In the wake of her announcement of next year’s tuition fee uplift, England’s education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, was repeatedly asked what the government had in mind when it said, as the quid pro quo, that it wanted universities to transform and operate more efficiently. What would this look like in practice? Where would the savings come from?
She didn’t find it an easy question to answer – because it isn’t an easy question to answer. Nor is it one that the government should be answering alone. Universities are clear on their shared responsibility with government to put the sector in the strongest possible position to support the needs of the country. We must work together to grasp this nettle.
A Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce was a key recommendation of Universities UK’s Blueprint for Change, published in September. Alongside the need for a stable environment and sustainable funding, the Blueprint recognised that the sector itself must also demonstrate its willingness to adapt and to deliver more efficient and productive working. The rapid formation of this task force is evidence that we are prepared to think radically about transformation to tackle the challenges we face.
Let me be clear: the UK sector has been working hard to address the multitude of challenges heaped upon it over the past decade, most obviously the impact of a decade-long near freeze in tuition fees in England, set against high inflation and the high student expectations that were driven by the introduction of the £9,000 fee. This challenge has been even more acute in the devolved administrations, which have been managing diminished resources for far longer.
Innovative new ways of working – from increased digitisation to more effective use of estates – have run alongside difficult decisions to achieve significant savings while still delivering core activities. Transformation programmes and cost-saving initiatives by individual institutions can only take us so far, however. To truly unlock the most effective and efficient ways of working, universities must collaborate and think creatively together, whether that’s locally, regionally or nationally.
This is not uncharted territory for the sector. Indeed, there are many success stories of improvements made through sharing expertise, facilities or services, and we can learn from these and build on them. We already have well-established sector-wide organisations such as Jisc for IT, Ucas for admissions and the UK University Purchasing Consortia, which leverages the combined purchasing power of universities.
Geographical partnerships between universities (and sometimes their local authorities and other local partners) were most recently showcased by the launch of Universities for North East England: an alliance of the region’s five universities with their local authorities and other partners to spearhead local access and impact.
Excellent joint work already exists to support student mental health and well-being by the universities in the cities of Bristol, Cardiff and Manchester. And we have the potential to explore more collaborative teaching models, as already demonstrated by the multiple partners at the University of London that collaborate to deliver a modern foreign languages MA that they would be unable to sustain individually.
A recent, comprehensive report on “collaboration for a sustainable future” by Jisc and KPMG celebrated more examples – but also made a compelling case for the sector to keep pushing itself on this.
As chair of the Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce, I will be ensuring we take an “all options on the table” approach. The scope of our discussion will include everything from systems- and process-sharing to shared delivery of some student-facing services and changes to operational and business models.
At the same time, I recognise that change on this scale is not easy. Transformation usually comes with considerable cost. Systems change brings technical challenges. And, critically, UK higher education is a marketised system and a university’s ability to differentiate its academic offer (surely one of the great strengths of our system) is crucial. But so is taking action to control the future strength and success of the sector – and demonstrating to both government and the wider public that we are doing so.
Our task force members are experts from across the sector, bringing expertise on operations, estates, people, finance and more, to be complemented by external expertise and scrutiny. We will explore opportunities for others in the sector to feed into the process, and UUK will be running a summit on this topic later next spring.
The outputs of this work will include evidence-led recommendations and high-level business cases to make a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the benefits associated with each initiative. We want to challenge ourselves but will do so within the parameters of the possible.
There will be no as-yet-undiscovered magic bullet. But this is our chance to think about how the sector can transform and drive meaningful change. By helping put itself back on a stable footing, the sector will also put itself in a better position to deliver the kind of growth and opportunity – personal and national – that is at the heart of what we do.
Sir Nigel Carrington is chair of the UUK-led transformation and efficiency task force.
