It’s looking grim out there in higher education land. Every day brings new stories about planned cuts to courses and disciplines or redundancy programmes at one university or another. Indeed, eyes around the sector are now being drawn daily to a tracker which one university’s UCU branch has developed to log announcements of this kind. 

Are We Doomed?

Everything seems to be looking bad all over the place and all aspects of university operations appear under threat. With home fees in England frozen and most courses effectively loss-making, the growth in energy bills over the past few years adding millions to baseline costs, not to mention growing maintenance backlogs and continued shortfalls on funding of research activity, lots of institutions are now posting deficits or predicting them. The precarious nature of international student recruitment, which has now become the principal means of sourcing additional income for institutions (but where it is essential not to forget all of the other benefits international students bring to our universities and wider society), and where both geopolitical turbulence and UK government ambivalence (at best) have impacted, has added further peril to the mix.

Moreover, higher ed has become increasingly unloved in recent years. Frequently targeted by tabloids and by government ministers with a culture wars agenda it is perhaps unsurprising that the public have begun to ask questions about the value of universities. Indeed, in a mass system not only does almost everyone have a connection with someone who is in or has recently experienced some form of higher education, but everyone is going to have a view about what goes on in their towns and cities and in universities and colleges based there. We are public property in every sense.

Still Delivering

So higher ed institutions face huge challenges right now and are operating in an extraordinarily difficult and uncertain environment. And yet they are still delivering. Up and down the country universities continue to provide outstanding higher education to hundreds of thousands of students and set their graduates on course for happy, successful and productive lives that are all the richer for the ideas and experiences they gained while at university. At the same time, academics at many institutions are undertaking world-changing research activity which continues to improve everyone’s lives and engaging in all sorts of different ways to spread their findings across industry and society in ways which add value to our economy and the public realm.

The overwhelming majority of all of this great work will continue in the sector, even allowing for all of the restructurings, disciplinary realignments and course closures which are, understandably, the main focus of everyone’s attention at the moment. The circumstances in which all institutions find themselves are exceptional and, in many cases, extraordinarily difficult, requiring some bold measures to ensure continued viability and effective delivery of education, research and knowledge exchange.  

Don’t panic!! 

University World News recently reported that it was “panic stations” at some UK universities: 

Panic stations appear to have set in across the United Kingdom higher education sector with many universities – from the so-called premier league Russell Group institutions to mid-league players and Scottish universities – issuing warnings about course cuts and staff redundancies. But not all universities are struggling.

At least 15 universities have publicly confirmed they are shedding staff and shutting down courses while many others are “quietly inviting” lecturers to apply for voluntary severance following a sharp fall in overseas students enrolling on postgraduate courses this January…

There is undoubtedly deep anxiety across the sector. As you would expect when there is widespread evidence of redundancy schemes being introduced, people are concerned about their own jobs and futures. And yet universities have to continue to deliver high quality education and great experiences which meet the changing needs of students while also planning for a route to a sustainable future. Such plans – which will inevitably involve change, some of it radical, and possibly shrinkage – are necessary because it is likely to be quite a few years before the structural problems with sectoral funding are addressed by any future government.

We have been here before though. Sort of. There have been significant dips in university funding in the relatively recent past, most significantly with the dramatic Thatcher cuts of 1981, the financial crash of 2009-10 and the Covid pandemic. But this great mid-2020s contraction is altogether different and is the product of a range of different factors, all underpinned by a funding model which is no longer fit for purpose. At the tail end of the last Labour government when we were facing a not wholly dissimilar scenario Lord Mandelson established the Browne review, commissioned to report after the 2010 general election. Unfortunately, despite leading to several significant changes, including a major hike in tuition fees, it did not result in the comprehensive structural change to the sector funding model which would have meant, arguably, that we would not be in this mess today. 

Can We Have a New Review Please?

We therefore need a new big review please, one which will address all of the structural funding and other problems the sector faces. It needs to be a bit Dearing, part Robbins and with a dash of Browne.

However, we are unlikely to get one, at least in the short to medium term. We can be confident too that there will be no more money for HE in the meantime. If there is any government funding at all directed at HE then it is hard to argue that it should do anything other than address some of the basic issues in relation to student maintenance.

But one way or another we are going to have to find the right level of resource, from both public and private sources to fund the sector appropriately. Higher education in the UK is not going to shrink its way to sustained global leadership.

Awash With Cash?

There are those who say all their prescient warnings of impending doom were ignored. But while the prevailing narrative in Whitehall and beyond is that the sector is, despite all of these challenges, ‘awash with cash’ (and indeed there are those within higher education who have also, rather unhelpfully, claimed the same), it makes the argument for increasing funding, whether via home student fee increases or more direct resourcing, extremely difficult indeed. Especially given all of the other public service funding needs.

However, no-one (OK, almost no-one apart from a former Home Secretary and some ideologues) believes that it would be a good thing if some universities went bankrupt. The consequences of such a collapse for their students, employees, alumni, stakeholders, the towns in which they are anchor institutions and indeed the sector as a whole would be disastrous. 

Mergers may yet become the thing. They have been talked about many times, including during previous periods of financial pressure, as the way out for cash-strapped institutions. But there have not been huge numbers of them over the years and where they have succeeded it has been because of shared strategic alignment and/or additional resources being tipped into the mix rather than as a way of escaping a funding crisis. Maybe though if the platform is really burning brightly this will become more commonplace in the sector. 

Save Money – Reduce Regulation

In absence of funding, from whatever source, which will address these issues, or a big new shiny review of the HE financial model this or the next government needs to reduce the burden of regulation. Urgently. In the face of all these significant financial challenges universities and colleges have to look for ways to make more cash and save more money to invest in core activities and sustain operations.

Regarding the latter, as I’ve written here before, one way in which savings can be made is in reducing the excessive burden of regulation. In England the bulk of unnecessary regulation is principally, but not exclusively, managed by the Office for Students (OfS). There are other burdensome regulatory activities at play too though, including some self-imposed ones, which do need to be considered.

Whatever are the next steps as part of the recent review of the OfS and any moves the government (current or future) wishes to take, reducing the burden to enable universities to save money will surely be a necessary undertaking.

Work on reducing the burden, which would free up at least some resource across the sector, can start at once. It does not require new legislation, no new regulations have to be drafted. Rather it is about an attitude which recognises the importance of trust, institutional autonomy, the professionalism of staff and a determination to be open and transparent where faults are found. All of this will save money, desperately needed resource for institutions, and help to re-establish the confidence of all stakeholders in the quality of the UK’s higher education.

Higher trust, lower cost means that everyone gains. And in the absence of new government funds it is likely to be just about the only resource opportunity available.

Feel Good Factors

Reducing the regulatory burden, as one response to the current challenges, would be the start of returning a feel good factor to the sector. And if it were to be combined with the removal of international students from UK migration figures and an unequivocal encouragement to grow and diversify international student recruitment –  welcoming the contributions they make while studying here (and indeed potentially working for a few years post-graduation) – then that would be another extremely welcome positive signal.

And if the endless culture war attacks on universities were to stop, that would be a welcome bonus for all too and would help smooth the way as institutions begin to grow back following the difficult short term period ahead. It may feel like a very slow path to improvement. But things can and will get better. Eventually.

This article represents the personal views of the author