As with the prior column, this week’s thesis evolves out of the Zoom keynote to the Rethink AI Conference, sponsored in part by the International Academy of Science, Technology, Engineering and Management and hosted by the ICLED Business School in Lagos, Nigeria. Thanks again to the chair of the International Professors Project, Sriprya Sarathy, and the conference committee for making my presentation possible.
Virtually all aspects and positions at universities will be touched by the transformation. The changes will come more rapidly than many of us in higher education are accustomed to or with which we are comfortable. In large part, the speed will be demanded by employers of our learners and by competition among universities. Change will also strike directly at the nature of what and how we teach.
It is not that we have seen no change in teaching over the years. Notably, delivery systems, methods and modes of assessment, and related areas have been subject to significant changes. Anthony Piña, Illinois State University’s chief online learning officer, notes that online learners surpassed 50 percent in 2022 and continue to rise. However, deeper changes in the nature of what we teach have progressed as technology has influenced what employers are seeking.
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Building knowledge has been the mantra in higher education for many centuries. The role of the university has been to build knowledge in learners to make them “knowledgeable.” Oxford Languages and Google define knowledge most concisely as “facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.”
The emphasis on facts and information has taken a somewhat changed role with the advent of technologies over recent decades. Notably, the World Wide Web with the advent of the first browser, Mosaic, in 1993 provided instant access to unprecedented volumes of information. While familiarity with key facts and information remains paramount, the recall and synthesis of facts and information via the web can be performed nearly as quickly and more thoroughly than the human brain in most instances. In a sense the internet has become our extended, rapid-access, personal memory. Annual global web traffic exceeded a zetabyte for the first time in 2015. A zetabyte is 1,000 exabytes, one billion terabytes or one trillion gigabytes. This year, it’s expected to hit 175 ZB.
More recently, we have seen a surge in professional certificates offered by higher education. As Modern Campus reports,
“Every professional needs upskilling in order to maintain a competitive edge in the workforce. Keeping ahead of the latest skills and knowledge has become more crucial than ever in order to align with evolving market demands. Although traditional degree programs have long been the standard solution, certificate programs have gained popularity due to their ability to offer targeted, accelerated skill development.”
However, agentic AI is just now emerging. It is different than the prompt to answer generative AI in that agentic AI can include many workforce skills in its array of tools. In fact, working and collaborating with agentic AI will require an advanced, integrated skill set, as described by the Global Skills Development Council:
“In the fast-paced, digitally driven world, agentic AI is at the forefront of demanding new human competencies. While intelligent agents retain a place in daily life and work, individuals should transition to acquire agentic AI skills to thrive in the new age. These skills include, but are not limited to, working with technology, thinking critically, applying ethical reasoning, and adaptive collaboration with agentic AI systems. Such agentic AI skills empower one to consciously engage in guiding and shaping AI behaviors and outcomes rather than passively receiving and adapting to them. If one has agentic AI skills, they can successfully lead businesses, education, and creative industries in applying agents for innovation and impact. As such, re-dedicating ourselves to lifelong learning and responsible use of AI may prove vital in retaining humanity at the core of intelligent decision-making and progress. Without such competencies, professionals risk being bypassed by technologies they cannot control or understand. A passive attitude creates dependency on AI outcomes without the skill to query or improve them. Adopting agentic AI competencies equips individuals with the power to drive innovation and ensure responsible AI integration in the workplace.”
The higher-level skills humans will need as described by the Global Skills Development Council are different from many of the career-specific skills that universities now provide in short-form certificates and certification programs. Rather, I suggest that these broad, deep skills are ones that we might best describe as wisdom skills. They are not vocational but instead are deeper skills related to overall maturity and sophistication in leadership, vision and insight. They include thinking critically, thinking creatively, applying ethical reasoning and collaborating adaptively with both humans and agentic AI.
Agentic AI can be trained for the front-line skills of many positions. However, the deeper, more advanced and more cerebral skills that integrate human contexts and leadership vision are often reflective of what we would describe as wisdom rather than mere working skills. These, I would suggest, are the nature of what we will be called upon to emphasize in our classes, certificates and degrees.
Some of these skills and practices are currently taught at universities, often through case studies at the graduate level. Integrating them into the breadth of the degree curriculum as well as certificates may be a challenge, but it is one we must accomplish in higher education. Part of the process of fully embracing and integrating AI into our society will be for we humans to upgrade our own skills to maintain our relevance and leadership in the workplace.
Has your university begun to tackle the topics related to how the institution can best provide relevant skills in a world where embodied, agentic AI is working shoulder to shoulder with your graduates and certificate holders? How might you initiate discussion of such topics to ensure that the university continues to lead in a forward-thinking way?
UK universities are under mounting financial pressure. Join HEPI and King’s College London Policy Institute on 11 November 2025 at 1pm for a webinar on how universities balance relatively stable but underfunded income streams against higher-margin but volatile sources. Register now. We look forward to seeing you there.
The Prime Minister’s new target is for two-thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning by age 25. This encompasses not only undergraduate degrees but also higher technical education and apprenticeships, all delivered under a single funding model for all Level 4-6 courses. Some have described this as England’s turn to tertiary, six years after the Augar Review called for a more ‘joined-up system’.
Since at least the 1990s, English post-secondary education has been characterised by market-based regulatory apparatus and fragmentation. Further education is associated with technical and vocational education, and training and entry to the labour market; higher education with professions, leadership, and research. Oversight of both is dispersed across multiple agencies and further disconnected from adult and lifelong learning. Critics have argued that, consequently, market logics have sustained wasteful competition and produced a homogenised system that privileges higher education over further education, to the detriment of equity and national skills needs.
If Augar exposed the limits of market-driven differentiation between further education and higher education, tertiary approaches in the devolved nations illustrate how greater collaboration and integrated oversight offer a potential corrective. Wales and Scotland have advanced considerably in a ‘tertiary’ direction and developed governance modes that exercise holistic stewardship over funding and quality regimes. They are justified on grounds of efficiency, concertedness, and the capacity to advance the common good. In Wales, Medr uses its statutory powers under the Well-being of Future Generations Act to guide institutions in meeting duties on equality, sustainability, and civic mission. In Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council leads the Outcome Agreement process, through which colleges and universities set out activities in return for funding. Even in England, partnerships at a regional level, such as those in the North East or through Institutes of Technology, aim to facilitate partnerships to align lifelong learning with local economic needs. In 2021, the last time a representative survey of the scale of collaboration took place, 80% of colleges and 50% of universities in the UK had formal programme links (and it is likely that collaboration has grown since then).
Despite this prevalence and enthusiasm, research on how the benefits arising from tertiary collaboration manifest at the level of institutions and students is limited. In a short exploratory study with the Edge Foundation, I examined one facet of tertiary systems in Scotland and England: the creation of formal student transition ‘pathways’ between colleges and universities. The aim was not a comprehensive survey, but to sample something of the nature of collaboration in existing systems, to gather evidence to think with and about the concept of tertiary and the place of collaboration and competition.
Collaboration as an adaptive strategy
Existing collaborations are, perhaps surprisingly, not foremost concerned with any given common good. Instead, collaboration often emerges as an adaptive strategy within conditions of resource scarcity. Local ‘natural alliances’ in shared specialisms, mutual values, and commitments to widening participation were important in establishing trust necessary to sustain joint work. Yet, as the study found, institutional precarity is the principal driver.
One Scottish interviewee put it plainly:
‘If I’m sitting there and I’ve got 500 applications, like 10 applications for any place, I’ve got good, strong applications. I’m not going to be going, right, how am I going to look at different ways to bring in students?’
Well-resourced institutions do not collaborate out of necessity: those under pressure do. Partnerships often take the form of a ‘grow your own’ recruitment pipeline, guaranteeing transitions between partner institutions. Universities could ask ‘some tough questions’ of colleges if progression was lower than anticipated. In some cases, institutions agree to partition markets to avoid directly competing for the same students.
Collaboration could also be used as an instrument of competition. In Scotland, articulation agreements (under which universities recognise vocational qualifications such as HNDs and HNCs and admit students with advanced standing) are commonplace. Colleges in this research reported ‘some bad behaviour’ where partner universities would use these agreements to siphon off students from colleges to secure enrolment numbers. This was contrary to the wishes of colleges, which argued that many such students might benefit from the more intimate and supportive college environment for an additional year, better preparing them to enter the more independent learning environment of university.
What collaboration offers students
Where collaboration was stable, tangible benefits followed for learners. Partnerships combine colleges’ attentive pedagogies and flexible resources with university accreditation and facilities. This enables smaller class sizes, greater pastoral attention, and sometimes improved retention and progression, particularly in educational cold spots. Colleges bring local specialisms and staff expertise, often linked to industry, which enrich university courses through co-design and joint delivery.
This lends cautious support to the claims of tertiary advocates: that collaboration can widen access and enhance provision. Yet formal, longitudinal evidence of graduate outcomes remains rare. The value of such partnerships, their distinctiveness, public benefit, and contribution to regional prosperity need to be more readily championed.
From expedient to strategic collaboration
As an instrument, collaboration is worth understanding. The capacity to facilitate collaboration as a strategic good is an important policy lever where market mechanisms are unable to respond immediately or efficiently to the imperatives of national need and public finance. The study suggests four priorities for policymakers:
Clarify national priorities and reform incentives
Collaboration has greater utility than an institutional survival tool. With the bringing together of funding for further education and higher education, there is an opportunity to create stability. Together with the clear articulation of long-term educational goals, strategic cooperation in pursuit of these ends could be sustained.
Strengthen regional governance
Where regional stewardship exists, through articulation hubs or in Scotland’s Outcome Agreements, collaboration is more systematic. England’s existing fragmented oversight and policy churn undermine this. Regional coherence enables institutions to collectively make strategic planning decisions.
Value colleges’ distinct niche
Colleges’ localism, technical capacity, and pedagogical expertise are distinctive assets. Policy should promote these specialisms and encourage co-design and co-delivery rather than hierarchical franchising. Partnerships should foreground each institution’s unique contribution, not replicate the same provision in different guises.
Improve data sharing and evaluation
The absence of mechanisms to track students’ journeys and long-term outcomes, including ‘distance travelled’ evaluations, makes claims about distinctiveness and public benefit harder to substantiate.
Tertiary turns in resource scarcity
Policy discourse has tended to over-dichotomise competition and collaboration. The question is: to what extent each strategy is most helpful for achieving agreed social ends. Where partnership is an appropriate mechanism, it requires a policy architecture with clarity of purpose and stability. To what ends collaboration is put to must be settled through democratic means – a more complicated question altogether.
In the weeks since Trump officials asked university leaders to give feedback on their plan to ensure that colleges are adhering to the administration’s priorities, several of those leaders and others in higher ed have made clear that the proposal is a nonstarter—at least in its current form.
So far, leaders at 11 universities have publicly said they won’t sign the current draft of the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” according to an Inside Higher Ed database. Two others have said they are providing feedback. Universities will be added to the map and table below as they make public statements.
The wide-ranging proposal would require universities to ban consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition, commit to not considering transgender women to be women and shut down departments that “punish, belittle” or “spark violence against conservative ideas,” among other provisions. Trump officials say universities that sign on could get access to some benefits such as preferential treatment for grant funding. But those that don’t want to adhere to the agreement are free to “forego [sic] federal benefits.”
Higher ed leaders and observers see the compact as the Trump administration’s blueprint for overhauling America’s colleges and universities. Trump officials view it as an opportunity for the “proactive improvement of higher education for the betterment of the country.” Critics have urged institutions to reject the proposal, arguing it undermines institutions’ independence and carries steep penalties.
Nine universities were initially asked Oct. 1 to give “limited, targeted feedback” by Oct. 20 on the document that Trump officials said was “largely in its final form.” President Trump said in mid-October that any college that wants to “return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement” could sign on but didn’t explainhow interested institutions could do so. No college has publicly taken Trump up on his offer. The administration is reportedly planning to update the document in response to the feedback and send out a new version in November.
This guest blog was kindly authored by Imran Mir, Campus Head and Programme Lead, Apex College Leicester
Leadership in higher education is often measured by indicators such as retention rates, research outputs and league table positions. These are important, but leadership is far deeper than numbers. Growing up with autism and then becoming a leader in higher education has shaped how I approach leadership. Being neurodiverse means I see situations differently, notice patterns others may miss, and feel deep empathy with students and colleagues who are often invisible in our systems.
This is why neurodiverse leadership must be treated as a quality issue. Universities are rightly talking more about inclusive curriculum design and student support, but these conversations rarely extend to who sits at the decision-making table. Representation in leadership is not about tokenism. It is about ensuring the sector benefits from different ways of thinking, which is vital for quality, resilience and innovation.
Why neurodiverse leadership matters
According to the University of Edinburgh 2024, in the UK, one in seven people are neurodiverse. Advance HE 2024 report shows leadership teams in higher education remain overwhelmingly homogenous. This lack of representation is not just an issue of fairness, it is also a missed opportunity for innovation. Research by Deloitte 2017 shows that neurodiverse teams can be up to 30 per cent more productive in tasks requiring creativity and pattern recognition. Universities are currently facing challenges in relation to funding and digital disruption, and they will need this kind of productivity and resilience more than ever.
Further, Made By Dyslexia 2023 claims that one in five people are dyslexic, many of whom bring excellent problem-solving and communication skills. These strengths align with what is expected in leadership roles, where complex challenges and clear communication are requirements. Yet recruitment and promotion processes can often filter out people who think or communicate differently.
Austin & Pisano, 2017 adds that neurodiverse leaders frequently demonstrate empathy and adaptability. These qualities are imperative in higher education as institutions are trying their best to meet diverse student needs, respond to rapid change and rebuild trust in their systems. Without neurodiverse leadership, universities risk reinforcing the very barriers which they are trying to eradicate.
Lessons for higher education leaders
From my own experience, I have learned three lessons that apply directly to leadership in higher education.
The first lesson is the power of clarity. Neurodiverse staff and students excel when expectations are clear. As a leader, I have seen first-hand that communicating with clarity in strategy documents, policies and day-to-day interactions builds trust in the academic institution. Research on organisational effectiveness suggests that clear communication consistently improves outcomes across diverse teams
The second lesson is valuing flexibility. Traditional recruitment, professional development and promotion systems seem to reward conformity. This is a missed opportunity because neurodiverse teams will bring innovation and productivity benefits. Strong leaders can change this by adopting flexible approaches such as task-based interviews, blended assessments that combine written, oral and practical elements, and CPD which takes into consideration various communication styles.
The third lesson is role modelling openness. For years I believed that revealing my autism would be seen as a weakness. In reality, sharing my story has made me a stronger leader. It has encouraged colleagues to be open about their own experiences and helped students feel less isolated. Austin & Pisano 2017 show that when leaders model vulnerability and authenticity, it strengthens organisational culture and increases trust across teams.
A quality issue, not a side project
These lessons outline why neurodiverse leadership should not be viewed as a side project. Quality frameworks such as the Office for Students’ conditions and the QAA Quality Code are built on assumptions of fairness, reliability and inclusivity. If leadership itself is not inclusive, then the credibility of these frameworks is undermined. If the voices of the one-in-seven neurodiverse people are not present in leadership, then universities are failing to reflect the diversity of the communities they are trying to serve.
Neurodiverse leadership will strengthen governance, enhances decision-making and ensures policies reflect the diversity of the student body. It is a direct contributor to educational quality, not an optional extra.
Conclusion
As someone working in higher education, I know these lessons are transferable across the sector. But they feel especially urgent now, as universities face funding pressures, digital disruption and growing student expectations. In such times, leaders who think differently are not optional. They are essential.
Neurodiverse leadership is not about meeting quotas. It is about strengthening quality. The sector cannot afford to waste talent or exclude perspectives that could help it adapt and thrive. If universities want to remain resilient, they must recognise that diversity of thought at the leadership table is just as important as diversity in the classroom. At its heart, this is about shaping the future of higher education in a way that is inclusive, innovative and sustainable.
Dartmouth CollegeFile photoDartmouth College has declined to sign the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” becoming the latest prestigious institution to prioritize institutional autonomy over preferential federal funding access.
In a statement released Saturday, Dartmouth President Dr. Sian Beilock firmly articulated the college’s position ahead of Monday’s deadline, emphasizing that governmental oversight—regardless of political affiliation—represents an inappropriate mechanism for directing the mission of America’s top research universities.
“I do not believe that the involvement of the government through a compact—whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led White House—is the right way to focus America’s leading colleges and universities on their teaching and research mission,” Beilock stated.
The compact, extended to nine select institutions, promised enhanced access to federal research dollars in return for compliance with several administration policy mandates. These requirements included adopting the administration’s gender definitions for campus facilities and athletics, eliminating consideration of race, gender and various demographic factors from admissions decisions, and restricting international student enrollment.
Despite rejecting the compact’s terms, Beilock expressed openness to dialogue, indicating her willingness to explore how to strengthen the traditional federal-university research partnership while maintaining higher education’s focus on academic excellence.
The decision followed significant campus pressure, with nearly 500 Dartmouth faculty members and graduate students signing a petition advocating for rejection, according to the Valley News.
In her statement, Beilock emphasized the fundamental principle at stake: “Universities have a responsibility to set our own academic and institutional policies, guided by our mission and values, our commitment to free expression, and our obligations under the law.”
She framed institutional independence as essential to rebuilding public confidence across political lines and preserving American higher education’s global preeminence.
Dartmouth’s decision aligns with rejections announced last week by peer institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California, suggesting a coordinated defense of academic autonomy among elite research universities.
The Trump administration wants colleges to make a number of changes to their policies in order to get an edge in grant funding.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
After four universities rejected the Trump administration’s compact for higher education, the White House is planning to meet Friday afternoon with the remaining five that have yet to respond.
A White House official confirmed plans of the meeting to Inside Higher Ed but didn’t say what the purpose of the gathering was or which universities would attend. Nine universities were asked to give feedback on the wide-ranging proposal by Oct. 20.
The virtual meeting will likely include May Mailman, a White House adviser, and Vincent Haley, director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, according to a source with knowledge of the White House’s plans. Mailman, Haley and Education Secretary Linda McMahon signed the letter sent to the initial nine about the compact.
So far, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California have publicly rejected the deal. Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University haven’t said whether they’ll agree to the compact. Trump officials have said that the signatories could get access to more grant funding and threatened the funding of those that don’t agree.
After USC released its letter rejecting the proposal, Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, told the Los Angeles Times that “as long as they are not begging for federal funding, universities are free to implement any lawful policies they would like.”
Following the first rejection from MIT last Friday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that all colleges could now sign on. The White House has said that some institutions have already reached out to do so.
The source with knowledge of the White House’s plans said that the meeting “appears to be an effort to regain momentum by threatening institutions to sign even though it’s obviously not in the schools’ interest to do so.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that Arizona State University, the University of Kansas and Washington University in St. Louis were also invited. According to the Journal, the goal of the meeting was to answer questions about the proposal and to find common ground with the institutions.
Former senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and trustee at Vanderbilt, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the compact was an example of federal overreach akin to previous efforts to impose uniform national standards on K–12 schools.
“Mr. Trump’s proposed higher education compact may provoke some useful dialogue around reform,” he wrote. “But the federal government shouldn’t try to manage the nation’s 6,000 colleges and universities.”
Inside Higher Ed reached out to the remaining five institutions as well as the new invitees, but they haven’t responded to a request for comment or to confirm whether they’ll attend the meeting.
After four universities rejected the Trump administration’s compact for higher education, the White House met Friday with some universities about the proposal.
A White House official confirmed plans of the meeting to Inside Higher Ed but didn’t say what the purpose of the gathering was or which universities would attend. Nine universities were asked to give feedback on the wide-ranging proposal by Oct. 20.
The virtual meeting planned to include May Mailman, a White House adviser, and Vincent Haley, director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, according to a source with knowledge of the White House’s plans. Mailman, Haley and Education Secretary Linda McMahon signed the letter sent to the initial nine about the compact.
So far, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California have publicly rejected the deal. Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin, and Vanderbilt University haven’t said whether they’ll agree to the compact. UVA said late Friday afternoon that it wouldn’t agree to the proposal.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Arizona State University, the University of Kansas and Washington University in St. Louis were also invited. According to the Journal, the goal of the meeting was to answer questions about the proposal and to find common ground with the institutions.
Inside Higher Ed reached out to the universities, but none confirmed whether they attended the meeting.
The nine-page document would require universities to make a number of far-reaching changes from abolishing academic departments or programs that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas” to capping international undergraduate enrollment at 15 percent. Institutions also would have to agree to freeze their tuition and require standardized tests for admissions, among other provisions.
Trump officials have said that the signatories could get access to more grant funding and threatened the funding of those that don’t agree. The Justice Department would enforce the terms of the agreement, which are vague and not all defined.
After USC released its letter rejecting the proposal, Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, told the Los Angeles Times that “as long as they are not begging for federal funding, universities are free to implement any lawful policies they would like.”
Following the first rejection from MIT last Friday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that all colleges could now sign on. The White House has said that some institutions have already reached out to do so.
The source with knowledge of the White House’s plans said that the meeting “appears to be an effort to regain momentum by threatening institutions to sign even though it’s obviously not in the schools’ interest to do so.”
Former senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and trustee at Vanderbilt, wrote in aJournal op-ed that the compact was an example of federal overreach akin to previous efforts to impose uniform national standards on K–12 schools.
“Mr. Trump’s proposed higher education compact may provoke some useful dialogue around reform,” he wrote. “But the federal government shouldn’t try to manage the nation’s 6,000 colleges and universities.”
A Joint Warning
The American Council on Education and 35 other organizations warned in a joint statement released Friday that “the compact’s prescriptions threaten to undermine the very qualities that make our system exceptional.”
The organizations that signed requested the administration withdraw the compact and noted that “higher education has room for improvement.”
But “the compact is a step in the wrong direction,” the letter states. “The dictates set by it are harmful for higher education and our entire nation, no matter your politics.”
The letter is just the latest sign of a growing resistance in higher ed to the compact. Faculty and students at the initial group of universities rallied Friday to urge their administrators to reject the compact. According to the American Association of University Professors, which organized the national day of action, more than 1,000 people attended the UVA event.
And earlier this month, the American Association of Colleges and Universities released a statement that sharply criticized the compact. The statement said in part that college and university presidents “cannot trade academic freedom for federal funding” and that institutions shouldn’t be subject “to the changing priorities of successive administrations.” Nearly 150 college presidents and associations have endorsed that statement.
The joint statement from ACE and others, including AAC&U, was a way to show that the associations, which the letter says “span the breadth of the American higher education community and the full spectrum of colleges and universities nationwide,” are united in their opposition.
“The compact offers nothing less than government control of a university’s basic and necessary freedoms—the freedoms to decide who we teach, what we teach, and who teaches,” the statement reads. “Now more than ever, we must unite to protect the values and principles that have made American higher education the global standard.”
But not everyone in the sector signed on.
Key groups that were absent from the list of signatories include the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of American Universities, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Career Education Colleges and Universities, and the American Association of Community Colleges.
Inside Higher Ed reached out to each of those groups, asking whether they were invited to sign and, if so, why they chose not to do so. Responses varied.
AAU noted that it had already issued its own statement Oct. 10. AASCU said it was also invited to sign on and had “significant concerns” about the compact but decided to choose other ways to speak out.
“We are communicating in multiple ways with our member institutions and policymakers about the administration’s request and any impact it might have on regional public universities,” Charles Welch, the association’s president, said in an email.
Other organizations had not responded by the time this story was published.
I can’t be the only person to have been shocked that 1.5 per cent of respondents to OfS’ NSS extension on harassment and sexual misconduct said they’d been in an intimate personal relationship with a member of university staff in the past year.
Nor, notwithstanding the sampling issues, can I have been the only one to have been alarmed that of those relationships, 68.8 per cent said that the staff member was involved with their education or assessment.
A few weeks ago now over on LinkedIn, former Durham psychology prof and harassment and sexual misconduct expert Graham Towl triggered a bit of debate.
Having asserted that, to his knowledge, no university had initiated an outright ban on intimate personal relationships between staff and students, a whole raft of respondents appeared to tell him he was wrong – at least when it came to their university.
So I checked. And sadly, whatever their perceptions, almost all of said contributors were mistaken. There’s plenty of strong discouragement, a lot of bans where there’s a supervisory relationship, but not a lot of policies that actually respond to what students want – which is for university to be one of the few settings where they’re not pestered for sex.
Anna Bull’s work on professional boundaries couldn’t be any clearer, really. Two studies surveying students about staff-student relationships show that the vast majority of students – at least 75 per cent – are uncomfortable with teaching staff having sexual or romantic relationships with students.
The research examined both “sexualized interactions” (such as dating or romantic relationships) and “personal interactions” (like adding students on social media or drinking with them). Notably, there were no differences in attitudes between undergraduate and postgraduate students, suggesting that different policies for different levels of study may not be justified.
Women students were considerably more uncomfortable than men with both sexualized and personal interactions from staff, no doubt reflecting their heightened awareness of potential sexual harassment and intrusion. Black and Asian students also reported greater discomfort with personal interactions than white students, which researchers linked to preferences for greater professionalism and concerns about culturally inappropriate settings like pub meetings.
The findings point towards establishing clear professional boundaries in higher education to create a more inclusive and comfortable learning environment for diverse student groups. So why hasn’t that happened?
Power imbalance
Since August 1st, the Office for Students (OfS) has required universities to implement one or more steps that could make a “significant and credible difference” in protecting students from conflicts of interest and abuse of power in intimate personal relationships between relevant staff members and students.
While a complete ban on those relationships is deemed to meet this requirement, it is not mandatory – providers can alternatively adopt other measures such as requiring staff to disclose relationships, managing academic interactions to prevent unfair advantage or disadvantage, ensuring students can report harassment through alternative channels, and providing appropriate training on professional boundaries.
If providers choose not to ban relationships, they have to actively manage any actual or potential conflicts of interest. Conversely, if they do implement a ban, breaches must result in disciplinary action through usual processes, including the possibility of dismissal.
The policy must apply to “relevant staff members” – those with direct academic or professional responsibilities for students, including lecturers, supervisors, personal tutors, and pastoral support staff. And OfS expects providers to regularly review their approach based on evidence of prevalence, consultation with students, and the effectiveness of measures in place, adjusting policies as necessary to ensure student protection.
That’s the bare minimum – but save for that stuff on “training on professional boundaries”, the problem has always been that it partly misses the point. Both OfS’ Condition E6 and several of the policies I’ve read since August 1st seem to suggest that intimate personal relationships between staff and students are somehow inevitable, or will just “happen”.
But someone has to initiate them. Is it really too much to ask that higher education will be a space where students can get on with their lives without that initiation? Apparently it is.
And if we’re looking more broadly at the professional boundaries that students think should exist, I can say with some confidence that they’re barely addressed at all in the policies I’ve seen.
Between August 1st and October 16 this year, I’ve been using the odd break to search for what universities in England have done, or continue to do, in this space via what is supposed to be an easy-to-find “single source of information” on harassment and sexual misconduct. The difficulty in finding information in some cases is a different article, and in some cases searches might have surfaced old policies or rules that have since been updated.
But having reached York St John University down the alphabetical list, I think I can now say what I can see. And it’s pretty disappointing.
Ban or regulate?
A clear minority of English universities now operate we might define as a total “ban” – prohibiting intimate relationships between staff and students, allowing only excluded pre-existing relationships, and making breach subject to disciplinary sanction up to dismissal.
Those operating a ban between relevant staff members and students have moved decisively beyond the traditional “discourage and disclose” model, recognising that a prohibition sends a clearer message about acceptable professional conduct than a register that implicitly frames relationships as permissible if declared.
But the vast majority of providers continue to run hybrid disclosure-and-mitigation regimes. These typically prohibit relationships where staff have direct academic, supervisory or pastoral responsibility whilst requiring declaration elsewhere so conflicts can be managed.
Some variants include mandatory disclosure forms, formal HR records, automatic removal of responsibilities, and explicit disciplinary consequences. Weaker implementations rely on cultural expectations of disclosure with what read like vague enforcement mechanisms.
Definitional inconsistencies and structural complexities
Policy complexity and inconsistency remain significant compliance risks. E6’s definition of “relevant staff member” extends beyond academic roles to include pastoral advisers, complaints handlers, and security personnel, yet plenty of policies restrict prohibitions to “teaching” or “supervisory” staff. That narrower scope risks under-compliance, particularly given the condition’s emphasis on addressing “direct professional responsibilities” broadly conceived.
The challenge is then compounded by the increasingly blurred boundaries of contemporary academic work. Academic casualisation means many staff occupy ambiguous positions – postgraduate students who teach undergraduates, visiting fellows with limited institutional attachment, or part-time lecturers working across multiple institutions. Hybrid roles complicate traditional staff-student distinctions and create enforcement challenges that policies rarely acknowledge explicitly.
Similarly, institutions vary widely in defining “intimate personal relationship.” Some focus narrowly on romantic and sexual connections, whilst others encompass emotional intimacy or even brief encounters. The definitional variation undermines the sector’s ability to provide consistent protection – and creates real confusion for staff and students moving between institutions.
Disciplinary frameworks
E6 explicitly requires that breaches of relationship bans be actionable under disciplinary codes with the possibility of dismissal. Many policies use hedged language – “may be subject to disciplinary processes” – without clearly linking to dismissal procedures. This vagueness reads like a compliance gap, given the condition demands visible enforceability rather than implied consequences.
More fundamentally, some universities fail to integrate relationship policies with their harassment and sexual misconduct frameworks, treating consensual relationships as a separate administrative matter rather than a safeguarding issue. The siloed approach risks missing the connection between power abuse in relationships and broader patterns of misconduct.
Meanwhile, even where I found the “single comprehensive source of information”, there were publication gaps. Multiple providers either don’t publish any staff-student relationship policies or fragment them across HR documents, safeguarding procedures, and harassment frameworks. It makes it impossible for students to locate the unified information that E6 demands.
And even where policies exist, they often read as HR-focused documents with limited student-facing clarity. E6 expects providers to communicate that students can report misconduct within relationships, will not be penalised for participating in permitted relationships, and will be protected from retaliation. Few policies include explicit student-facing assurances on these points – they’re largely staff-facing. Students won’t know what they can and can’t expect.
Maybe it’s the lack of student engagement. E6 encourages providers to gather evidence, review complaints data, and consult students when setting policy. Very few institutions mention regular review cycles or evidence of student consultation in developing their approach. Over the past two weeks, just two of the 35 SUs I’ve spoken to have been shared the institution-level NSS extension prevalence data. Sigh.
Transition and review
The core critique of disclosure regimes – that they prioritise staff honesty over student protection and create implicit permission for advances – remains pretty much unaddressed by the sector. Most universities retain register-based systems that focus on “managing conflicts of interest” once relationships exist, rather than preventing the harm that may occur from approaches themselves.
Policies typically frame concerns in managerial language around “professional integrity,” “institutional reputation,” and “fairness in assessment.” Staff-centric discourse contrasts sharply with student-centric concerns about discomfort, vulnerability, and psychological harm. The regulatory emphasis on conflict management appears to miss the fundamental critique that the proposition itself, regardless of outcome, can damage students’ academic confidence and sense of safety.
While many policies acknowledge “power imbalances,” they operationalise the idea narrowly through formal supervisory relationships. Few grapple with the diffuse cultural authority that academic staff wield as gatekeepers to disciplinary knowledge, professional networks, and career opportunities. It suggests that universities don’t know how power operates in their own environments, particularly for students from underrepresented backgrounds who may be more dependent on staff endorsement and support.
The evidence that women, Black, Asian, and LGBTQ+ students are disproportionately uncomfortable with boundary-crossing receives pretty much no acknowledgement in institutional policies. The absence of intersectional analysis by definition means that universal policies may systematically under-protect the most vulnerable student populations, despite E6’s emphasis on safeguarding.
Technology and boundaries
Both academic research and common sense tells us that contemporary academic relationships increasingly develop through digital channels that traditional policies struggle to address. Social media connections, informal messaging platforms, and online collaboration tools blur the boundaries between professional and personal communication in ways that very few of the policies I’ve seen acknowledge explicitly.
More broadly, the policies on offer are poorly equipped to address subtle forms of grooming and boundary erosion. Most frameworks deal with binary outcomes – either declared relationships to be managed, or clear breaches to be disciplined – but offer little on the grey areas where inappropriate behaviour develops incrementally through seemingly innocent interactions.
The research evidence on grooming pathways – special attention, informal meetings, personal communications, boundary-testing compliments – finds limited reflection in the material. Where policies do address professional boundaries, they typically focus on practical arrangements (meeting locations, communication channels) rather than the relational dynamics that create vulnerability to exploitation.
It’s a gap that is particularly significant given evidence that students often recognise exploitation only retrospectively, after the power dynamic becomes clear. Policies designed around consent at the time of relationship formation do nothing to address the temporal aspects of harm recognition.
Reporting barriers and trust
Despite E6’s emphasis on accessible reporting, most universities have not fundamentally addressed the structural barriers that deter students from raising concerns. Few policies guarantee independent reporting channels or provide concrete protections against retaliation beyond general misconduct language. The asymmetry of consequences – where students risk academic and career damage whilst staff face at most employment consequences – receives little institutional acknowledgement.
This trust deficit is compounded by the limited evidence of truly independent support systems, particularly at smaller and specialist institutions. Students in performing arts, agriculture, PGRs in general – all are characterised by intense staff-student interaction often face the thinnest protection frameworks despite arguably facing the highest risks of boundary-crossing.
And miserably inevitably, to read the policies you’d think that staff in professional placement settings, years abroad, sports coaching, franchised provision and students’ unions don’t exist. Either those developing the policies have a limited understanding of the contemporary student experience, or have thought about the complexities and placed them in the “too difficult” pile for now. Or maybe it’s that the bulk of policies read like HR policies and have been developed with the university’s own employed staff in mind.
There’s no doubt that the regulatory intervention has successfully prompted some policy development across the sector, but on the evidence I’ve seen so far, the translation from policy text to cultural change remains incomplete.
Whether E6 delivers meaningful protection for students will depend on how universities implement the frameworks in practice, whether they address the underlying trust, power, and vulnerability dynamics that create risks, and how effectively they navigate the complex economic and cultural pressures that shape contemporary academic life.
They’ll also depend on universities proving the regulator wrong by actively deciding to do the right thing, rather than deciding that the bare minimum derived from the checklist will do.
Brazil exited the age of slavery 135 years ago. It remains a multi-racial society today. But for much of the twentieth century, Brazil suffered an enormous bout of amnesia. From being one of the last societies on earth to give up slavery, it immediately began touting itself as a place where colour did not matter, that it was a post-racial society.
But then about 30 years ago, things changed. Race — or more accurately race and inequality — became a much more prominent subject of debate, and various measures were brought in to lessen racial inequality. In higher education, however, Brazil did not however take the path of “affirmative action” as the United States did. Instead: it went the route India did with respect to caste: hard, fixed numerical quotas.
Today we’re going to look at how that this policy has worked out, and joining me to do so is Luiz Augusto Campos: He’s a professor of sociology and Political science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and he’s co-editor of a recent book on quotas in Brazilian higher education called O impacto das cotas: Duas decadasde acao affirmativano Ensino superior brasileiro. We had a great discussions about how Brazilian admissions quotas came to be and how they have change higher education. Of particular interest to me is that these quotas were imposed in some of the country’s most elite institutions — and how the arrival of quotas has managed to make policies of free tuition at elite institutions much less regressive.
The World of Higher Education Podcast Episode 4.7 | Access and Aftermath: What Racial Quotas Changed in Brazil’s Universities with Luiz Augusto Campos
Transcript
Alex Usher (AU): Luiz, before we start talking about quotas in higher education, let’s paint a picture of race in Brazil. Like the United States, Brazil was a colonial slave state—one where emancipation didn’t happen until 1888. But for a long time, there was a kind of myth that Brazil had become a post-racial society, one where people didn’t see race. So, what are the politics of race like in Brazil, and what’s changed over, say, the last 50 years?
Luiz Augusto Campos (LAC): That’s true, and I can say that almost everything has changed in recent years. At the beginning, Brazil was portrayed as a racial democracy—the idea that people in Brazil don’t see race and that there’s no racism. It’s complicated to understand how a country that was completely slave-based in the past could create this myth.
The myth was actually quite successful in the sense that most Brazilians used to believe it. It’s connected to how people viewed our history of slavery. In the past, people used to say that Brazilian slavery was a kind of soft slavery compared to other countries. Historians now show that’s not true, but that was how people saw it.
It was also tied to the myth of miscegenation—the idea that every Brazilian was of mixed race. And if everyone was mixed race, there was supposedly no place for racism, because you couldn’t practice racism against someone who was mixed, as everyone was.
But after 50 or 60 years, this national myth started to change—first because of the rise of the Black movement, which began to call out racism in Brazil, and later because of data on racial inequality. We’ve historically had very good data on race in Brazil—it’s a kind of legacy from the 18th century, through censuses and demographic records.
Those numbers began to show that, despite this idea of racial democracy, racial inequality remained deeply entrenched in Brazil, right up until the end of the 1990s. I think those two things—the activism of the Black movement and the hard data—really contributed to changing people’s belief in the myth of racial democracy.
AU: Just to be clear, when you talk about data on race, how is race classified? I don’t think it’s just white and Black, right? How does that work?
LAC: It’s changed over time, but we generally work with five racial categories. Even today, the Brazilian census is quite good. When a census worker comes to your house, they’ll ask you to identify your race using one of five options: Black, Brown, White, Yellow—which refers to Brazilians of Asian descent—and Indigenous.
That last category isn’t meant for people with distant Indigenous ancestry, but rather for those who actually live within Indigenous communities.
AU: Within higher education, how did race historically affect access? How big were the participation gaps between racial groups prior to the introduction of quotas?
LAC: The differences were huge. At the beginning of the 1990s, about 70 percent of students in public higher education were white. And it’s important to note that Brazil has both a public and a private higher education system.
AU: Right—and even though the private system is larger, the public system is the more selective and prestigious one. That’s where people want to go, correct?
LAC: Exactly. The private system is much bigger, but the public system is more selective, higher quality, and more prestigious.
At the start of the 1990s, around 70 percent of enrollments in the public system were white students. That was a real injustice, because the public system is completely tuition-free. So essentially, the government was collecting taxes from the majority of the population—who are largely Brown, Black, and poor—and using that money to fund the education of white students, who mostly came from middle- and upper-class backgrounds.
AU: Let me just ask—if about 70 percent of students in public higher education were white, how did that compare to the population as a whole?
LAC: In Brazil, the population has usually been about half white and half non-white. At the beginning of the 1990s, around 57 percent of people self-identified as white, but they made up about 70 percent of students in public universities.
It’s interesting, though, because racial classification in Brazil has also shifted over time—the proportions of people identifying as white, Black, or Brown have changed. But to answer your question directly, today less than 50 percent of students in public higher education are white. Black and Brown students now make up the majority in the public system.
AU: Let’s think about how we got there. In the 1980s and 1990s, as you said, racial politics started to change across Brazil. People realized this wasn’t really a racial democracy. How did quotas become the tool for achieving racial justice, rather than affirmative action as practiced in the United States at the time?
LAC: It’s a really complex process—and not one that was carefully planned.
First, we had the earliest proposals coming from the Black movement, mostly from an important Black leader in Brazil who was a congressman at the time. He introduced several bills for affirmative action, most of them based on quotas, though they included other ideas as well—such as direct financial support for Black Brazilians and other measures. But the core idea of quotas was already there in the early 1980s.
After that, we saw the rise of a movement creating preparatory courses for university entrance exams. In Brazil, admission to public universities is based on a standardized test, and these prep courses were designed by Black activists to help Black, Brown, and low-income students prepare for it.
The first actual quota policy began at my own university—the State University of Rio de Janeiro—at the beginning of the 2000s. Interestingly, the counselor who approved the quota system was from a right-wing party. He wasn’t necessarily a racial justice advocate; he was just a politician looking for proposals to champion, and this was one he decided to push through.
From that point onward, other universities began to adopt and replicate the model. Today, Brazil likely has the largest racial quota system in the world.
AU: So, how did we go from a situation in the 1980s and 1990s, where a few institutions were experimenting with quotas, to a point where the federal government actually mandated them for all federal universities in 2012? What led up to that decision, and how does the current quota system work?
LAC: It’s a complex story. In the beginning, there was fierce opposition to quotas in Brazil. Even intellectuals and public figures who had long supported anti-racist efforts criticized the quota system when it was first proposed.
At the same time, there were also important groups supporting these policies, but the federal government initially stayed on the sidelines. During Lula’s first two terms, he was personally supportive of such initiatives, but because the topic was so controversial, his government took a cautious approach. They said, “We need to wait—this is a divisive issue,” and chose not to sponsor a national quota bill for higher education at that stage.
However, during Lula’s broader reform of the higher education system, the government did introduce incentives for universities to adopt diversity policies. And for many institutions, quotas were simply the most practical approach—bureaucratically, they’re straightforward to implement. You just reserve a certain percentage of seats, and that’s it.
The Black movement also played a critical role. Activists developed strategies and frameworks to encourage universities to adopt quotas, and because Brazilian universities enjoy a high degree of autonomy, many were able to introduce these policies on their own.
AU: My understanding is that the quota system is actually a kind of two-level structure. The main rule is that 50 percent of students must come from public secondary schools, and then within that, there are race-based quotas that vary depending on the region—since, I assume, the racial makeup of Brazil isn’t homogenous across the country.
LAC: Exactly. First, it’s important to understand that Brazil’s quota system is primarily socioeconomic. The first criterion is that 50 percent of students admitted to public universities must come from public schools. On average, public schools in Brazil are of lower quality than private schools. You don’t pay to attend them, but the quality is generally weaker.
Within that 50 percent, there’s another socioeconomic division: 25 percent of seats are reserved for students from lower-income backgrounds, and 25 percent for students from higher-income backgrounds who still attended public schools.
Then, inside those categories, there are racial quotas. And as you said, the racial proportions vary by state, depending on the local population.
AU: It’s now been a couple of decades since quotas were first introduced, and 13 years since the federal law came into effect. You mentioned earlier that there’s been a significant narrowing of racial access gaps. How substantial has that change been?
LAC: In terms of access, it’s very significant. Today, we can say that Brazilian universities are truly Black and Brown universities. If you visit a campus in Brazil now, you’ll see far more Black and Brown students than in the past.
That said, there are still limits and challenges. While the public higher education system has changed dramatically in both racial and socioeconomic terms, it remains quite small compared to the private sector. In the 1990s, the public system made up almost half of Brazil’s entire higher education system. Today, it accounts for only about 20 percent.
AU: What about graduation rates? It’s one thing to get into university, but as you mentioned, students from public secondary schools might not have had the same preparation. Has the system been able to adjust to ensure that racial minorities are graduating at the same rate as white students?
LAC: In terms of graduation, the rates are quite similar. Black and Brown students now graduate at roughly the same rate as white students. But there are still differences because, even with quotas, access isn’t evenly distributed across all majors.
AU: So, there’s still stratification within the system.
LAC: Yes, exactly. Because racial quotas exist within the broader socioeconomic quota, the share of seats reserved for Black and Brown students ends up being about half of their proportion in the overall Brazilian population.
As a result, in some programs—especially in the less selective ones—you might see 50 or 60 percent of students identifying as Black or Brown. But in the most selective fields, like law or engineering, that number drops to around 20 percent.
It’s also important to note that not all quota seats are filled. Universities sometimes introduce additional requirements or special exams that can limit how these racial quotas are implemented in practice.
AU: Based on your overview of quotas and their results, is there anything you think could be improved in the system?
LAC: Yes, there’s quite a lot that could be improved. We have a new law from 2023 that made some small but important updates to the 2012 legislation. It’s a good law—I think it corrected several issues—but there are still many areas that need attention.
First, data access. In Brazil, getting access to racial data is actually harder today than it used to be. This is partly due to new data protection laws that were meant to regulate big tech companies, but in practice they’ve ended up restricting academic research instead. So, access to race-related data for research is now much worse than before.
Second, the admissions system itself is extremely complicated. Students take a national standardized exam—the ENEM—to apply for higher education. Through this unified system, they can choose from roughly 6,000 different programs across the country.
Within that, there are multiple overlapping quota categories. Besides the main racial and socioeconomic quotas, there are additional ones—like for students with disabilities—which exist inside the broader categories. Altogether, there are around 16 groups, and combining all of them within a single national admissions platform makes it very difficult to fill every quota properly.
So, while the policy framework is strong, the system still has a lot of complexity and operational challenges that need to be addressed.
AU: And what do you think the future holds for quotas in Brazilian higher education? Is there a limit to how far quotas can help narrow the access gap? And can you imagine a future in which quotas wouldn’t be needed anymore?
LAC: I can imagine that future—and I hope for it. I think we’re all working toward a world where quotas are no longer necessary. But for now, they’re still very much needed.
At the moment, the quota system itself isn’t under serious attack. What is under pressure, though, is public higher education—and really the higher education system as a whole. There’s a growing discourse, mostly from the far right, claiming that higher education isn’t necessary, that people should simply “work hard” instead.
Public universities, in particular, have become targets. Critics accuse them of being useless or of being dominated by the far left, which simply isn’t true.
To answer your question directly, I’d say the quota system in Brazil is quite stable right now. But the institutions that sustain it—especially public universities—are facing challenges. Looking ahead, I think the next step is to expand affirmative action beyond higher education, into other areas like the labor market and public institutions, where access for Black and Brown Brazilians remains limited.
AU: Luiz, thank you so much for being with us today.
LAC: Thank you. It’s my pleasure.
AU: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, and you, our readers and listeners, for joining us. If you have any questions about today’s episode or suggestions for future ones, don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. Next week is a break week—but after that, we’ll be back with another fascinating conversation. Bye for now.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service.Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
This blog was kindly authored by Professor Annabel Kiernan, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience at Goldsmiths University. It follows her speech at a HEPI event with the same title as this blog, held at the 2025 Conservative Party Conference.
To accept this question at its face and to understand what universities can and should do to build back public support, we need to look at how we got here. In broad terms, universities are not the only institutions whose role, purpose and efficacy are being challenged. There has been a wider breakdown of trust between the public and a wide range of local and national infrastructure, both public and private – from water and train companies, to the courts and local government.
In part, this is the inevitable consequence of two periods of significant financial stress – firstly from the 2008 financial crash and its resulting ten-year austerity programme, followed swiftly by the post-COVID cost-of-living crisis. The economic bite for the personal and public purse and the knock-on impact of such economic dislocation has been a considerable shrinking of the wider public realm and a gnawing away at the previous slowly progressive move towards a more ‘bread and roses’ type of social compact for all: of needing the fundamentals of life (bread), but also making available what brings beauty, culture and wellbeing (roses) to wider society, irrespective of economic circumstance. The shrinking of the public realm has pushed back this access to public goods.
Many education institutions, including universities, have attempted to be a buttress for this impact – whether that’s filling in social, behavioural, skills and knowledge gaps from lost learning, responding to increased mental health pressures, trying to mitigate, where possible, the impacts of poverty and other generalised impacts of closures of youth centres, libraries, museums and so on.
Clearly then, universities play a key role in delivering progress to individuals and the broader public. They are core to economic and social growth, delivering these while managing the public’s varied aspirations and differing expectations. The expansion of higher education was sought to widen the benefits of a university education and experience. Even before the Blair expansion in the 2000s, my own family – my mum, the eldest of six, with a miner and a housewife as parents – were beneficiaries, with all six children going to university during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite both leaving school at 14, my grandparents knew that university was the route to a different life. It paid off for all six brothers and sisters, and here I am today, the eldest grandchild of that mobility, a Deputy Vice Chancellor contributing a HEPI blog on public trust in universities.
But, whilst the cost of university entry has now significantly increased, the mobility pay off, or graduate premium, appears more challenged. This is despite the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2025 report showing that, over the course of a lifetime, attending university still delivers financially. In times of heightened economic stress, however, the public needs more immediacy in the financial payoff and surety in the belief that infrastructure delivers a high-quality service. We can see the political articulation of the need to see, feel and believe things work and have tangible benefits for individuals, their families and communities now. People’s sacrifices need to matter, and their investment needs to pay off.
So what do universities do to play their part?
As a sector, we work very hard on our civic role, but we need to be more porous. We can’t be seen to effectively privatise public space. We need to be of our places, and lead the charge on building solutions and helping people to navigate change – from how we work with local communities to how we contribute to global challenges. In other words, we need to reemphasise our role in sustaining the social, cultural and intellectual infrastructure of society,
To support that civic role, we need to offer more seamless education journeys and be accessible for learners throughout their lifetime. That means accelerating the ways in which we work in partnership with each other, with colleges, schools, employers and local authorities. Lifelong education is a philosophy, not just a government policy. The Lifelong Learning Entitlement needs to align with a wide range of policies. For example, now that ‘skills’ is situated with the Department for Work and Pensions, what harm in referring people to a bit of modular learning to get their employment on track rather than piecemeal training or benefit sanctions? Universities are a public infrastructure, so we need to connect well with other infrastructure to deliver our part of the ecosystem for individual and collective economic and social gains.
We must remain intentional, be high quality, deliver an excellent experience. There should continue to be robust regulation of bad actors. We should deliver success for all our students and we shouldn’t be a homogeneous model; learners take different pathways through higher learning and need to access it in different ways, through different modes and will have different needs for flexibility. There are specialisms and expertise in research and teaching, and these should remain available as choices. There has been much written about the detrimental impact of out-of-town shopping centres on our high streets. Similarly, if all universities have to deliver at scale for efficiencies, the impact of closures on the towns and cities of smaller, more specialist institutions would be devastating.
At this moment, we need to emphasise our value in relation to the individual economic benefit gained from the investment of a student loan. In other words, highly paid graduate employment. I’m not sure how potent the arguments for the collective economic benefit of universities currently are. Personal storytelling of meaningful impacts, like that of my own family, may have traction in our university locales.
Overall, we need to continue to deliver and continue to engage. We work hard in these spaces already, but we need to tell our story differently and continue to adapt our model.
Importantly, universities have a central part to play in delivering space for reflection, intellectual enquiry, creative and critical action and solutions which will help to navigate us, the public, through these significant and challenging periods of rapid economic, political and technological transition.
As Oppenheim wrote in his 1911 poem:
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.
What better challenge for universities to continue to rise to.
