to solve world problems. Another concern was that innovation strengths did not always translate into strengths around delivery.

Some questioned how much could be achieved without investment in supporting a healthy research environment for the long term. The recent decision to cut overseas aid in favour of increasing the defence budget was an example of how quickly government policies could change.

Research priorities could change too. One participant in the roundtable said it would be important not to ignore findings from further back in the past or for policymakers to forget the broader research agenda in favour of the latest exciting paper.

‘I look at the missions and I think the reason these are possible is because of R&D that was being done 25 years ago,’ said one delegate, who was worried that concentrating on where the government is looking now could be at the expense of developing capability in the missions of future generations and working out what these would be – learning to live with robots perhaps or addressing chronic loneliness.

Focusing exclusively on missions also ignores how ready the research community is for a shock like Covid or another existential challenge. And what about some of the nuances of where the UK’s research strengths are located, such as working with other disciplines, and how research feeds into growth in more general ways than through specific papers? Relevant skills training and universities’ educational role are also important.

Talking politics

Then, how much weight should be given to a government’s stated priorities? If last July’s election had elected a party with the mission to make Britain great again, would the research community want to find out how far the work it was doing supported it?

Also, how far are the government’s missions likely to persist, with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin doing everything they can to undermine them, as one delegate argued? Far more likely to determine whether the government gets re-elected will be progress on growth and healthcare, which have been consistent public concerns for decades. Even if, as Elsevier has found, 35% of research in the UK relates to health, ministers may respond by asking why, in that case, people are no healthier.

Some felt that universities needed to be more political and to understand better the channels by which research becomes policy and how to negotiate them. This could involve researchers considering the attitudes of the public as well as those of politicians.

The government may also need to give universities a clearer idea of what good looks like when it comes to universities, such as whether the amount of research related to healthcare that Elsevier has identified is good enough, where the government wants universities to be focusing and what resources will be available to them.

But spending too much time dabbling in politics could be dangerous. Instead, suggested one participant, universities should be engaging “at scale” with all sectors and everyone involved in the political process, giving advice to whoever needs it.

The public purse

Universities should also avoid dwelling on their own self-interest. One delegate noted that finding out how far they contribute to the government’s missions would be of little use if the sector collapses. But another suggested that focusing too closely on missions could encourage universities merely to highlight relevant work they are already doing and then make another request for money.

It is certainly the case that there will be plenty of other calls on the public purse over the next few months and years. In this context, it could be useful for the sector to stress the shorter-term wins relevant to the missions that management science or operational research can offer, as well as long-term gains such as new drugs. One delegate suggested that it would be useful to have clearer identification of where research has directly led to spin-out companies and economic growth.

The roundtable concluded that universities are clearly relevant to addressing the government’s missions, that they are already influencing policy and that the methodology under discussion could help inform strategy. But it recognised that outcomes – such as reduced crime and an efficient NHS – are what matter most to the public and these therefore should be the priority.

Source link

May 2, 2025