The Australian university sector has come under considerable pressure in recent years. It is currently in a parlous state.
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What happened to the President of UVA is devastating. And we have let ourselves believe it is surprising. But, while it should be shocking that the federal government – one that has been repeatedly talking about the return of education to the states – is interfering with the administration of a public university, it should have been expected if you were paying attention.
The tools in this Administration’s toolbox include cancelling funding, slashing federal student aid, investigating and auditing schools, removing and threatening international students and immigrants, and increasing the costs of higher education institutions doing their work – from indirect cost increases on research funds to attempting to revoke tax-exempt status, and the list goes on.
These actions have, and will, hit institutions across the board hard – from Columbia and Harvard to public state schools to small independent colleges to community colleges. All of these schools – and their students – rely on and benefit from public investments in higher education.
And the damage is not just to the schools and students. The communities, cities, and states where these schools are located benefit economically when colleges and their students thrive. Our nation’s standing as a leader in innovation – in technology, medical advancements, and other fields – will be threatened without federal investments in higher education. And, without academic freedom ensuring a diversity of viewpoints at our institutions, free from political interference, our democracy will be at risk.
So, what lessons can we take from what happened at UVA and the forced resignation of President Ryan?
First, this has never been just about the Ivies. There has been a belief that the elite schools are the target. Just take a look at the list of the 60 colleges that the Trump Administration opened investigations into, under the pretext of antisemitism, in March – Ivy League schools but also publics (in blue states and red states), privates, and small independent colleges. The reconciliation bill, which was signed into law last week, eliminated Grad PLUS loans and capped Parent PLUS loans – programs that help students at all schools, including HBCUs. And, the President’s FY26 budget would eliminate programs that fund wraparound services which will hurt community college students who rely most heavily on those federal investments.
Second, it is not just about the words used. Following UVA President Ryan’s resignation, DOJ Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon told CNN that although UVA decided in March 2025 to dissolve its DEI office, it “used a series of euphemisms to simply rebrand and repackage the exact same discriminatory programs that are illegal under federal law.”
This raises a couple of lessons that can be learned as higher ed institutions look ahead. Following the President’s executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion, many organizations began scrubbing their websites, shuttering DEI offices, and disbanding committees with diversity and equity in their titles. Schools instead need to first do a campus-wide review of their activities. Then, they should undertake a risk assessment to both determine which activities can be viewed as being in contrast to Trump’s executive orders and the new certifications being tied to federal funding and to determine which activities are actually in violation of current state and federal antidiscrimination laws. The first bucket of activities – those that do not follow the executive orders – may put schools’ funding at risk but are not necessarily illegal. This Administration is using a chilling effect to stop allowable initiatives that are in contrast with their ideology and politics. Understanding the risk is important for schools to protect themselves but schools must also continue to fulfill their missions of serving all students and providing diverse environments and inclusive communities and must be ready to push back when wrongly being accused of engaging in “illegal DEI,” which isn’t in and of itself a thing.
Sometimes changing the words, or renaming or eliminating an office, may be necessary. In fact, for federal grants, agencies are utilizing AI to do word searches so there may be a reason to use different words and reframe proposals for federal funds. But, if schools are going to do so, they need to engage in genuine stakeholder outreach to explain what is and what isn’t changing. In addition to the closing of UVA’s DEI office now being criticized as irrelevant in the eyes of the Trump Administration, the school leadership faced criticism from faculty, students and other university community members when they did so, which likely caused them to lose some of the support they needed to push back against the false charges by DOJ. Explaining which changes are being made early – and which aren’t and why – can help college leaders on multiple fronts.
Third, this Administration is continuing to not tell the truth about what the U.S. Supreme Court 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard (SFFA) meant. Assistant Attorney General Dhillon told CNN in her interview about UVA, “It’s not just admissions part, it’s also preferences in special programs while students are at the school … this is all illegal under Students for Fair Admissions.” Well, no. The Supreme Court’s decision in SFFA was about admissions. Telling schools to stop activities because of SFFA in other areas is again a scare tactic that must be pushed back on both in courts and in the court of public opinion.
This is the time for higher ed institutions and their stakeholders to come together and fight back. Institutions must think outside the box and do the hard work so that they can continue to fulfill their missions of serving all students and being inclusive communities while not increasing the risks of harmful actions that will hurt their students, their communities, the economy, and our democracy.
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Amanda Fuchs Miller served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Higher Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education in the Biden-Harris Administration. She is the president of Seventh Street Strategies, which provides advocacy and policy supports to higher ed institutions, nonprofit organizations, and foundations.
Universities want to be at the cutting edge of knowledge creation, but many are grappling with a paradox: how to harness the potential of AI while minimising its pitfalls. Done well, generative AI can help institutions run more efficiently, enhance teaching quality and support students in new and exciting ways. Done poorly, it can generate misinformation, introduce bias and make students (and staff) over-reliant on technology they do not fully understand. The challenge is not whether to use AI but how to make it work for human-driven, high-quality education.
Across the sector, institutions are already putting AI to work in ways that go far beyond administrative efficiencies. At many universities, AI-driven analytics are helping identify students at risk of disengagement before they drop out. By analysing attendance, engagement and performance data, tutors can intervene earlier, offering personalised support before problems escalate. Others have deployed AI-powered feedback systems that provide students with instant formative feedback on their writing. The impact? Students who actually improve before their assignments are due, rather than after they’ve been graded.
Concerns about the accuracy, transparency and provenance of AI tools have been well documented. Many of them operate as ‘black boxes’, making it difficult to verify outputs or attribute sources. These challenges run counter to academic norms of evidence, citation and rigour. AI tools continue to occupy a liminal space: they promise and deliver a lot, but are not yet fully trusted. AI can get things spectacularly wrong. AI-powered recruitment tools have been found to be biased against women and minority candidates, reinforcing rather than challenging existing inequalities. AI-driven assessment tools have been criticised for amplifying bias, grading students unfairly or making errors that, when left unchallenged, can have serious consequences for academic progression.
With new applications emerging almost daily, it’s becoming harder to assess their quality, reliability and appropriateness for academic use. Some institutions rush headlong into AI adoption without considering long-term implications, while others hesitate, paralysed by the sheer number of options, risks and potential costs. Indeed, a major barrier to AI adoption at all levels in higher education is fear: fear of the unknown, fear of losing control, fear of job displacement, fear of fostering metacognitive laziness. AI challenges long-held beliefs about authorship, expertise and what constitutes meaningful engagement with learning. Its use can blur the boundaries between legitimate assistance and academic misconduct. Students express concerns about being evaluated by algorithms rather than humans. These fears are not unfounded, but they must be met with institutional transparency, clear communication, ethical guidelines and a commitment to keeping AI as an enabler, not a replacement, for human judgment and interaction. Universities are learning too.
No discussion on AI in universities would be complete without addressing the notion of ‘future-proofing’. The very idea that we can somehow freeze a moving target is, at best, naive and, at worst, an exercise in expensive futility. Universities drafting AI policies today will likely find them obsolete before the ink has dried. Many have explicitly reversed earlier AI policies. That said, having an AI policy is not without merit: it signals an institutional commitment to ethical AI use, academic integrity and responsible governance. The trick is to focus on agile, principle-based approaches that can adapt as AI continues to develop. Over-regulation risks stifling innovation, while under-regulation may lead to confusion or misuse. A good AI policy should be less about prediction and more about preparation: equipping staff and students with the skills and capabilities to navigate an AI-rich world, while creating a culture that embraces change. Large-scale curriculum and pedagogic redesign is inevitable.
Where does all this leave us? Universities must approach AI with a mix of enthusiasm and caution, ensuring that innovation does not come at the expense of academic integrity or quality. Investing in AI fluency (not just ‘literacy’) for staff and students is essential, as is institutional clarity on responsible AI use. Universities should focus on how AI can support (not replace) the fundamental principles of good teaching and learning. They must remain committed to the simple but powerful principle of teaching well, consistently well: every student, every session, every time.
AI is a tool – powerful, perhaps partly flawed, but full of potential. It is the pocket calculator of the 1970s. How universities wield it will determine whether it leads to genuine transformation or a series of expensive (and reputationally risky) missteps. The challenge, then, is to stay in control, keep the focus on successful learning experiences in their multiple manifestations, and never let AI run the show alone. After all, no algorithm has yet mastered the art of handling a seminar full of students who haven’t done the reading.
When searching for friendly support or warm words from politicians, the media, and the public, UK universities are increasingly being left empty-handed.
Last year’s modest increase in tuition fees allowed universities a temporary reprieve after years of tightening financial constraints but came with a firm warning that standards must improve and was quickly wiped out by rises in National Insurance. Meanwhile, culture wars and negative perceptions on quality and graduate outcomes continue to dominate discourse around the sector, fuelling criticism of universities from all directions.
Richard Jones, vice president for regional innovation and civic engagement at the University of Manchester posited last week that university leaders may be tempted to look for easy savings in their civic impact work – initiatives that engage with and benefit their local community but ultimately fall outside of a university’s traditional mission of teaching and research. But as he argues, this would be a profound mistake.
The outlook in recent years for universities may have been challenging, but hope lies in Labour’s focus on place-based policy. Place has driven flagship funding decisions and policies including the Spending Review and the Industrial Strategy, with more money being devolved from Whitehall to the regions in pursuit of growth. New Mayoral Strategic Authorities have been empowered to take the reins on transport, investment, spatial planning and skills, with the promise of further autonomy as they mature. A new Green Book – government’s methodology for assessing public investments – is being updated and will broaden the criteria to look more favourably at investments outside London and the South East.
Universities are perfectly placed to be the drivers of Labour’s regional growth ambitions. The priority sectors in last week’s Industrial Strategy – including advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and clean energy industries – are some of UK universities’ best strengths. Moreover, as anchor institutions located in the heart of communities, universities are physically well-placed to address causes of economic decline.
The civic university movement, which champions collaboration between universities and their localities, has an established framework for institutions looking to ramp up civic impact initiatives with their civic university agreements. More than 70 civic university agreements are already in place between universities and their local authorities, with universities in Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Exeter, Derby and London, among others, providing a range of examples for institutions to learn from.
A UPP Foundation series of roundtables held in four regions across England recently has also highlighted that the civic university movement remains active, with a wealth of civic activity taking place across the country. Universities are finding creative ways to engage with their local communities, with examples including offering to host events in university spaces, or running a café that demystifies the benefits of nuclear energy while providing employment and training for local people. For institutions nervous about signing up to lengthy and potentially costly partnerships, participants at the roundtables instead stressed that smaller gestures can be just as meaningful. Rather than draining resources, civic activity can in fact alleviate funding pressures when universities work together to learn from one another.
Irrespective of geography, participants were united in their contention that universities should collaborate with their local partners to develop civic initiatives, working collaboratively to address the real day-to-day problems communities want help with, such as helping local businesses transition to net zero.
Labour’s devolution agenda also offers an opportunity for universities to become visible bridges working across regions and political geographies. While mayoral devolution has been lauded in cohesive urban centres like Manchester and Birmingham, there are concerns the model will work less well in rural areas where proposed Mayoral Combined Authorities will intersect with traditional county borders. For such regions, universities can both serve as bolsters to wider regional identity and can benefit from the flexibility of their own geography that may span mayoral regions.
The opportunities are there for universities to re-embed civic activity into their core work under Labour’s agenda – but it needs brave leadership to embrace them. In the face of tough financial decisions, university leaders must champion the benefits of civic activity. The late Bob Kerslake, chair of the UPP Foundation’s Civic University Commission 2018–19, deeply understood the potential and necessity for universities to be rooted in their local communities. For a higher education sector that has spent recent years on uncertain footing, tapping into Kerslake’s vision could provide a more certain path forward.
The UPP Foundation’s full report UPP Foundation Spring 2025 Roundtables: The Role of Universities in Regional Placemaking explores the key themes of the roundtable discussions. You can download the report here.
It is hard for universities to see beyond their own sector crisis right now, but the crisis facing the youth sector today will be the problem of universities tomorrow.
The youth sector in the UK greatly contributes towards supporting students and graduates of the future, but it is currently under threat and the deepest impact will come for those young people who face the highest barriers to accessing higher education.
The youth sector engages young people to develop their critical skills for life, including how to build relationships with peers; resilience and developing social and emotional skills; and how to integrate into a community. Many within the higher education sector will recognise these as areas which students and graduates are also struggling with.
At a time where universities are being called upon to widen access for young people, the reality is young people are facing narrower opportunities than ever. The challenge for widening participation teams will be multifaceted, including supporting attainment raising in schools; tackling entrenched views from schools and families of expectations of what their children can achieve; and providing the support needed for widening participation students to progress well once in higher education.
So how can the higher education sector help ensure that the challenges the youth sector are facing today don’t become a nightmare for widening participation teams to tackle in the future?
The youth sector includes large organisations such as UK Youth, Scouts and Girlguiding, to smaller grassroots organisations who run clubs and activities in and out of schools and community centres across the country.
There are many similarities between the crises facing the higher education sector and that of the youth sector. Much like universities, the youth sector has faced years of substantial defunding. A YMCA England and Wales report on The state of funding for youth services found that “local authority expenditure on youth services has fallen 73% in England and 27% in Wales since 2010-11” which “represents a real-term cut of £1.2bn to youth services between 2010-11 to 2023-24 in England, and £16.6m in Wales.”
At the same time as these cuts, the rate of young people who are NEET (not in education, employment or training) is growing, with 13.2 per cent of 16-24 year olds reported as NEET in 2024, and 15.6 per cent of 18-24 year olds NEET. Both figures have increased compared to previous years, particularly in young men. These young people need support and youth services are increasingly unable to provide it.
Organisations and charities who have been supporting the youth sector are closing at a rapid rate. The National Citizen Service (NCS), a national youth social action programme which has been running since 2009, has been cut by the Labour Government. Student Hubs, the social action charity I worked with which supported students to engage in social and environmental action, has closed. YMCA George Williams College, an organisation which supported the youth sector to improve monitoring, evaluation and impact of their activities closed on 31 March 2025 to the shock of many across the youth sector.
Whilst the Government’s National Youth Strategy announced in November 2024 is welcome, it will not fix years of systematic underfunding of youth sector services.
David Kernohan’s analysis of the UCAS 2025 application figures shows that applications are down, with only applicants from the most advantaged quintile, IMD quintile 5, having improved. We are in the midst of what could be a big decline in the rate of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds entering higher education, despite the transformative opportunities it provides.
This comes at a time where there is greater expectation by the government and the regulator for universities to be proactive in supporting students’ and young people’s skills, learning and access to opportunity. In February the Office for Students announced successful providers in their latest funding round to deliver projects which tackle Equality of Opportunity Risk Register areas. The register supports universities to consider barriers in the student life cycle and how they might mitigate against these.
Seeing the range of projects which have been awarded funding, it is clear that universities are being pushed to go further in imagining what their role is in shaping the lives of the students they engage, and it starts significantly earlier than freshers’ week. This funding shows that more emphasis is being put on universities to address barriers to participation by the Office for Students, and with the youth sector in crisis, this may need to become even wider if universities are to fulfil their access missions.
Thankfully, there are actions universities can take now which will make a difference both to young people and widening participation teams.
The youth sector cannot afford to wait. If universities want to be ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow, they need to build strong collaborative relationships with organisations already situated in communities whilst they are still here. Partnership with the youth sector offers an opportunity to enhance university strategic activity whilst making genuine social and economic impact.
Universities could be doing more to provide expertise on monitoring and evaluation of youth activities, enhancing quality of local activities, and conducting research to support future outcomes. There’s an opportunity for universities to learn from these partnerships too, particularly because the youth sector has a range of expertise which is highly applicable to the work the sector is doing in broadening their widening participation and civic strategies. These partnerships will sometimes be informal and sometimes they might be formalised through knowledge exchange programmes like student consultancy.
Students can play a big role in linking universities and youth services. Research conducted by the National Youth Agency in 2024 found “that fewer than seven per cent of respondents to a national survey of youth workers are under 26 years old”. There is a desperate need for youth workers and particularly under-30s to support the sector. Student Hubs’ legacy resources detail the approach we took to supporting students to volunteer in local schools, libraries and community centres to provide free support to young people as part of place-based programmes with universities.
Universities and students’ unions have spaces they are looking to commercialise, whilst also trying to give students jobs on campus. Universities and students’ unions could work collaboratively with community groups to use spaces on campus, provide student work through staffing them, and in turn support young people and families to access campus facilities.
One of the hallmarks of a crisis is communities coming together to meet challenges head on, and universities shouldn’t wait to be invited. Trust will need to be built and relationships take time to forge.
The best time to start is now. Universities should mobilise whilst there is still a youth sector left to support, or the void left by the lack of youth services means universities’ involvement in young people’s lives is going to become even larger.
In the wake of the Trump administration’s extralegal attack on Harvard University, which is essentially an attempted government takeover of a private school, the importance of academic freedom and institutional independence is clearer than ever. Had Harvard meekly complied with the demands in the hopes of maintaining its funding, it would’ve set a dangerous precedent for political interference in higher education.
Enter the Kalven Report: the north star for institutions striving to foster academic freedom. Crafted by the University of Chicago in response to Vietnam-era foment, the report warns that a university, though it may have the constitutional right to speak about unrelated political issues, should not take an official stance on these issues because of the chilling effect it has on the ability of university community members to discuss and debate amongst themselves.
But it allows for two exceptions. First, when it comes to threats to the university’s very mission and values of free inquiry, the Kalven report explains, “it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.” Second, when university ownership of property, its receipt of funds, its awarding of honors, or its membership in other organizations is at issue, the university is likewise entitled to defend itself.
Both exceptions apply to Harvard.
There is no standard by which an “exceptional” threat to the university can be determined. Instead, that is up to the university’s administration to determine. Kalven stresses that “it must always be appropriate, therefore, for faculty or students or administration to question whether in light of these principles the University in particular circumstances is playing its proper role.”
But by issuing a statement at all, the university risks chilling the speech of those who wish to question it.
The decision by many universities to sign a “Call for Constructive Engagement” statement, published in April as a response to government pressure, may likewise be deemed an appropriate response by virtue of the Kalven exceptions. Yet, the question remains: was it wise to do so?
By issuing a statement at all, the situation risks chilling the speech of those who may disagree.
Developed by college and university leadership in conjunction with the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the statement urges opposition to “undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses” and rejects “the coercive use of public research funding.” It is signed by over 650 institutional leaders and counting.
And while the signatories explicitly affirm their “commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where . . . faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas . . . without fear of retribution,” they cannot escape the fact that their willingness to make an institutional statement risks undermining that commitment to open inquiry. After all, there are undoubtedly many people on those 650 campuses who agree, either in whole or in part, with the Trump administration’s efforts.
The Kalven report issues a “heavy presumption” against making statements, “however appealing or compelling” the social or political value in question may be. This is partly because there is no escaping the question of who will decide which situations qualify as exceptional — there is no standard set by Kalven, simply the distinction of an “exceptional” circumstance. By issuing a statement at all, the situation risks chilling the speech of those who may disagree.
There are other actions an institution can take to protect itself. Remaining neutral does not mean the university cannot advocate for itself against unconstitutional action. Nothing in the Kalven Report requires colleges to submit to unlawful action that merits a lawsuit. But when an institution adopts a statement on behalf of all its members, this stifles dissent and free inquiry because to question university statements then becomes tantamount to questioning the very values of that institution. This, in turn, negatively impacts students’ education. As J.S. Mill famously argued in On Liberty, “The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion.”
Indeed, in many cases, schools that have signed the letter don’t always uphold the values of free speech internally.
For example, Columbia University signed the Constructive Engagement letter — and ranks second-to-last on FIRE’s Free Speech Rankings. Its faculty have experienced pushback from university administrators in response to their scholarship for decades, from the 2001 case of George Fletcher to the 2024 case of Adbul Kayum Ahmed. Nearly half (48%) of Columbia faculty think academic freedom on their campus is “not at all” or “not very” secure. Signing an open letter does little to improve the situation.
To preserve a culture of open debate and expression, colleges and universities must have the courage to defend their principles on campus and in court.
Another signatory to the statement, University of Pennsylvania has recently illustrated why statements aren’t an all-purpose solution but are instead an invitation for side-taking. The university faced significant backlash after it began to offer statements deemed inadequate in the weeks following October 7, including those by President Liz Magill and by members of Penn’s Board of Trustees.
In response to a displeased alumnus, administrators released a slew of institutional statements, putting even more daylight between themselves and anything resembling institutional neutrality. Concerns over antisemitism eventually led to Magill’s resignation and the Pennsylvania House of Representatives withholding $31 million in state funding from Penn’s veterinary school. Finally in September, then-interim President J. Larry Jamson declared Penn would no longer issue statements in response to social and political events.
Penn’s policy shift was a good call, even if it took a lot to get there. Modeling Kalven, Penn made a carve-out by promising not to comment on any more issues “except for those which have direct and significant bearing on University functions.” The only problem is that that loophole was on full display weeks ago when Penn signed the Constructive Engagement letter. Penn is once again speaking with its institutional voice by way of signature, finding itself aligned with a stance that is by nature political.
To preserve a culture of open debate and expression, colleges and universities must have the courage to defend their principles on campus and in court. It is therefore worth considering whether signing the AACU statement was a smart move or an instance of political posturing that may end up doing more harm than good.
Dinah Megibow-Taylor is a FIRE intern and a rising second-year at the University of Chicago.
The industrial strategy is not only an economic document it is also a roadmap for how the country will be governed.
At its heart is a simple premise. Places know what is best for people locally and power should be devolved to them. Not all powers, because some things like defence have to be coordinated at a national level, and certainly not lots of fiscal policy like taxation, but powers over things like spatial planning (where the government allows it), investment, and some parts of the R&D ecosystem.
The ideal body for distributing these powers is the Mayoral Combined Authority (MCA). These are the collection of councils in one area, usually a city, that work together to achieve more than they could alone. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the West Midlands Combined Authority are just two examples
In 1997 then Secretary of State for Wales Rob Davies called devolution “a process not an event”, and he was right. Powers are not spread evenly through the UK, London has quite a lot and a local town council has very few. And the propensity for government to operate through pots of money that local government bid for to do stuff is unusual by international comparisons. This level of financial control limits many places to being the delivery arm of government more so than independent decision makers in their own right.
This patchwork approach also means higher education providers have a mixed relationship with the devolution story.
Solely through an academic lens research intensive universities have done well out of (even if they do not like it) how centralised the UK is. The REF just isn’t interested in geography. It follows quality, impact, and environments wherever they may be. Previous research pots like the Regional Innovation Fund which apply a funding multiplier to places underserved by research funding are the exception not the norm.
The industrial strategy is different in that it at least attempts some kinds of rebalancing in acknowledging that if the government funds the same things in the same places the same kinds of research outputs will be produced. The fact there is some money behind it is even better. As DK noted in his review of research in the industrial strategy:
The £500m Local Innovation Partnerships Fund is intended to generate a further £1bn of additional investment and £700m of value to local economies, and there are wider plans to get academia and industry working together: a massive expansion in supercomputer resources (the AI research resource, inevitably) and a new Missions Accelerator programme supported by £500m of funding. And there’s the Sovereign AI Unit within government (that’s another £500m of industry investments) in “frontier AI”. On direct university allocation we get the welcome news that the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) is here to stay.
The places that are located outside of major cities without large research portfolios have more reason to be sceptical about devolution. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has called for local leaders to “fill in the map” of devolution but this is easier said than done. Places have distinct histories, geographies, and can’t as easily be accommodated into MCAs as places like Greater Manchester.
While there has been interest in towns from time to time, the Towns Fund provided some funding to some places on some research projects, they risk being left behind within a devolution system that prioritises larger conurbations.
Let’s take the government’s proposals at face value and assume it is going to implement the full version of the devolution agenda it is proposing. This would mean local government has more funding to buy land, freeports and investment zones will be streamlined to provide even more business incentives, the British Business Bank (among other funders) will release and coordinate capital aligned to regions and the eight industrial strategy priorities, a further £200m will be spent on further education in England, and a series of growth funds will run directly through mayors.There are more announcements to come on skills, local economic regulation and infrastructure.
Universities are not losers in any of these measures but nor are they inevitably complementary to everything the governments wants to do. Former universities minister David Willetts, who had some reservations about the draft strategy, has softened his tone writing:
Most of the key industries set out in that visual [the one explaining the industrial strategy priorities] are heavy users of higher education. Universities will play a crucial role in the strategy. One of the biggest risks to delivering it is the financial fragility of these core institutions. It is good to see them getting a vivid illustration as well – on page 73. But the Government has not yet taken the decisions needed to ensure they can thrive and continue to be such a national asset.
This is the core problem. It is possible to imagine how industries may rely on universities but it is more difficult work out how universities, specifically, can deploy their capacity in the most effective ways. Universities cannot expect government money for everything they do but it is also true that if they fall over the industrial strategy will fall with them.
Philosophically, the industrial strategy neither supports enormous state intervention nor is it a hands off document of supply-side reform. It sees the state as an enabling force which can reduce risks to business, catalyse investment, and reconfigure the public sector. The industrial strategy does not tell universities what to do, or even what they might do in great detail, because that is not what it is designed to do. It gives an approach and it is for universities to choose whether and how they follow it.
This suggests a significant period of adaptation for universities. If more investment and political attention is flowing through their places then being involved in their places becomes significantly more important. Fundamentally, the industrial strategy is not an instruction manual but it is a guide to the things that the government will and will not fund.
There are lots of devolved things that universities would generally find unpalatable like top-slicing QR funds to MCAs. There are lots of things that universities could do and are doing to set an example which might one day be backed up by legislation. Organising regional bodies to coordinate the provision of education to meet local labour market needs. Forming joint research programmes and investment vehicles to form one front door for research in their area. Using their own research capacity to interrogate the best forms of devolution and devolved structures. And, perhaps most importantly, being embedded in the important but unglamorous business of transport and spatial planning.
The bigger mental shift is that the industrial strategy has two core centres of control. Its eight priority industries and regions and clusters within them. The challenge for universities, if they want to see sustained government support for their work, is to answer how what they do supports those two agendas. This is not a PR exercise but a careful interrogation of the limits and approaches of universities in their places and within those core industries.
In some places this might mean tweaking existing work, in others it might mean new partners or new projects, and in some it might mean a more fundamental reimagining of the shape of the education sector in a region. Given the perilous state of university finances it is the institutions that look like they have solutions that will do well in the era of uncertainty.
The industrial strategy does not leave universities behind, but it might. The opportunity is for universities to shape the settlement they want through being proactive in shaping their regions. This is not about another civic strategy but about creating the governance apparatus to support economic growth. Anything short of this risks an economic agenda which is done to universities rather than with them.
The number of assessments set by universities is steadily rising, but there are worries this could result in student burnout and prove counteractive if implemented without centering learning.
A recent report by the U.K.-based Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) and Advance HE found that assessments at U.K. institutions have risen to 5.8 summative assignments and 4.1 formative assignments per semester in 2025, compared to five summative assessments and 2.5 formative assessments in 2020.
Josh Freeman, policy manager at Hepi and co-author of the report, said the advent of AI is “reducing the accuracy of assessments as a measure of students’ performance,” prompting universities to re-evaluate their examination methods.
“It’s possible that course organizers are assessing students more to improve the confidence they have in their assessments,” he said.
“It’s also possible that, as they redo assessment models, which may have remained the same for a long time, they are switching to alternative models of assessment—for example, those that assess students on an ongoing basis, rather than simply once at the end of the year.”
However, rising numbers of exams risks universities “overassessing” students, he added, as “students now face an intense battle over their time,” noting that the number of hours that students spend studying has fallen.
“[Many are making] sacrifices around social activities, sports and societies. These ‘extra’ activities are the first to go when students are squeezed and would probably be cut further if the academic elements of university become more demanding.”
Some 68 percent of students in the U.K. are now undertaking part-time work during term time, a record high, largely in response to cost-of-living pressures.
Michael Draper, a professor in legal education at Swansea University and chair of the university’s academic regulations and student cases board, said that some universities have begun supplementing assessments with “some form of in-person assessment” to counteract AI “credibility concerns.” But “that of course does lead to perhaps overassessment or more assessments than were in place before.”
“Students have got so many competing claims on their time, not just in relation to work, but care responsibilities and work responsibilities, that you run the risk of student burnout,” he continued.
“That is not a position you actually want to be in. You want to make sure that students have got a fair opportunity to work consistently and get the best grade possible. You want students to have a chance to reflect upon their feedback and then to demonstrate that in other assessments, but if they’re being continuously assessed, it’s very difficult to have that reflection time.”
However, Thomas Lancaster, principal teaching fellow in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, speculated that a rise in the number of exams could be a sign that assessments are being “split into smaller stages,” with more continuous feedback throughout the process, which could also simultaneously have benefits for counteracting AI use.
“This is something I’ve long recommended in response to contract cheating, where it’s good practice to see the process, not just the final product. So I do hope that the revised assessment schedules are being put in place to benefit the students, rather than purely as a response to AI.”
While breaking assessments down could prove beneficial to student learning, Drew Whitworth, reader at the Manchester Institute of Education, questioned, “How does one count what constitutes ‘separate’ assessments?”
“If a grade is given partway through this process … this is actually quite helpful for students, answering the question ‘How am I doing?’ and giving them a pragmatic reason to show [their work and that they are working] in the first place.
“But does this count as a separate assessment or just part of a dialogue taking place that helps students develop better work in response to a single assessment?”
The publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in early June 2025 emphasised a whole-of-society approach to defence and recognised the importance of societal engagement and resilience-building.
But there was also an element of missed opportunity – the review should also have been a moment to highlight the role of the network of 19 regional military education committees (MECs) which exist to foster good relations between universities and the armed forces, and their associated university service units (USUs).
Although universities were prominently featured in the SDR, the focus was narrowly confined to their ability to serve as a talent pipeline and to provide technology to support “warfighting” and “lethality”.
What’s missing is a more engaged understanding of the broader value universities provide for defence, particularly the role of MECs in fostering this relationship, building on Haldane’s earlier vision of a civic university with strong links to the armed forces.
We see a need to outline a broad vision for MECs that builds on the SDR but also looks beyond it, offering a future-focused perspective for leaders in the armed forces and academia.
Universities play a crucial – though often overlooked – role at the interface of civil-military relations. Our graduates are the officers of the future, and with seven per cent of UK households including a veteran, and over 180,000 currently serving, many of our students’ university experiences are inherently shaped by military life, whether as part of service families or as future personnel.
Established as part of the Haldane Reforms of the armed forces in 1908, MECs were initially created to ensure that officer cadets received a balanced education, combining academic study with military training.
Today, MECs are a vital bridge between two distinct worlds: academia and the military. They offer a unique forum where these cultures meet, enabling universities to better understand the particular pressures facing students in university service units and students from service families, while helping the military appreciate the academic environment through the eyes of those teaching their officer cadets.
MECs support students serving in university service units by helping them navigate the dual demands of academic study and armed forces activities. These officer cadets face unique pressures and challenges, but also gain valuable opportunities for skills development, leadership training, and even paid experiences through social and sporting activities including overseas trips and training deployments. For those interested in an armed forces career, scholarships are available which provide a crucial route to higher education, often for those who would otherwise find it financially prohibitive.
A recent commentary from the Royal United Services Institute underscores the importance of these activities, particularly the role of the University Officer Training Corps (UOTCs) in the British Army’s officer training pipeline. The authors warn against proposals to centralise all training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which they argue would undermine the historical and practical value of UOTCs as springboards for leadership and national resilience. They argue that UOTCs are vital for building the skills and networks needed for future mobilisations and for sustaining the Army Reserve’s capacity.
This vital role underscores how the meeting of minds facilitated by MECs is more than just symbolic. In practical terms, MECs bring together universities and university service units for events ranging from Remembrance Sunday commemorations, to officer cadet-led debates on topical issues, to high-profile guest lectures, like Newcastle’s annual defence lecture.
It has also helped bridge defence and the lecture hall. For example, through the Hacking 4 MoD module, facilitated by the Common Mission Project, where students tackle real-world challenges set by the Ministry of Defence. To date, this is run in over 20 universities across the UK, and is often led by MEC members, whose insights into defence make it easier for academics with no military background to teach and engage confidently in this space to better support students.
The relationship between academic and the military is not without its critics. Some argue that engagement with the armed forces risks the militarisation of academic spaces, threatening academic freedom and raising ethical concerns.
Yet universities have never been entirely “de-militarised” spaces. The concept of the “military-university nexus” is useful here in that it challenges any simplistic binary between civilian and military spheres, requiring us to consider each relationship on its own merits.
MECs provide essential civilian oversight of USUs, establishing lines of communication that build trust and mutual understanding. As autonomous institutions, universities thrive on debate and competing viewpoints – this pluralism is vital if they are to remain places of innovation and critical thought.
Looking to the future, MECs face the challenge of adapting to a rapidly changing educational and geopolitical landscape – one in which the UK will increasingly rely on societal resilience, whether to counter misinformation or respond to threats against NATO allies. Universities therefore have a crucial role in national security, not as talent pipelines alone, but as civic institutions producing future leaders, both civilian and military.
The national security landscape outlined in the SDR echoes Haldane’s idea of a “nation in arms”, fostering closer ties between the army and society to mobilise civilian resources during wartime.
The risk of the SDR, however, is that it frames universities too narrowly, as talent pipelines supporting STEM innovation in service of “lethality”, rather than recognising the wider civic contribution they make. In a democracy, we expect the armed forces to reflect the society they serve, in both composition and leadership values. Tomorrow’s officers are shaped in part by their university experiences – ignoring this reality is a missed opportunity.
Moreover, the emphasis in the SDR on AI, cyber warfare, and space defence requires a re-evaluation of MECs and their engagement with USUs. This sits alongside a broader shift from civic universities to a more regionally-engaged model – globally connected but rooted in local innovation and committed to addressing societal challenges. Universities and their respective MECs will need to foster adaptability and technological literacy, preparing students and staff for non-conventional challenges, whether in warfare or not.
Taking a whole society approach to defence, MECs will need to redouble their efforts to champion inclusivity and diversity, fostering lesson-sharing between universities and USUs.
The armed forces struggle to be representative of the society they serve – with a level of ambition set for 30 per cent intake of women by 2030 (currently at 11.6%) and only incremental improvement in ethnic minority representation (currently 15.3 per cent).
Many USUs in contract already achieve or approach gender balance, though challenges remain in recruiting ethnic minority cadets, and translating the gender balance into those who chose to go through the full officer selection process. That said, MECs need to focus efforts to ensure the offer from USUs is inclusive, addressing barriers to participation and creating welcoming environments for all. At the Northumbrian Universities Military Education Committee, for example, we have a standing agenda item for USUs to report on the status of women within their units. This has led to several collaborations between university colleagues and their military counterparts to tackle the issue head-on.
The civic role of universities in supporting societal resilience – essential for an effective defence, through fostering informed debate, critical thinking, and understanding – is too important to lose. MECs remain central to this mission, ensuring that universities continue to be spaces of pluralism and partnership, bridging military and academic worlds for the benefit of both.
As universities reimagine their civic role, it is crucial that engagement with the armed forces remains anchored in inclusivity and democratic values, rather than reduced to recruitment pipelines or simply extracting STEM expertise in service of “lethality”. MECs have a key role in this, bringing together academic and military leaders to create spaces for reimagining civil-military partnerships – championing diversity, civic leadership, and mutual understanding in all areas of their work.
We are a collaboration between UK research-focused universities with a common purpose – to advance economic growth, prosperity, and societal wellbeing for the benefit of the places where we are located and for the wider world. Our aim in collaborating is to achieve this through excellence in research and innovation, pursued in conjunction with excellence in research-informed education and advanced skills development.
ResearchPlus is a new collaboration bringing together long-established and highly regarded research-focused universities that constitute a critical element of the broad foundation upon which the UK’s globally leading research and innovation system is built. Each of us has outstanding research teams and specialist areas that are recognised as being amongst the very best in the world, attracting global talent in staff and students, and we are essential to the success of the industrial and business ecosystems, public services, and community and cultural life in the places where we operate.
ResearchPlus universities provide a wide range of the most important UK research capabilities, as well as a number of distinctive specialisms. There are many areas in which, to drive ongoing economic, social, and technological development and to secure national interests, the UK must maintain and grow the research capacity, the related specialist education, and the advanced skills development that we provide. Most ResearchPlus universities have our foundations in successive initiatives by government and industry to invest in economic growth, through the advancement of technology and public services, and the expansion of educational opportunity and social mobility. We remain true to those missions, and we are key partners for government, businesses, and communities in re-imagining the contribution of universities to the public good as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century. We will play a vital role in delivering the ambitions of the Industrial Strategy across all eight high-growth sectors.
The UK has achieved its world-leading position in research and innovation because it has a diverse higher education system, but it needs to hear the voices of all parts of that sector if it is to maintain that position. Over the past 30 years, the sector has organised itself around representative groups with distinct missions focused on advancing specific agendas and interests. By articulating policy positions, and through their organised interventions, these groups have engaged government and have enabled understanding of their various strengths amongst a range of stakeholders, including government departments, industry research partners, inward investors, students, and others. Higher education in the UK is stronger as a consequence.
However, there is no collective voice or visibility for the research-focused universities outside the Russell Group. We see this as a problematic gap and a weakness in the system. Our collaboration seeks to address this in a complementary way that will enable us to work better with each other and with existing groups across the national research and innovation system. Several universities in our collaboration are categorised as ‘large, highly research intensive and broad-discipline universities’ by Research England, and demonstrate high levels of excellence in research, knowledge exchange, and research-informed and inclusive education. Others are more specialised, delivering excellent research in particular subject areas, or are oriented to technological research and innovation, in combination with research-informed skills education.
In bringing many of the universities of this type together, we have huge potential to deliver the UK’s research, innovation, and advanced skills agenda. We have substantial strength in these areas, and we possess both great agility and capacity for growth: we are ready and able to do much more to serve the public good. We attract a substantial proportion of public funding for research and innovation and span the UK’s cities and regions. Together we offer research that is competitive nationally and globally, that is recognised across the full breadth of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, and much more. We provide excellent research, education, and knowledge exchange to many areas beyond the major cities across the country.
In addition to the research we conduct, we are making distinctive contributions to:
It is for this reason that we are calling our collaborative partnership ResearchPlus.
ResearchPlus will contribute to the flourishing of our communities and their people through our comprehensive collective higher education and research capabilities. By working together, we will further enhance the national research, innovation, and higher education system. We believe that collaboration and proactive engagement across our universities can drive the change and strategic coordination that is so urgently needed in the higher education system, as well as in the wider world, and we intend both to support each other and our distinctive contributions, and to be a positive voice for the whole sector and for the public good.
We are establishing ResearchPlus as a national university collaborative committed to strengthening the UK higher education sector and working together, as a partner for government, to drive UK growth, prosperity, and societal wellbeing through excellence in research, innovation, and engagement, and in research-informed education and advanced skills development.
The ResearchPlus collaborative will enable research-focused universities that are currently under-represented in the national conversation to marshal enhanced visibility and a coherent augmented voice with government and the wider public, including the media, schools, colleges, prospective students, industry, and third sector partners. The establishment of ResearchPlus will provide a collective source of information, advocacy and expertise which will aim to strengthen the whole UK higher education and research and innovation system, and public and governmental interaction with it.
ResearchPlus will be formally launched at a parliamentary event in October.
Welcoming the formation of ResearchPlus, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP, said:
‘The UK is home to some of the best universities in the world, making ResearchPlus an exciting opportunity to bring that top talent together to solve challenges and unlock new innovations that improve lives across our country.
‘By strengthening collaboration between universities, industry and government we can break down barriers to opportunity and work together to drive the economic growth that is central to the Government’s Plan for Change.‘