Tag: Wonkhe

  • Higher education postcard: Ashridge | Wonkhe

    Higher education postcard: Ashridge | Wonkhe

    We looked a few weeks ago at Philip Stott College; this week we’ll go to the Bonar Law Memorial College, its rival and successor, and see what happened there.

    Earlier in my career, when I worked at what is now City St George’s, I was obliged to visit Ashridge in my official capacity. A magnificent stone building, with wonderful medieval fireplaces and mullioned windows; the childhood home of Elizabeth I, rich in history.

    Except, of course, that Ashridge House was built in the early nineteenth century. All of that history took place at Ashridge Priory, which stood on the same site but was demolished in 1803. And Ashridge House is now grade I listed, with its grounds grade 2 listed. It’s a fake, but it’s a glorious fake.

    It was built under the auspices of John Egerton, 7th Earl of Bridgewater. He was a descendent of Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and Lord Chancellor of Elizabeth I and James VI and I, and also of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater and a canal magnate. And when complete it eventually passed into the Brownlow family, who in 1921 sold the house and the grounds to the National Trust.

    It was bought by Urban H Broughton. Broughton was a civil engineer, who in 1884 went to the USA to promote a hydro-pneumatic sewerage system. He clearly did well there, promoting the system at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago, and in 1895 being hired by oil tycoon Henry Rogers to instal the system in his home community. And there he met Cara Leland Duff, Rogers’ widowed daughter. Sparks flew; they married. And, years later, he returned to Britain with his family, a rich man. He became a personage in society, a Conservative MP, and he was just about to be ennobled when he died.

    Before he did this, however, he gave Ashridge House to the Conservative Party to be used as a staff college.

    And so the Bonar Law Memorial College was born. Its original trustees were a roll-call of the Conservative party’s great and good: Stanley Baldwin MP, John Colin Campbell Davidson MP, Baron Fairhaven, John William Beaumont Pease, Viscount Hailsham, Neville Chamberlain MP, Viscount Astor, Col. John Buchan (he of The Thirty-Nine Steps), Viscountess Bridgeman, and Lady Greenwood, amongst others. The Leader and Chaiman [sic] of the Conservative and Unionist Party were trustees ex officio. It was named for Andrew Bonar Law, Prime Minister from 1922 to 1923.

    The Bonar Law Memorial College opened in 1929; it became known as a college of citizenship. During WW2 it was used as a field hospital. And it seems that its time as a Conservative college was not without tensions between the Conservative party and the college. Which is probably inevitable: the periodicity of vicissitudes in politics is, I claim, shorter than the periodicity of change in ideas and curricula.

    By 1954 the political nature of the college was coming to an end. By an Act of Parliament – the Ashridge (Bonar Law Memorial) Trust Act 1954 – the college became non-partisan, and known as the Ashridge Management College. It seems that the charitable aims were focused on the UK and the Commonwealth, meaning that the Ashridge (Bonar Law Memorial) Trust Act 1983 was necessary to enable the college to recruit students from countries outside the Commonwealth.

    In the 1990s Ashridge was validated by City University – which was how I got to go there – but then gained its own degree awarding powers. And rightly so. In 2015 it became part of Hult International Business School and now hosts executive education.

    The card is undated and unposted but judging by the cars parks out front I would guess stems from the 1950s, after it had become Ashridge. Here’s a jigsaw of the card – it’s a really tricky one this week!

    Source link

  • Podcast: Labour Conference 2025 | Wonkhe

    Podcast: Labour Conference 2025 | Wonkhe

    This week on the podcast, as the dust settles on Labour conference in Liverpool, we unpack what Keir Starmer’s new higher education participation target really means – and whether universities have the capacity and funding to meet the moment.

    We also get into the surprise return of targeted maintenance grants – funded controversially by the levy on international student fees, and we reflect on the wider political atmosphere at the conference – from policy signals to sector perceptions, and what all this might tell us about Labour’s emerging offer and forthcoming White Paper.

    With Gary Hughes, Chief Executive at Durham Students’ Union, Eve Alcock, Director of Public Affairs at QAA, Michael Salmon, News Editor at Wonkhe and hosted by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.

    The PM’s announcement on higher level participation is a win for the HE sector

    The fifty per cent participation target is no more. Again.

    Grants return, the levy stays

    Maybe the levy just moves money to where it’s needed most

    The Augar review is back, baby. Just don’t about talk yourself

    Students are being othered again – and everyone loses out

    Have universities got the capacity and cash to respond to the government’s agenda?

    How much should the new maintenance grant be?

    Universities should be central to rebuilding communities

    Students are working harder than ever – because they have to

    I have a lot of questions about the LLE

    Who’s ready for a debate at 930am on a Sunday?

    The education policy trap: will the Augar review avoid the mistakes of the past?

    You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music, Deezer, RadioPublic, Podchaser, Castbox, Player FM, Stitcher, TuneIn, Luminary or via your favourite app with the RSS feed.

    Source link

  • The Wonkhe HE staff survey – how good is work in higher education?

    The Wonkhe HE staff survey – how good is work in higher education?

    As financial pressures continue to bear down on higher education institutions across the UK, there is a visible impact on higher education staff, as resources shrink, portfolios are rationalised, and redundancy programmes are implemented. These are definitively tough times for the sector and its people.

    One way this plays out is in the industrial relations landscape, with unions balloting for industrial action, as well as, on some specific issues, advancing joint work with employers.

    But there is a wider, arguably more nuanced, lens to bring to bear, about how the current circumstances are reshaping staff experiences of working in higher education, and what options are available to those with responsibility for leading and supporting higher education staff.

    When the Wonkhe team came up with the idea of running a national survey for higher education staff we knew from the outset that we would not be able to produce definitive statements about “the HE staff experience” derived from a representative sample of responses. There is no consensus over how you would define such a sample in any case.

    The best national dataset that exists is probably found in UCEA publications that combine institutional staff experience survey datasets at scale – one published in 2024 titled “What’s it really like to work in HE?” and one in May this year diving into some of the reported differences between academic and professional staff, “A tale of two perspectives: bridging the gap in HE EX.”

    Instead we wanted to, firstly, ask some of the questions that might not get asked in institutional staff surveys – things like, how staff feel about their institution’s capacity to handle change, or the relative importance of different potential motivating factors for working in HE, or, baldly, how institutional cost-cutting is affecting individuals. And secondly, as best we can, to draw out some insight that’s focused on supporting constructive conversations within institutions about sustaining the higher education community during challenging times.

    We’ll be reporting on three key areas:

    1. “Quality of work” – discussed further below
    2. Professional motivations, the relative importance of different motivators for our sample group, and the gap between the level of importance afforded key motivators and the extent to which respondents believe they actually get to experience these in their roles – DK has tackled that subject and you can read about his findings here
    3. Views on institutional change capability – coming soon!

    We’ve not covered absolutely everything in this tranche of reporting – partly because of time pressures, and partly because of format constraints. We have a fair bit of qualitative data to dive into, as well as the third area of investigation on institutional change capability all still to come – watch this space.

    The methodology and demographics bit

    We promoted the survey via our mailing list (around 60,000 subscribers) during July and August 2025, yielding a total of 4,757 responses. We asked a whole range of questions that we hoped could help us make meaningful comparisons within our sample – including on things like nationality, and type and location of institutions – but only some of those questions netted enough positive responses to allow us to compare two or more good-sized groups.

    Our working assumption is that if there was a group of around 500 or more who share a particular characteristic it is reasonable to compare their responses to the group of respondents who did not have that particular characteristic. We have conducted analysis of the following subgroups:

    • Career stage: Early career (n=686), mid career (n=1,304), and late career (n=2,703)
    • Those with an academic contract (n=1,110) and those with a non-academic contract (n=3,394) – excluding some other kinds of roles/contracts
    • Time in higher education: five years or fewer (n=908); 6-10 years (n=981); 11-20 years (n=1,517) and more than 20 years (n=1,333)
    • Working arrangements: on-site (n=988); working from home or remotely (n=475); and flexible/hybrid (n=3,268)
    • Leadership role: respondents who said they have formal management or leadership responsibility in their current role for projects, programmes, resources, or people (n=3,506), and those who did not (n=1,214)

    And we also looked at the following identity characteristics:

    • Gender: men (n=1,386) and women (n=3,271)
    • Sexuality: those who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer (n=654) and those who did not (n=4,093)
    • Ethnicity: those who identified as being of a minoritised ethnicity (n=247) and those who did not (n=4,444)
    • Disability: those who identified as being disabled (n=478) and those who did not (n=4,269)

    In one case – that of respondents who identified as being of a minoritised ethnicity – our sample didn’t meet the threshold for wholly robust analysis, but we found some differences in reported experience, which we think is worth reporting given what we already know about this group of staff, and would caution that these findings should be viewed as indicative rather than definitive.

    In some cases we have combined subgroups to make larger groups – for example we’ve grouped various academic roles together to compare with roles on other kinds of contracts. In others we’ve ignored some very small (usually n=3 and below) groups to make for a more readable chart; for this reason we don’t often show all responses. And although our response rates are high you don’t have to refine things much to get some pretty low numbers, so we’ve not looked at intersections between groups.

    We have reported where we found what we considered to be a meaningful difference in response – a minimum of four percentage points difference.

    The financial context

    88 per cent of respondents said their institution has taken material steps to reduce costs in the last 12 months, offering a background context for answers to the wider survey and the assurance that the thing we are looking at is definitely staff views against a backdrop of change.

    51.6 per cent said they personally had been negatively affected by cost reduction measures, while 41.9 per cent said the personal impact was neutral. This suggests that while cost reduction may be widely viewed as negative, that experience or the views that arise from it may not be universal.

    Of those that said they had been negatively affected we found no meaningful differences among our various comparator groups. Leaders and those later in their career, were as likely to report negative impacts as those without leadership responsibilities or earlier in their career, suggesting that there is little mileage in making assumptions about who is more likely to be negatively impacted – though of course we did not try to measure the scale of the impact, and we’re mindful we were talking to people who had not lost their jobs as a result of cost-saving measures.

    The one exception was between those on academic contracts, of whom nearly two third (65.3 per cent) reported negative impacts, and those on non-academic contracts, of whom the number reporting negative impact was closer to half (47.4 per cent). This difference gives important context for the wider findings, in which those on academic contracts are consistently more likely to offer a negative perspective than those on non-academic contracts across a range of questions. This tallies to some degree with the national picture explored in UCEA’s “Bridging the gap” report in which academics were more likely to report challenges with workload, work-life balance, and reward and recognition, than professional staff – though higher levels of work satisfaction.

    Regretting and recommending HE

    We asked whether, taking into account what is known about other available career paths, whether respondents feel that choosing to work in HE was the right decision for them – two thirds said yes (66.9 per cent) while 23.8 per cent were unsure. Only 9 per cent said no.

    Those approaching the end of their career were more likely to agree (74.3 per cent) compared to those mid-career (65 per cent) or early career (61.2 per cent). Those with leadership responsibilities were also slightly more likely to agree, at 68.2 per cent, compared to 62.3 per cent for those without leadership responsibilities.

    Those on academic contracts were slightly less likely to agree, at 60.8 per cent compared to 68.9 per cent for those on non-academic contracts.

    However, the real divide opens up when we looked at responses to our follow up question: whether respondents would recommend a career in higher education to someone they cared about who was seeking their advice. A much smaller proportion of our sample agreed they would recommend a career in HE (42.2 per cent), with much higher rates of “unsure” (32.1 per cent) and “no” (24.5 per cent) – most likely reflecting the impact of current challenges as compared to people’s longer-term lived experience.

    For the recommend question, the career-stage trend reverses, with those approaching the end of their careers less likely to say they would recommend a career in HE (39.2 per cent) compared to 41.6 per cent for those mid-career and 50.4 per cent for early career respondents.

    There was a substantial difference by role: only 25.7 per cent of those on academic contracts would recommend a career in HE, compared to 46.9 per cent of those on non-academic contracts.

    We did not find any differences by gender, ethnicity, disability, or sexuality on either confidence in the decision to work in HE or willingness to recommend it as a career.

    Quality of work

    One of the great things about higher education as an employment sector is that there are lots of ways to be employed in it and lots of different types of jobs. What one person values about their role might be quite different from what another person appreciates – and the same for the perceived downsides of any given role.

    So rather than trying to drill down into people’s reported experiences based on our own probably biased views about what “good work” looks and feels like, we turned to the idea of “quality of work” as a guiding framework to look at respondents’ experiences and perceptions. We asked 16 questions in total derived from this 2018 Carnegie UK-RSA initiative on measuring job quality in the UK which proposes seven distinct dimensions of work quality, including pay and conditions, safety and wellbeing, job design, social support, voice, and work-life balance.

    We also kept in mind that, while support, safety and wellbeing at work are foundational conditions for success, so is effective performance management and the opportunity to apply your skills. In the spirit of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we clustered our questions broadly into four areas: safety, security, and pay/conditions; the balance between support and challenge; relationships with colleagues; and “self-actualisation” incorporating things like autonomy and meaningfulness.

    For each question, respondents were offered a choice of Strongly disagree, Disagree, Agree, and Strongly agree. Here we report overall levels of agreement (ie Agree and Strongly Agree)

    You can see the full findings for all our comparator groups in the visualisation below.

    [Full screen]

    Headlines on quality of work and interaction with willingness to recommend

    You can see all the workings out below where I’ve gone through the results line by line and reported all the variations we could see, but the TL;DR version is that the quality dimensions that jump out as being experienced comparatively positively are physical safety, good working relationships with colleagues, and meaningfulness of work. Two key areas that emerge as being experienced comparatively negatively are feeling the organisation takes your wellbeing seriously, and opportunities for progression – the level of agreement is startlingly low for the latter.

    We compared the various quality dimensions against whether people would recommend a career in higher education for the whole sample and found that across every question there was a direct correlation between a positive response and likelihood to recommend a career in HE – and the inverse for negative responses. We think that means we’re asking meaningful questions – though we’ve not been able to build a regression model to test which quality questions are making the largest contribution to the recommend question (which makes us sad).

    [Full screen]

    Going through the various comparator groups for the quality of work questions we find that there are three core “at risk” groups – one of which is respondents of a minorised ethnicity, which comes with caveats regarding sample size. Another is those on academic contracts, and the third is disabled respondents. These groups did not consistently respond more negatively to every question on quality of work, but we did find enough differentiation to make it worth raising a flag.

    So to try to see whether we could find some core drivers for these “at risk” groups, we plotted the response to the “recommend” question against the responses to the quality questions just for these groups. At this point the samples for disabled and minoritised ethnic responses become just too small to draw conclusions – for example, under 100 respondents who identified as being of a minoritised ethnicity said they would not recommend a career in HE.

    However, over 400 of those on academic contracts said they would not recommend a career in HE, so we compared the answers of that group to those of respondents on non-academic contracts who also would not recommend a career in HE (just shy of 700 respondents). Interestingly for a number of the quality questions there was no differentiation in response between the groups, but there was noticeable difference for “reasonable level of control over work-life balance”, “able to access support with my work when I need it”, and “opportunities to share my opinion” – in the sense that among the group that would not recommend HE the academic cohort were more likely to give negative responses to these questions, giving a modest indication of possible priority areas for intervention.

    We also found that those who had worked in higher education for five years or fewer were frequently more likely to report agreement with our various propositions about quality work. While there’s clearly some overlap with those early in their career they are not entirely the same group – some may have entered HE from other sectors or industries – though early career respondents do also seem to emerge as having a slightly more positive view as well, including on areas like emotional safety, and wellbeing.

    Safety, security and pay and conditions

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • I feel reasonably secure in my job
    • I am satisfied with the pay and any additional benefits I receive
    • I feel physically safe at work
    • I feel emotionally safe at work

    On job security, overall two thirds (66.3 per cent) of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that they feel reasonably secure in their job. Those on academic contracts reported lower levels of agreement (57.8 per cent). Those who said they had been employed in higher education for five years or fewer reported higher levels of agreement (71.4 per cent). Respondents who identified as disabled reported slightly lower levels of agreement (61.9 per cent).

    On satisfaction with pay, conditions and additional benefits, overall 63.8 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied. Those on academic contracts reported lower levels of agreement (56.3 per cent). Those who identified as having a minoritised ethnicity had the lowest levels of agreement of all our various comparators (53.1 per cent), and were twice as likely to strongly disagree that they were satisfied with pay and benefits than those from non-minoritised ethnicities (15.2 per cent compared to 7.9 per cent). Those who identified as disabled had lower levels of agreement (54.6 per cent agreement) compared to those who did not consider themselves disabled (64.9 per cent agreement)

    On physical safety, the vast majority of respondents (95.8 per cent) agreed or strongly agreed they feel physically safe at work with very little variation across our comparator groups. While the overall agreement was similar between men and women, notably men were more likely to register strong agreement (66.3 per cent) than women (51.9 per cent).

    On emotional safety the picture is more varied. Overall 72 per cent agreed or strongly agreed they feel emotionally safe at work. Those who reported being earlier in their career reported higher levels of agreement (78.6 per cent), as did those who reported having worked in the HE sector for five years or fewer (78.6 per cent). Those with academic contracts reported lower levels of agreement (61.62). Those who identified as having a minoritised ethnicity had lower levels of agreement (62.7 per cent) and were more than twice as likely to strongly disagree they feel emotionally safe at work than those who are not minoritised (14.2 per cent compared to 6.1 per cent).

    Balance, challenge, and performance

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • The work I do makes appropriate use of my skills and knowledge
    • I have a reasonable level of control over my work-life balance
    • My organisation demonstrates that it takes my wellbeing seriously
    • My organisation demonstrates that it takes my performance seriously

    On using skills and knowledge 79.2 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that their work makes appropriate use of their skills and knowledge. There was very little variation between comparator groups – the one group that showed a modest difference was those who reported being disabled, whose agreement levels were slightly lower at 75.3 per cent.

    On control over work-life balance, 80.7 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they have a “reasonable” level of control. Those who had worked in higher education for five years or fewer were more likely to agree (87.2 per cent). 86.5 per cent of those who work from home agreed, compared to 74.4 per cent of those who work on campus or onsite, and 81.7 per cent of those who have hybrid or flexible working arrangements. Those who reported having leadership responsibilities had lower levels of agreement (78.9 per cent) compared to those who did not (85.9 per cent).

    The biggest difference was between those on academic contracts (66 per cent agreement) and those on non-academic contracts (85.3 per cent agreement). There were also slightly lower scores for disabled respondents (74.7 per cent compared to 81.2 per cent for non-disabled respondents) and for minoritised ethnicities (76.6 per cent compared to 81 per cent for non-minoritised ethnicities).

    On wellbeing, 57.8 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that their organisation demonstrates that it takes their wellbeing seriously. This was higher for early-career respondents – 60 per cent agreement compared to 57.9 per cent for those in mid-career, and 55.5 per cent for those approaching the end of their career. Agreement was higher for those with five years or fewer in higher education at 68.4 per cent agreement, compared with 54.5 per cent for those with more than 20 years’ experience.

    Those on academic contracts were substantially less likely to agree with only 39.7 per cent agreement that their organisation demonstrates that it takes their wellbeing seriously. Disabled respondents were also much less likely to agree than non-disabled respondents, at 47.7 per cent and 59 per cent respectively. Those working from home reported slightly lower levels of agreement, at 52.6 per cent.

    On performance, 63.1 per cent of our sample reported that their organisation demonstrates that it takes their performance seriously. This was slightly higher for those who had five years or fewer in higher education, at 69.6 per cent. Again, there was a difference between those on academic contracts with 57.8 per cent agreement and those on non-academic contracts, with 64 per cent agreement. Disabled respondents were slightly less likely to agree (58 per cent agreement) than non-disabled (63.8 per cent agreement).

    Relationships with colleagues

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • I am able to access support with my work when I need it
    • I am given sufficient opportunities to share my opinion on matters that affect my work
    • For the most part I have a good working relationship with my colleagues
    • I generally trust that the people who work here are doing the right things

    On accessing support, 76.2 per cent of our sample agreed they are able to access support when they need it. There was higher agreement among those early in their career at 81.3 per cent, and similarly among those who had worked five years or fewer in HE, at 82.8 per cent. There was lower agreement among those on academic contracts: 62.3 per cent agreement versus 80.5 per cent for those on non-academic contracts. Those from a minoritised ethnicity had lower agreement at 70.6 per cent, as did disabled respondents at 67.4 per cent.

    On opportunities to share opinion, 70.4 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they were given sufficient opportunities to share their opinion on matters that affect their work. There was a small difference between those who held a leadership role and those who did not, at 71.9 per cent and 66 per cent agreement respectively. Again, those on academic contracts had lower levels of agreement, at 58.2 per cent compared to 73.9 per cent for those on non-academic contracts. Disabled staff also had lower agreement at 60.9 per cent.

    On working relationships, cheeringly, 96.1 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they have good working relationships with their colleagues. While this held true overall across all our comparator groups regardless of leadership roles, working location, personal characteristics or any other factor, notably those of a minoritised ethnicity strongly agreed at a lower rate than those who did not identity as being from a minoritised ethnicity (39.6 per cent strong agreement compared to 48.3 per cent).

    On trust, 70.8 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that they generally trust the people they work with are doing the right things. This was very slightly lower among those who work from home or remotely, at 65.9 per cent. Agreement was lower among those on an academic contract, at 61.6 per cent, compared to 73.4 per cent of those on a non-academic contract. Agreement was also lower among disabled respondents, at 63.8 per cent.

    “Self-actualisation”

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • My current job fits with my future career plans and aspirations
    • I am comfortable with the level of autonomy I have in my job
    • There are sufficient opportunities for progression from this job
    • The work I do in my job is meaningful

    On career plans, 76.1 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that their current job fits with their future career plans and aspirations. Those who said they work from home or remotely had slightly lower levels of agreement at 69.3 per cent. Those who said they do not have any kind of leadership role had slightly lower levels of agreement at 69.4 per cent.

    On autonomy, 82.5 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they were comfortable with the level of autonomy they have in their job. Those with an academic contract had very slightly lower levels of agreement at 77.9, compared to 83.8 per cent agreement among those on non-academic contracts. Those of a minoritised ethnicity had lower levels of agreement at 73.9 per cent, as did disabled respondents, at 75.9 per cent agreement.

    On progression, a startling 29.5 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that there are sufficient opportunities for progression from their current position. There was a modest difference between those with leadership roles, 31.1 per cent of whom agreed, compared to 25 per cent of those without a leadership role. Those on academic contracts had higher levels of agreement at 38.5 per cent, compared to 26.8 per cent of those on non-academic contracts.

    On meaningful work, 86.1 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that the work they do in their job is meaningful. Those who work from home or remotely had very slightly lower levels of agreement at 77.9 per cent but otherwise this held true across all our comparator groups.

    Aspiration to lead and preparedness to lead

    We asked about whether respondents aspire to take on or further develop a leadership role in higher education, and if so, whether they are confident they know what a path to leadership in higher education involves in terms of support and professional development. These questions are particularly relevant given the generally negative view about opportunities to progress held by our survey respondents.

    [Full screen]

    Overall, 44.5 per cent of our sample said they aspire to take on or further develop a leadership role. Curiously, this was only slightly higher for those who already have some level of leadership responsibility, at 48.3 per cent. This can be explained to some degree by differentiation by career stage: 58.8 per cent of early career respondents aspired to take on or develop leadership roles, as did 50.9 per cent of mid-career respondents.

    Aspiration to lead was higher among those identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual at 52.6 per cent compared to 43.2 per cent for those who did not. Aspirations were also higher among respondents of a minoritised ethnicity, at 54.5 per cent, compared to 43.8 per cent among those not of a minoritised ethnicity.

    We also asked respondents whether they are confident they know what a path to leadership involves in terms of support and professional development, where we found some important variations. Confidence about pathways to leadership was lower among early career respondents, at 22.8 per cent agreement, and even mid-career respondents confidence was lower than the numbers reporting they aspire to leadership, at 36.6 per cent.

    While there was no difference in aspiration between respondents on academic contracts and those on non-academic contracts, those on academic contracts were more likely to say they are confident they know what a path to leadership involves, at 50.3 per cent compared to 34.8 per cent.

    While there was no difference in aspiration between men and women respondents, women were slightly less likely than men to report confidence in knowing about the path to leadership, at 37.5 per cent compared to 42 per cent. Those who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, those of a minoritised ethnicity, and disabled respondents were also slightly less likely than their comparator groups to express confidence, despite having expressed aspiration to lead at a higher rate.

    These findings around demographic difference suggest that there remains some work to be done to make leadership pathways visible and inclusive to all.

    We’ll be picking up the conversation about sustaining higher education community during tough times at The Festival of Higher Education in November. It’s not too late to get your ticket – find out more here.

    Source link

  • KEF deserves a boost | Wonkhe

    KEF deserves a boost | Wonkhe

    The Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) is excellent in all kinds of ways.

    It eschews the competitiveness of league tables. It provides a multi-faceted look at everything that is going on in the world of knowledge exchange. And it is nuanced in comparing similar kinds of institutions.

    KEF is not overly bureaucratic and it is helpful for universities in understanding where they might improve their knowledge exchange work.

    It is a shame then that the release of the KEF dashboard is not as big a day for the sector as something like REF or even TEF.

    Keep on KEFing on

    The KEF is the friend that would help you move house even if it isn’t the first one you would call for a gossip. It is nice, it is helpful, it is realistic on what is and isn’t working. In the very kindest way possible it is straightforward.

    The problem is that the nuance of the KEF doesn’t make for sensational coverage. There isn’t an up and down narrative, there aren’t really winners and losers, and of course there is no funding attached. It is a mirror to the world of knowledge exchange that simply shows what is going on.

    And if you dig deep enough the stories are good. Queen Mary University of London is doing a superb job at IP and commercialisation as well as public and community engagement all the while generating £760m of GVA. Birmingham Newman University is playing a significant role in local growth and regeneration through partnerships, placements, collaborations and consultancy. While the University of Plymouth has one of the most complete radar diagrams with a distinct focus on its maritime work.

    Every single event about how the sector promotes its value discusses the need for universities to have a better story about their places, economic impact, and the tangible impact they make on people’s lives. The KEF is a single source of hundreds of such stories, but somehow it is not cutting through.

    Perhaps, one of the reasons is because the consequences of doing badly (whatever badly means in the context of KEF) is very little. It is not the public shaming tool of the TEF, it is not the funding mechanism of REF, and it doesn’t attract very much media attention. It could have been so different. As Jo Johnson, then Science Minister, said at the launch of KEF

    Our ambition is that the new KEF will become an important public indicator of how good a job universities are doing at discharging their third mission, just as the REF rewards excellence in research and the TEF rewards excellence in teaching and student outcomes.

    The KEF does not reward anything, but it could (yes – its constituent parts are linked to HEIF but that isn’t quite the same thing.)

    My favourite gains

    Another model of funding distribution is possible. One of the major concerns about the REF is that it is becoming too complex. REF measures inputs and outputs, it looks at impact but not in the same way as KEF, and there is also the ongoing debate about People, Culture, and Environment, as a measure of research excellence.

    To make the REF more manageable and make the KEF more meaningful perhaps it is time to add funding consequences to KEF and just shift the pressure a little bit. Previously, I have made the argument that one way of doing this would be to rationalise all of the funding mechanisms that bump into KEF:

    As a starting point it would be sensible to rationalise HEIF allocations and KEF measurements. Without getting into the weeds at this stage a joint data set would likely draw from an enhanced HE-BCI survey, Innovate UK income, research income, journal data, and non-credit bearing course data from the Office for Students. The most straightforward way would be either to dispense with HEIF entirely and allocate the whole pot to KEF with a strengthened self-assessment element, like in REF, or use KEF as the sole basis for HEIF allocations. This would avoid both double counting funds and reduce administrative burden.

    Given the government agenda around universities and economic contribution now might be the time to consider going further.

    One measure could be to allocate a proper funding formula to KEF. In keeping with the spirit of KEF each university would still be organised into a cluster, ensuring like for like is being compared, and funding would be allocated on a formula basis depending on their contribution to each of the seven areas. Each area would not have to receive the same level of funding. Instead, the government could vary it from time to time depending on national priorities or alternatively universities could (in advance) make a pitch for their own growth priorities ensuring they devote energy to and are rewarded for where their strengths lie. This would also help with greater specialisation.

    Simultaneously, the government could add in a more dynamic competition element that is tied to funding. For example, given the state of the economy it might make sense to provide greater reward for the institutions contributing to local growth and innovation. This then becomes a whole new kind of funding route with funding to support the things universities are good at and a gentle nudge toward the things government wish them to do.

    Something changed

    The trade-offs, and the arguments, would of course be significant. In a world of fiscal constraint one of the trade-offs would be reducing funding allocated through REF or through grants in order to fund KEF.

    Reducing funding through REF may help to reduce some pressure on it but it isn’t clear that reducing the pot for exploratory research would be a net economic good in the long-term. Reducing grant funding would mean simply trading off one lever to direct research activity for another.

    Simultaneously, adding in funding allocations to KEF would undoubtedly make it into a more high-pressure exercise which would then attract costs as universities looked to maximise their returns. The exercise would need to be carefully managed to, as far as possible, rely on public data and limited returns.

    Nonetheless, it seems to be a wasted opportunity to have an exercise which is primed for measuring engagements between universities and wider society and economy, at precisely the time there seems to be a consensus this is a good idea, but with few levers to enhance this work. The benefit of looking at a funding allocation toward KEF could be a greater spread of providers rewarded for their work, greater focus on growth and social contribution, and greater attention on the work universities do alongside research and teaching.

    The road to a new kind of KEF is long. However, if the debate about REF has taught us anything, it’s that trying to change a single exercise is exceptionally hard. If the current arrangements feel tired, and reform feels piecemeal, perhaps now is the time to look at the whole ecosystem and look at a system which prizes universities third mission as much as their other work.

    Source link

  • Students as curriculum critics | Wonkhe

    Students as curriculum critics | Wonkhe

    When a member of staff claimed their course reading list was “diverse” because it included authors from the UK, North America, and Australia, it captured something problematic in higher education: an entrenched Eurocentric worldview dressed as global perspective.

    Despite growing sector-wide commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion, many UK university curricula remain bounded by the ideas, voices and assumptions of the Global North. This isn’t just an issue of representation. It cuts to the core of what and whose knowledge counts and who the curriculum is for.

    Universities have long functioned as what sociologist Remi Joseph-Salisbury calls “white spaces”; spaces where whiteness is not just numerically dominant, but culturally embedded. When students from minoritised backgrounds find their lived experiences absent from course readings, case studies, or teaching examples, the message is clear: they are not the imagined subject of the curriculum.

    Lost in translation

    This exclusion is rarely intentional. However, its effects are deeply felt. Students must expend emotional labour to navigate, challenge or mentally translate course content that does not reflect their experiences or worldviews. For some, this produces what scholars such as Smith and colleagues in 2014 have termed racial battle fatigue.

    Language plays a significant role here. In many classrooms standard academic English, which is rooted in the speech of white, middle-class Britons, is upheld as the norm. Yet this language can be very different to that adopted by young people. Students who speak dialects such as Multicultural London English (MLE), or whose cultural references differ from the mainstream, are often seen as less articulate or capable. Even institutional communications, usually packed with acronyms like NSS, OfS, PGCert, and so on can create an impenetrable culture that alienates students unfamiliar with higher education’s bureaucratic vernacular.

    Such institutional language is frequently seen in formal assessment briefs and feedback mechanisms, and so existing insecurities and barriers are reinforced. Minoritised students can struggle to link the assessments to their own lived realities and performance is impacted. These are factors that will contribute towards the ethnicity degree awarding gap, at many universities where white students tend to be awarded more top grades at the end of their studies than students from minoritised backgrounds.

    From audit to agency

    To address the ethnicity degree awarding gap, universities are now moving away from peer reviews or external examiner reports for assessments of teaching and learning materials. In their place, models of evaluation have been introduced that empower students to take the lead in assessing the inclusivity of their curriculum. This isn’t a symbolic gesture. Student reviewers can not only be trained in inclusive pedagogy and curriculum theory but bring a wealth of experiences and insights that add considerable value to curriculum.

    Having a student review their teaching can be challenging for staff, but it should be viewed as a positive experience and an opportunity to develop. Practical, structured student feedback specifically about how the curriculum is experienced isn’t routinely available but by positioning students as co-creators rather than consumers of education and working with them to develop a negotiated curriculum universities can begin to develop what Bovill and Bulley in 2011 call “student–staff partnerships” in curriculum design. More importantly cultures of reflection will be built among both students and staff.

    Indeed, the insights gathered by students provide fresh ideas and impetus for change. Universities should expect to see changes such as staff diversifying reading lists, incorporating non-Western knowledge systems, adopting and adapting podcasts and visual content, removing or clarifying colloquialisms, and reflecting more critically on their own teaching assumptions. Students also benefit as they gain a deeper understanding of learning and teaching at a personal and institutional level while developing skills that make them more employable.

    Structural limits, and what they reveal

    It is important that inclusion is not viewed as a compliance exercise. Inclusivity isn’t just about content or the material on reading lists, but about systems. Class times, unit design or professional frameworks can prevent meaningful change. These barriers resonate with what Sara Ahmed calls “non-performativity”; institutional practices that talk inclusion but do little to change the power structures that sustain inequality.

    Too frequently in HE, students are asked for feedback at the end of a module; asked what is missing or could be improved. And too often, the work of inclusion is treated as a box-ticking exercise, rather than as a long-term commitment to changing institutional norms. Collaborations that give agency to students provide visible demonstration to staff and students that inclusion matters, and that they need to work together to take practical steps that make a real difference.

    Importantly, in the same way that it is vital to reduce the burden of navigating racialised systems and institutional language, inclusive practice cannot rest on the unpaid labour of those most affected by exclusion. Students employed to do this work should be compensated, recognising their expertise and time – institutions must demonstrate their commitment to this work.

    It is also important to address how gender, disability, class, and educational background also shape curriculum experience. This move reflects the understanding, drawn from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work that inclusion must be multi-dimensional. One-size-fits-all interventions rarely address the complex realities students navigate.

    Reimagining who defines knowledge

    Curriculum audits on their own are not enough to drive change, A shift in culture is needed. The idea that academics alone define what is taught must be challenged, with students viewed not as passive recipients but as partners in learning.

    If universities are to genuinely respond to the challenges of structural inequality, they must go beyond slogans and statements. They must create space for critique, redistribute power, and invite students to shape the educational experiences that shape them in return.

    At a time when EDI initiatives in the higher education sector are facing pressure from right-wing popularist leaders it is perhaps now more important than ever that efforts to decolonise and diversify curricula continue to grow. The question for higher education institutions is whether they are willing to relax their control over whose knowledge counts.

    Practical takeaways for sector professionals

    • Start small, but with structure. Begin with a pilot group of trained student reviewers and focus on a manageable number of modules.
    • Pay students. Their labour and insights are valuable; budget for it.
    • Support staff engagement. Offer training and development to help staff reflect and act without defensiveness.
    • Embed responses in course planning. Ensure that student input leads to visible, documented changes.
    • Build community, not compliance. Inclusion isn’t just about metrics; it’s about shared commitment to equity and belonging.

    The authors are grateful for the contributions of Rebekah Kerslake and Parisa Gilani to this article.

    Source link

  • Podcast: Mergers, reshuffle | Wonkhe

    Podcast: Mergers, reshuffle | Wonkhe

    This week on the podcast we examine the bombshell merger announcement between the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent, set to create the London and South East University Group – one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK.

    With a memorandum of understanding signed and contracts expected by Christmas, this “super university” is being hailed as a potential blueprint for sector transformation. But what does this new multi-university model really mean for students, staff, and the future of higher education consolidation?

    Plus we discuss the recent government reshuffle and its implications for the sector, as Angela Rayner’s departure triggers ministerial changes across departments with direct links to higher education – from Liz Kendall’s appointment as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology to questions about skills policy under Pat McFadden’s expanded brief at the newly configured Department for Work and Pensions.

    With Ben Vulliamy, Executive Director at the Association of Heads of University Administration, Emma Maslin, Senior Policy and Research Officer at AMOSSHE, Michael Salmon, News Editor at Wonkhe, and presented by Mark Leach, Editor-in-Chief at Wonkhe.

    The first multi-university group arrives

    Back to the future for the TEF? Back to school for OfS?

    The former student leaders entering Parliament

    You can subscribe to the podcast on Acast, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, RadioPublic, Podchaser, Castbox, Player FM, Stitcher, TuneIn, Luminary or via your favourite app with the RSS feed.

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: matriculation | Wonkhe

    Higher education postcard: matriculation | Wonkhe

    It’s that time of year again. A level results have been and gone, the initial buzz of clearing has passed, and new students are about to turn up. It can only mean enrolment. Or, at some universities, this strange thing called matriculation.

    One internet definition of matriculation has it as “the process of matriculating”. Helpful.

    To get to the bottom of it, we need to remember that universities were medieval European creations, and medieval Europe was all about the corporation. A universitas was a single body of people, chartered by a king or a pope, or sometimes by both, and you had to become a member of the universitas to benefit from its protection and patronage.

    And the terminology stays with us – a degree refers to your class of membership of the universitas. A master had a license to teach at a universitas, and being a master at one would often (but not always) give you license to teach at another.

    Matriculation was the process whereby you became a student member of the university. At some universities (here’s Oxford, for example) it is a formal ceremony, dressing up and parading, and the whole works. At other universities it can be more administrative – in my own case, I got a letter from the University of London University Entrance Requirements office telling me that I’d matriculated. But I still had to queue up a long winding staircase at LSE to enrol, get my student ID and a grant cheque.

    Yes, I am that old.

    Enrolment is really the same as matriculation, but without the razzamatazz. It’s the moment when the contract between the student and the university becomes made by both sides; calling it enrolment not matriculation is a badge of the ongoing transition by universities from being medieval to being modern. Which I guess we should probably support. Before we need to transition to being postmodern.

    The card itself was issued by Clarkson School of Technology, in the USA. It’s actually a marketing card. Come to Clarkson, it says. There’s still time to matriculate and register, and start to learn. Note that the sequence is: exam for matriculation, matriculation, instruction begins. And note that the exam to matriculate isn’t the university’s, but is the New York Education Department’s. An external verification that standards had been met before enrolment could happen.

    The Thomas S. Clarkson Memorial School of Technology was founded in 1896. Thomas S Clarkson was a businessman, with multiple interests including a quarry. In August 1894 we are told that a worker at the quarry was in danger of being crushed by a derrick pump. Clarkson pushed the worker out of the way, being crushed himself instead. He died five days later of his injuries. His three sisters and his niece established the technical school in his name.

    In 1912 the State University of New York required the registration of all higher educational establishments, and it became the Thomas S. Clarkson Memorial College of Technology, commonly known as the Clarkson College of Technology. It became a university in 1984. The university has a more thorough account of its history on its webpages.

    The card itself was sent on 19 February 1910.

    Good morning, Leon:- Haven’t heard from you this week. Neither have we heard from Mayme. Had letter from Mabel R, her vacation began last Monday and lasts ‘til April 1st ….

    Here’s the actual message if you can decipher more than I have, please share in the comments!

    Image: Hugh Jones

    And here’s a jigsaw of the postcard for you – hope you enjoy it.

    Source link

  • Higher education misunderstands neurodivergence | Wonkhe

    Higher education misunderstands neurodivergence | Wonkhe

    The term “resilience” is everywhere in higher education.

    It shows up in strategic plans, wellbeing frameworks and graduate attribute profiles.

    Universities want students who cope well with pressure, bounce back from problems, and adapt quickly to change.

    But this obsession with using resilience as the cure all is quietly doing damage – particularly to neurodivergent students, and risks perpetuating a culture that conflates survival with success.

    Resilience, as it is often used in policy or wellbeing guidance, makes assumptions about a universal baseline.

    All students (and staff) are under pressure to “cope” with the demands of higher education, including anything from deadlines, group work, feedback, through to accommodation moves. It is as though everyone is starting from the same place, with the same resources.

    But neurodivergent students often come into higher education already managing complex internal landscapes – sensory overwhelm, executive dysfunction, rigid routines (or lack of), social anxiety, rejection sensitivity dysphoria, and demand avoidance, to name but a few.

    These are not just barriers to learning in an abstract sense but are, in fact, daily realities.

    And when we talk about resilience without consideration of this as a baseline for some, we begin to measure students by how well they endure suffering, not how well they are supported.

    A lack of adaptation becomes lack of success.

    Surviving is not thriving

    Neurodivergent students often go to extraordinary lengths to meet the expectations of higher education.

    They may appear to be coping, attending lectures, submitting assignments, and even achieving high grades.

    But this superficial success can be very misleading. What is often interpreted as resilience is, in many cases, a form of masking, a conscious or unconscious effort to suppress traits, needs, or behaviours to fit in.

    This is not a sign of thriving – it is a survival strategy.

    Masking is emotionally and physically exhausting. It can manifest as mimicked social behaviours, hiding sensory issues, or continuing despite major executive dysfunction. Over time, this leads to chronic stress, anxiety, and burnout.

    The student may be praised for their work, but inside they are struggling to maintain the illusion. The cost of appearing resilient is often invisible to staff and friends, yet it can be devastating.

    This is where the resilience narrative becomes dangerous. It rewards students for enduring environments that are not designed for them, rather than prompting institutions to question why those environments are so difficult to navigate in the first place.

    A student who seems to be “doing well” may be on the brink of collapse. Without understanding the hidden labour behind this apparent success, we risk reinforcing a system that values endurance over wellbeing.

    Support as self-blame

    While the rhetoric of resilience is often framed as empowerment, in practice it can move responsibility away from universities and onto students, especially neurodivergent students.

    Support services may focus on coping strategies, stress management, or time management techniques. These can be helpful, but when offered in isolation, they imply the problem is that the student cannot adapt satisfactorily, rather than with the system’s failure to accommodate.

    This framing can lead to a harmful cycle of self-blame. When students struggle, with rigid timetables, inaccessible assessments, or overstimulating environments, they are told to be more resilient. But resilience, in this context, becomes a term for tolerance of unsuitable conditions.

    When students inevitably reach their limits, they may internalise this as personal failure, that they didn’t try hard enough or put enough effort in.

    The reality is that the burden of adaptation is not equally shared. Institutional structures can be inflexible, and staff may lack the training or resources to provide robust accommodations.

    This creates a scenario where neurodivergent students are expected to conform to a model of academic success that was never designed with them in mind. When they can’t, they disengage, not because they lack resilience, but because the system has failed to support them.

    This creates a vicious cycle. The student struggles. They perseverate on that as personal failure. And yet, ultimately, they are encouraged to be more resilient. And when that doesn’t work, as masking and self-management have reached their limit, this is when neurodivergent students disengage or drop out.

    Whilst national statistics are not readily available due to underreporting and also confusion around definitions, research does point to these issues. The British Psychological Society (2022) reports that due to an over-reliance on self-disclosure, as well as inconsistent support systems,

    ND students face a disproportionate amount of challenges in higher education. Furthermore, the Office for National Statistics (2021) report that only 21.7 per cent of autistic adults were employed in 2020, demonstrating systemic barriers which students may face when transitioning to work.

    They will blame themselves.

    Rethinking resilience

    That is not to say resilience is inherently bad. The ability to manage setbacks and adapt to change is fundamental but, for neurodivergents, that can only be when it is coupled with appropriate support, inclusive systems and compassionate pedagogy.

    In its current format, the discussion around resilience become a deflection. It reframes structural exclusion, such as inaccessible or rigid assessment methods, inflexible teaching patterns, and overstimulating spaces, as personal challenges that they must overcome.

    An example of this may be that many universities still require in-person attendance for some assessments. For a student with sensory or processing issues, this could effectively provoke masking, which could lead to overwhelm and/or burn-out. Despite us having the power to change it, we instead expect students to improve at surviving the experience.

    A solid example of where this has been integrated, in terms of flexibility, is the University of Oxford’s (2024) NESTL toolkit, which demonstrates how applications of moving adaptations throughout the programme can, in the first instance, support ND students, but actually could have implications for all students in terms of authentic assessment and individualised learning.

    From resilience to responsibility

    If universities are serious about supporting neurodivergent students, they must start by reframing resilience not as an individual concept but as a systemic responsibility. Rather than asking students to become more resilient, the more important question is how institutions can reduce the need for resilience in the first place.

    This begins with designing systems that are accessible from the outset. Instead of relying on individual adjustments, universities should embed flexibility into their base structures, with adaptable deadlines, varied assessment formats, and alternative ways for students to engage with learning. These changes not only support neurodivergent students but enhance the experience for all learners.

    Creating a culture of safety is vital. Disclosure should not trigger a bureaucratic process but should be met with empathy, understanding, and timely support. It would be a bonus if staff training could go beyond basic awareness and involve critical reflection on how teaching practices can embody inclusion and empower educators to make meaningful changes.

    Finally, institutions must place ND students in the centre throughout the design and review of policies, curricula, and spaces. Lived experience should not be treated as an optional perspective but as a foundation. Only by shifting from a format of individual endurance to one of collective responsibility can we begin to challenge the structural barriers that resilience discourse too often obscures.

    The myth of the resilient student is appealing and offers a neat solution to complex challenges. But it also permits institutions to bypass important discussions about structural exclusion, academic tradition and the limitations of current support models. We have to rethink the system from the ground up, and not just ask students to endure it.

    Source link

  • The estate we’re in | Wonkhe

    The estate we’re in | Wonkhe

    Sometimes you walk through a city and the city changes around you.

    There’s a subtle modulation in feel – the style and tenor of the place is renewed, the rhythm of green spaces shifts, the architectural language expands. Statements made in concrete, brick, limestone, and plate glass are more assertive.

    And a new form of power and control begins to be felt. You see what look like guard posts, staffed by a private police force. Gates and passes dictate where you can and cannot go. Parking a car holds a byzantine mystery of its own. Signs are branded, sometimes incomprehensibly, for the attention of an elite you suddenly feel you are not part of.

    And who runs these places? Well, you don’t get to choose. What do they do? You don’t get a say. This part of your city is not your city.

    It’s a university estate.

    Special economic zones

    If you like, a university is a freeport – where the goods coming in and out are ideas. It is, to be clear, absolutely a part of a nation state – but it is a separate polity – designed and separated for a purpose. Individually these areas are tiny, but when you start adding things together it gets interesting.

    The total population (the FTE of every staff member and student that could be counted as a “citizen” of our higher education zones) is 2.4 million – that’s around the size of Slovenia or Latvia. Staff FTE is closer to 396,000 – larger than the population of Iceland.

    University sites extend across 12,887 hectares of land in the UK – that’s more space than Bristol (the unitary authority area), and larger than Jersey. But for the number of people involved that isn’t a lot of space: the population density (again, using FTE here) is 0.02 FTE/m2 (behind only Macau and Monaco in global terms).

    Financially, we are looking at £48bn in income and £39bn in expenditure (these as reported in the Estates dataset, not the Finances dataset, giving us a positive (if weak) balance of trade. Gross national income per FTE (if we use staff only) is £12,192 (that’s 16,518 USD at current prices, a higher equivalent GNI per capita than Russia!)

    Land management

    According to the Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE, using last year’s data) our hypothetical micronation spends around £200m on defence (or security if you’d rather) each year. If you include maintenance and repair – another essential way to protect the value of your estates assets, we’re pushing our total up beyond £1bn. And if you factor in all spending on premises (cost centre 205, which includes things like taxes, rental payments, energy, and insurance) – we are talking in the region of £6bn.

    This spending covers a lot of work. Higher education involves the use of just under 16,000 buildings – everything from student accommodation and office blocks, from nuclear reactors to wind tunnels, from listed buildings to literal pigsties. It isn’t published in the open data, but last year AUDE tells us the proportion of buildings rated as being in condition C (operational but major repair or replacement needed in the short to medium-term) and D (inoperable or serious risk of major failure or breakdown) was 23.8 per cent – the building stock is deteriorating, year on year, as repair and maintenance backlogs grow.

    What we do see in published data is display energy certificates (DEC) and and energy performance (EPC) certificates, two broadly comparable ways of rating the environmental performance of buildings. It’s not a direct line that can be drawn, but a well maintained estate (or an estate where old buildings are replaced with new) is likely to become more energy efficient over time and a poorly maintained estate will tend to lose efficiency. This year 28.21 per cent of sector non-residential estates were in categories E, F, or G – broadly the same as last year, for a larger estate that still includes a number of older buildings that are never going to reach modern efficiency standards, but still a concern.

    [Full screen]

    Though higher education involves the creation of intangible assets (everything from intellectual property to the future value of graduates in wider society), the estate represents the sector’s tangible assets. Should we lose a provider to the financial storms the sector faces, it is to the estate that creditors (or potential buyers) might look to release funds.

    Zero and below

    The UK’s COP29 pledges – in the service of a global “net zero” carbon in 2050 – have become increasingly politically controversial as the costs of doing pretty much anything have risen (due to a range of geopolitical factors far too well-known and tedious to go into here having an impact on supply chains and labour availability).

    In our hypothetical UK higher education micronation – given what is popularly imagined to be a progressive, science-informed, population – you would expect an element of leadership in sustainability and decarbonisation. And indeed, this has been the case. But this stuff comes at a cost.

    OfS’s review of the financial stability of providers in England in 2024 suggested that a key driver of continued financial challenge was:

    The affordability of necessary estate maintenance and development and the significant cost of investment needed to reduce carbon emissions as part of providers’ commitments to achieve net zero.

    A year later, the mention of net zero had been scrubbed entirely:

    the significant cost of investment needed to reduce carbon emissions as part of a commitment to tackling environmental sustainability

    Despite governments having an interest in the improving the sustainability of, and reducing emission from campuses (for example the education system sustainability and climate change strategy, first published by DfE in 2021 under the auspices of noted doyenne of woke activism Nadhim Zahawi) there is no statutory energy and carbon reporting route in English higher education(as there is for FE colleges and schools). The closest OfS gets is to gently ask those bidding for historically tiny amounts of capital to offer “assurance that providers have considered practical solutions towards achieving environmental sustainability as part of their bid”.

    Our UK HE micronation, as well as being a good global citizen, also has an interest in driving down long-term costs. Fossil fuels are only going to get more expensive in the long run, switching to alternatives and moving to greater efficiency makes business sense even if there are initial costs. There has been some progress with scope 1 and 2 emissions (another fall last year), though this is limited compared to what could be achieved last decade: much of the “easy” work has already been done. That said, we’re still talking about 1.4m tonnes of carbon a year, equivalent to a small African country (Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, is a decent comparator) – and this is only scope 1 and 2 (direct) emissions, factoring in the supply chains and travel within scope 3 is another matter.

    [Full screen]

    Zones of proximal development

    So, while it is undeniably fun to see UK higher education at the scale of a small country, it still remains firmly rooted in the four home nations. But the exercise prompted me to think – are there other zones within the UK that have been designed to optimise specific benefits for the areas and nations around them?

    These days its all industrial strategy zones, but in terms people may recognise we might think about enterprise zones designed to stimulate economic growth by offering incentives to business – there are 48 in England. We have the internationally focused freeports, of course – 12 of them in the UK, and 7 investment zones (to date) that aim to unlock opportunities for business. In each of these examples the actual zones are quite small (almost like campuses, in fact) but the focus is on the impact on a wider local area (where workers may commute from, for example).

    Zones like this reflect a global trend towards special economic zones (SEZs) which disapply national rules (around tax, customs, state aid, planning and so on – in some international examples we get as far as labour laws and immigration rules) in the interests of commercial activity. The wilder fringes of policies like this are pretty terrifying, but the UK does appear to be open to paddling in the shallower waters.

    Which prompts the question – if universities are like freeports (better than freeports, in fact, as they have a proven track record of providing local benefits) why not offer the relaxation of some national regulations to encourage them to expand and develop in the areas that we want them to? Perhaps it should be easier for UK higher education to recruit international staff – perhaps there should be reductions of employer national contributions with respect to UK staff. Perhaps planning could be easier around established campuses? Perhaps it should be easier to unlock state investment to improve estates without triggering the rules that would drag us into the public sector? Perhaps we could unlock investment and incentives for clean electricity generation and area heating systems?

    In the absence of an increase in tuition fees or income from OfS, a special economic zone (or zones) for higher education might be a way forward. The ideas of universities as largely self-administrating state-like entities within a country is an old one (the early days of Oxford featured a parallel judicial system, that ended up provoking riots and the foundation of Cambridge!) and perhaps worth revisiting.

    Source link

  • National Student Survey 2025 | Wonkhe

    National Student Survey 2025 | Wonkhe

    After a few years of rapid changes and exogenous shocks we are pretty much back to normal on the national student survey.

    The 2025 results tell an overall tale of graduate improvement – of students being generally content that they are getting what they have been led to expect (or, for the cynics, having modulated their expectations appropriately), and of a sector where the majority of students are content with pretty much every area of their academic experience.

    The positivity is always worthy of noting as it balances out a popular image of unhappy students, poor quality courses, and failing universities. The inconvenient truth is that UK higher education as a whole is pretty good, and remains so despite the efforts and fervent wishes of many.

    Overall

    The main utility of the National Student Survey is to draw gentle but persistent external attention to the kind of internal problems that decent providers will already be aware of. If you know, for example, there is a problem with students receiving timely feedback on your undergraduate architecture course, the temptation in these times of budgetary restraint may be to let it slide – a negative NSS finding focuses attention where it is needed.

    Michelle Donelan (where is she now?) famously took against the framing of students being “satisfied” in her jeremiad against the old NSS – but the NSS has, since inception, acted as a tool to get students some satisfaction.

    [Full screen]

    Our first chart looks at the four home nations and the UK as a whole – you can examine subject areas of interest at three levels, choose to see registered or taught students, of all undergraduate levels and mode, and filter out areas with low response numbers. From this we learn that food and beverage studies is probably the most challenging course in the UK, with 94.8 per cent of respondents responding positively to question 4 (“how often does your course challenge you to achieve your best work”).

    In Wales, medical technology students were least likely to be positive about the fairness of marking and assessment. In England, maritime technology students are least likely to feel their student union represents them. To be clear, at CAH3 we are often looking at very small numbers of students (which may pertain to a single course in a single provider) – cranking things up to CAH1 means we can be much more confident that veterinary science students in Scotland find their course “intellectually stimulating”.

    By provider

    It gets interesting when you start comparing the national averages above to subject areas in your provider, so I’ve built a version of the dashboard where you can examine different aspects of your own provision. I’ve added a function where you click on a subject dot it updates the bar chart on the right, offering an overview of all responses to all questions.

    [Full screen]

    This helps put in perspective how cross your computer games and animation students are with your library resources – it turns out this is a national problem, and perhaps a chat to a professional body might be helpful in finding out what needs to be done

    Of course, there’s a whole industry out there that uses NSS results to rank providers, often using bizarre compound metrics now we don’t have an “overall satisfaction” question (if you’ve ever read nonsense about nursing students in a provider being the most satisfied among modern campus universities in the East Midlands then this is how we get there).

    There is a value in benchmarking against comparators, so this is my gentle contribution to this area of discourse which works in the same way as the one above (note that you need to select a subject area as well as a subject level). For the people who ask every year – the population sizes and response numbers are in the tooltips (you can also filter out tiny response numbers, by default I do this at fifty).

    I’ve not included the confidence intervals that OfS’s dashboard does because it simply doesn’t matter for most use cases and it makes the charts harder to read (and slower to load). You should be aware enough to know that a small number of responses probably doesn’t make for a very reliable number. Oh, and the colour of the dots is the old (very old) TEF flags – two standard deviations above (green) or below (red) the benchmark.

    [Full screen]

    Characteristics

    Beyond national trends, subject level oddities, and provider peculiarities the student experience is affected by personal characteristics.

    While there may be a provider level problem, many of these could equally be a national or UK-wide issue: especially when linked to a particular subject area. We get characteristic statistics up to CAH level 1 (very broad groups of subjects) in public data, which may be enough to help you understand what is going on with a particular set of students.

    For instance, it appears that – nationally – students with disabilities (including mental health struggles) are less likely to feel that information about wellbeing support is well communicated – something that is unlikely to be unique to a single provider, and (ideally) needs to be addressed in partnership to ensure these vulnerable students get the support they need.

    [Full screen]

    Conclusion

    If you take NSS at face value it is an incredibly useful tool. If we manage to leave it in a steady state for a few more years time series will add another level to this usefulness (sorry, a year-on-year comparison tells us little and even three years isn’t much better.

    As ammunition to allow you to solve problems in your own provider, to identify places to learn from, and iterate your way to happier and better educated students it is unsurpassed. It’s never really convinced as a regulatory tool, and (on a limb here) the value for applicants only really comes as a warning away from places that are doing outstandingly badly.

    Source link