Category Archives: news

news

More signs of collaboration and sharing

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In the news this week, two stories on collaboration and shared services.

The first of these was the launch of Universities West. It is a new collaboration between Bath Spa University, the University of Bath, the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England – has formally launched. The grouping is intended to strengthen collaboration, support economic growth and improve opportunities for learners.

These sorts of collaboration can lead to more collaboration. Though the focus of Universities West is on supporting the (WECA) Skills Strategy, there are implications and possibilities for future collaboration, shared services, and potentially shared infrastructure to support student mobility to deliver on the skills strategy.

Up in Scotland, the staff at Napier and Queen Margaret universities have been told of plans to create a “multi-university” with Scotland’s Rural College

In Scotland, a staff briefing was “revealed” that detailed plans to share services between Edinburgh Napier University, Queen Margaret University, and Scotland’s Rural College.

Reaction from staff was that they fear this as a “merger by stealth”. Senior management have “categorically told the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) union that  they are not planning a merger,” while an unnamed member of staff was reported saying that plans would “maintain each institution’s independence and autonomy, but provide some shared services.”

My reflections on this, having been involved in the collaboration agenda over the last few years, one concern not often expressed, is the impact of shared services on jobs. Collaboration and shared services are often seen as potential solutions to another problem, such as financial sustainability. This reaction though is interesting in that the focus is on how shared services would not just result in loss of autonomy, but the end game was merger. 

Over on WonkHE, Vicki Stott the incoming senior strategic advisor to the alliance outlines the vision for the collaboration.

From the outset, the principals have been clear that this must be a genuine alliance of equals: three institutions, each with its own history, mission and place, choosing to test how far they can go together while remaining themselves.

She also talks about the ambitions of the alliance.

On the ambitious side, the alliance will deliberately explore shared services, aligned procurement, collaborative curriculum development (within the guardrails of CMA guidance, naturally), data-sharing and better student transitions across institutional boundaries. 

As well as emphasising that this is not a merger.

It is, very explicitly, not a merger. It is an attempt to find out whether autonomy, identity and radical collaboration can coexist in practice rather than just in strategy documents.

Of course, we have seen with the London and South East University merger between Greenwich and Kent, that merger doesn’t always mean losing identity. We have seen that in the large number of FE college groups that exist, where the local campus has retained their individual identities despite being part of a larger group structure.

What both these news stories tell us, is that collaboration isn’t always straightforward, and isn’t always seen as a good news story by staff in those institutions. 

Understanding the local culture and background is important, when we discuss collaboration with members, but also that there are potentially some negative reactions to news of collaboration or implementation of shared services.

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More jobs to be lost at Dundee

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It is been reported that the University of Dundee is looking to cut an additional 190 jobs. Despite already cutting about 675 jobs through voluntary redundancies, the university said it still needed to make annual savings of about £20m – mostly from staff costs. This is after the Scottish government provided £40m in emergency funding last year to help stabilise the university, with ministers expecting at the time that this would limit job losses to about 300. Political pressure is mounting for a complete reimagining of the university and college sector.

Dundee is not the only university in Scotland in dealing with financial challenges, you could argue Dundee’s problems were exacerbated by poor management. GuildHE did publish some lessons learned here.

So, what are the implications of this for higher education in Scotland?

It seems highly unlikely that another university in Scotland would get the same kind of bailout that Dundee had. It will depend on which (if any) university is failing and where it is. The Scottish government could not afford a scale of bailout that Dundee across the whole of the sector.

Another question is can the sector afford the level of redundancy that we are seeing across the sector. Dundee has reduced its staffing by around 25% and 80% of that was through voluntary redundancy. Across the sector as a whole we are seeing more jobs been cut. 

Despite the need for efficiencies, these cuts must be having an impact on the student experience. In the longer term, we may see a restructuring of the Scottish higher education sector. The SFC has been advocating for more collaboration across both HE and FE in Scotland.

news, stuff

The cost of living with student loans

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Over the last couple of years I have been saying across various conversations about the impact of paying back student loans could have on future student recruitment. I would talk about how the next generation of students will be the first whose parents were required to take out student loans to pay their fees and for the maintenance. Their parents would have the seen the real life impact of their student debt on their lifestyle. It would reduce their real income and would have had an impact on other financial choices such as mortgage affordability.

You could quite easily see these parents advising their children to really think about university and also think about other possible options. 

We have seen some evidence of this with the huge demand for degree apprenticeships, getting paid, part time study, and no loans. The supply of such apprenticeships has certainly not increased to meet the demand.

When the government raised student fees, there was a almost audible sigh of relief from the university sector, however I do remember the press coverage of the time rarely if ever mentioned the impact of this on students. They would need get larger student loans.

Over the last few weeks there has been substantial press coverage about student loans, it certainly has become a political issue and is getting talked about on the news, in the press, and online. There have been whole programmes and features on the issues of student loans. What we are now seeing is human impact stories about loans.

The BBC News has published an article which makes for interesting reading.The article, Paying back my student loan is more painful now I have a young family, covers the story of a graduate who went to university in 2014 who took out a Plan 2 student loan. The one line from the article that stood out to me was this one.

Richmond is “really pleased” with where he’s got to in his career in recruitment. But he says he has colleagues doing just as well who didn’t go to university, so he questions whether he needed his degree.

When this comparison starts, then some people will start to think seriously about whether going to university, getting loans, is going to be the best option. Is there going to be that graduate premium in earnings that will offset the extra student loan charge.

On the WonkHE site, David Kernohan looks at the graduate premium in much more detail than I could ever do.

I think another factor out there is that university is no longer the life changing event was, even in the 2000s. I remember when I went away to university, it was a paradigm shift, the only way to communicate was by letter and using the payphone with huge queues. Today technology means even if you do go away to university, you don’t need to break everyday contact with friends and family. Likewise, in order to survive at university you will probably need to have a part-time job as well. Then, your life is not university, university is just something you do alongside everything else. That experience may mean that looking at alternative pathways for the same kind of benefit.

Something else which gets lost in the discussion is that for many students, they don’t go away to university they stay at home and go to their local university (to save money, but for other social reasons as well).  For many students alternative routes to higher education may become the preferable option.

There are lots of benefits to higher education, the question though going forward can you achieve those benefits in ways which don’t mean getting huge student loans and the negative impact that debt has for life after university.

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It’s coming back

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Some thoughts from me on the news that the UK will be joining Erasmus+. So what does the Erasmus announcement mean for UK higher education and for Jisc.

Since Brexit the number of EU students attending UK higher education institutions fell sharply.

Brexit’s effects on student demographics also tell an alarming story. EU student degree intake in the UK has more than halved. From a vibrant community of over 150,000 in 2020-21 (the final year when home fees applied), the total EU-citizen enrolment slipped to just 75,000 by 2023-24, with a larger fall in first-year enrolment. EU students, once representing a quarter of all international students, have now shrunk to less than a tenth. While UK universities have not suffered financially and indeed have compensated by increasing income from non-EU international student fees, the transformation runs deeper than balance sheets.1

Re-joining Erasmus could potentially see the number of EU students attending UK universities increase, possibly back to even pre-Brexit levels.  However, with the international student levy, we may see an overall decline in international student numbers.

One of the interesting aspects of re-joining Erasmus is the implications of this on the plan in the EU for a European Education Area where students can move between institutions and study when and where they want to. Despite the pre-eminence of national agendas in the education space, the EU Commission is looking to improve and enable greater student mobility. There has been substantial work on this by the various European University Alliances across the EU, the European Digital Education Hub 2, and it wouldn’t surprise you by the various NRENs across Europe as well.

Of course in the UK (well England), we have our own plans for student mobility with the LLE 3.

Europe has already undertaken a lot of work in the mobility space with the implementation of the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework 4.  What the Erasmus news means is that student mobility between the EU and the UK will be easier (and cheaper) than it was, and the EU ambitions in relation to student mobility does mean that the UK should be thinking how UK higher education could be aligned to what is happening in Europe.

1 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20251021121022353

2 https://education.ec.europa.eu/focus-topics/digital-education/action-plan/european-digital-education-hub

3 https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-providers/student-protection-and-choice/lifelong-learning-entitlement/

4 https://education.ec.europa.eu/focus-topics/digital-education/digital-education-hub/workshops-and-working-groups/interoperability-framework

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Increase in cold spots

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Image by Ramon Perucho from Pixabay

One of the reports I have been working on this year was on subject collaboration within higher education. We did reference a previous British Academy report, so it was with interest that I read their recent report, which obviously focuses on the arts and social sciences.

In this report the British Academy revealed a troubling trend in UK higher education: a growing number of “cold spots” where students have limited to no access to local humanities, social sciences, and arts degrees (known as SHAPE subjects). This is especially concerning since more than half of UK undergraduate students attend a university within their home region, and that number is even higher for disadvantaged students. The report argues that the lack of local access to these degrees risks deepening social inequality.

The Scope of the Problem

The decline in subject provision is not uniform. The report identifies specific subject areas that are particularly vulnerable. Modern foreign languages have been hit the hardest, with the number of available courses having nearly halved since 2011. Other subjects like linguistics, anthropology, and drama are also showing significant declines in geographical coverage. While parts of England are affected—especially the North, South West, and East—large areas of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are also experiencing a shrinking of SHAPE degrees.

This issue is a symptom of wider financial pressures on universities. The report warns that institutions are making decisions based on short-term financial concerns and competition for students, rather than a strategic vision for the future. The British Academy cautions that if these trends continue, even more popular subjects like English and history could be at risk.

Recommendations for possible solutions that come from the report.

To combat this trend, the British Academy is urging a collaborative response from the government, universities, and regulators. The report’s key recommendations include:

  • National Registers for At-Risk Subjects: The creation of a national register to monitor and track the health of specific subjects in different regions. This would provide a clearer picture of where “cold spots” are emerging.
  • Government Financial Support: The government should provide targeted funding to protect and support subjects that are identified as being at risk.
  • Encouraging Collaboration: Universities in each UK nation and region should actively seek opportunities to collaborate on teaching, research, and shared services. This would help ensure that specialised courses remain available to students without requiring every institution to run a separate program.
  • Legal: The government (well the CMA) should issue clear guidance on how far higher education providers can collaborate without breaching competition law.

The report serves as a stark warning that without urgent intervention, access to these critical subjects will continue to diminish, undermining the UK’s reputation for academic excellence and weakening the skills needed to tackle major societal and economic challenges. The British Academy argues that SHAPE subjects are crucial for fostering a well-rounded society, as they contribute to innovation, critical thinking, and cultural understanding.

It should be noted that there are similar cold spots in other subject areas as well, including core priority subjects such as nursing.

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Let’s get ready to rumble…

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University of Greenwich
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Today we heard about the creation of the “first” super university, arising from the planned merger between the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent.

BBC reporting UK’s first ‘super-university’ to be created as two merge from 2026

The UK’s first “super-university”, stretching across an entire region, is to be created through the merger of the universities of Kent and Greenwich, the BBC has learned. Under the proposed name of London and South East University Group, the single institution will have one vice-chancellor from the academic year starting in autumn 2026.

The WonkHE perspective on the merger news.

The plan on the student-facing side is for each university’s identity to be preserved – with applications, and degree awards, kept separate – behind the scenes, the “super-university” (as the press release puts it) will have a unified governing body, academic board, and executive team, and a single vice chancellor: Greenwich’s Jane Harrington. Staff at both universities are expected to transfer across to the newly merged university – legally, there will be one entity, but the two “brands” will still exist as trading arms.

Degrees from the new super university will still be awarded in the name of Kent or Greenwich. I think that this is a wise move and needs to be supported, mergers don’t and shouldn’t always means the loss of institutional identities.

This is not the first higher education merger, the City St Georges merger happened last year. However, this is the first merger between two large universities. 

As the BBC notes, The plans unveiled on Wednesday are on a bigger scale, with two universities offering a full range of courses and spread over a wider geographical area.

It’s interesting to see the BBC call it the first merger, is there anticipation that there will be more mergers in the future.

The Department for Education welcomed the merger, a spokesperson said: “This collaboration shows how strong partnerships in higher education can help enable delivery of world-class teaching and research whilst maintaining the best interests of students.”

So is this the start of something, we will have to wait and see.

One question though might need asking, what about the other two universities based in Canterbury, what are they thinking?

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Then the lights went out…

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The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home.

So I wrote a blog post exploring this.

When I posted the link to my blog post on the Twitter, I did get this response.

I don’t disagree with people spending three hours staring at a flickering candle, but it would be nice if students had a choice about how to spend that three hours. It did though get me thinking, could I last three hours without coffee? Should I get a camping stove and use my stovetop espresso maker?

stove espresso maker
Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

I also ordered a new power bank.

So, would the power just cut out? Well, I later read this from the Guardian: How would three-hour power cuts work if enacted in Great Britain? on how power cuts would work across England, Scotland and Wales.

People in England, Scotland and Wales are braced for the possibility of rolling power cuts this winter after a warning on Thursday from National Grid. The electricity and gas system operator has said households could face a series of three-hour power cuts

So how it would work is as follows:

… consumers in different parts of the country would be notified a day in advance of a three-hour block of time during which they would lose power. Households in different areas would then be cut off at different times or days, with the frequency rising depending on the severity of the supply shortage.

As a result if this is how it happens, then students probably would get notice that when they would lose power, that would given them time to charge up devices and download activities, resources and other content.

Of course the risk of this happening, according to the National Grid, is low, and dependent on a range of circumstances. Or another way of looking at, it will happen, and probably happen more often than is being reported. Or is that my just being a little too cynical?

learning, news

When everything goes dark

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Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay

So how do students do online and digital learning without electricity or even connectivity?

The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home. With the continuing prospect of restrictions in gas supplies across Europe, there is a strong chance with a extreme cold spell in the UK that there will be power rationing. This means that some parts of the UK will be dark. Students will face learning without light, power, heat or connectivity.

What can universities do to prepare for this potential likelihood?

How can you deliver high quality online learning without power or connectivity?

When the power goes out, this means no lights, no power, potentially no heating and no broadband. Of course a blackout also means as well no mobile signal, so no 4G. So though you may have a mobile device with enough battery power to use it, it you won’t be able to use the internet.

This means that if learning is to take place during a power cut, then it needs to be offline (downloaded), so it can be accessed without the internet.

It is important that any such learning activities are able to take place on (probably) a mobile device, with no connectivity. Mobile devices will have limited battery life, so though the idea of downloadable video content (recorded lectures) may be attractive, watching these can dramatically reduce the battery life of a device, so curtailing the amount of time it can be used for learning.

So how can universities prepare for low power asynchronous learning activities?

The obvious solution is to revert back to paper and candlelight as many students did in the 1970s. 

However fully charged devices with their own power source (batteries) provide the potential for digital learning despite there been no electricity.

It is likely that areas of the UK at risk of blackout will have some advance warning (as they did in the 1970s) of the risk of blackout, so allowing students a chance to download activities before the power cuts out.

If you’re not using video, you don’t have to be constrained by text, downloaded audio recordings and podcasts are possible options. Audio also means that the screen can be turned off (or turn the brightness down) again increasing battery life.

For example the high end iPhone 14 Pro on a full charge can deliver 29 hours of video playback. On a full charge it could also deliver 95 hours of audio playback. Of course those figures aren’t real-life experiences, and assumes the phone was fully charged when the power was cut.

Audio also doesn’t require light, so less need for lots of candles or torches.

Delivering audio as a subscribed podcast, means that the device will probably have downloaded the content already in the background, so will be available for listening when the power cuts out.

There will probably still need to be a reliance on contingency planning to ensure that students are aware of what they can do, and are able to do when everything goes dark.

They may not want to actually learn whilst it is dark.

There is the further challenge of what to do when the campus goes dark.

Learning during a blackout is always going to be a challenge, and for many students it will be something that they don’t do until the power comes back on. However universities can do some things that make at least some learning possible, so diminishing the impact of the blackout.

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OfS launches new strategy targeting quality and standards

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The Office for Students (OfS) is today launching its strategy for 2022 to 2025.

The strategy confirms two main areas of focus for the OfS’s work: quality and standards, and equality of opportunity.

The OfS’s work on quality and standards aims to ensure that students receive a high quality academic experience which improves their knowledge and skills. Much provision in the English higher education sector is excellent – the focus of the OfS will be on challenging provision that falls short, and taking action as needed.

On access and participation work, the OfS will encourage higher education providers to work in partnership with schools to raise attainment.

These two areas of focus are mutually reinforcing, with effective regulation of quality helping to ensure that students from all backgrounds have the support they need to succeed in and beyond higher education.

Speaking ahead of the launch of the strategy at a Parliamentary event later today [Wednesday], Lord Wharton, Chair of the OfS, said:

‘Our new strategy sets out a clear plan of action to achieve our goal of ensuring all students, regardless of their background, have a quality education and achieve successful outcomes.

‘Over the next three years we will take action to challenge universities and colleges offering students poor academic experiences. Courses that fall below our minimum requirements damage the quality of English higher education and harm the prospects of students from all backgrounds.

‘This new strategy will guide how the OfS will regulate in students’ interests over the next three years. Our focus on quality and equality of opportunity reflects the issues that are important to students, and which have the greatest impact on their experience. The strategy also sets out how we will support providers in their actions to address student mental health and prevent harassment and sexual misconduct.

‘We are committed to engaging with students as we deliver the strategy and will shortly be publishing refreshed student engagement priorities.’

Office for Students Strategy 2022 to 2025

learning technologies, news

Predicting is hard, and we can get it wrong

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HEPI published a blog post on Five common predictions about COVID and education that now appear to be wrong.

No one would dispute that COVID-19 has severely disrupted the education of millions of people. Our polling with Advance HE, for example, shows an unprecedented proportion of undergraduate students think they have received ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ value for money and twice as many as usual feel their experiences have been worse than their prior expectations.

This is not surprising, given full-time students on three-year courses graduating this summer will have had every one of their years at university disrupted. Those leaving school / college this summer have seen both their GCSEs and their school-leaving qualifications (A-Level / BTECs) affected. But it is also true that most of the really big predictions about how COVID would affect education have (fortunately) turned out to be wrong.

It makes for interesting reading. Predictions about fewer students, or higher drop-outs were wrong as it turned out.

Why does this matter, well the article summarises with this comment.

It is worth flagging how poor the predictions about education in a pandemic have turned out to be because it acts as a reminder about how hard it is to predict the future, because it could serve as a useful guide in future crises and because it shows the importance that hard counter-intuitive evidence should play in policymaking.

This is something that we can reflect upon.

One prediction made at the start of the pandemic by many involved in education technology was that the forced working from home would (post-pandemic) be a catalyst for more blended and online learning in higher education. The prediction was that following people being forced to use tools such as the VLE, Teams, Zoom, lecture capture, that this would embed such technologies into future teaching and learning. Well we know from the press this week that this may not be the case, with  Nadhim Zahawi talking in the Daily Mail that “Students made to pay tuition fees for Zoom lectures should revolt”. This kind of rhetoric makes any (current and future) use of online technologies challenging for universities. Benefits of online will be missed, as students will “revolt” regardless.

Later a more reasoned open letter was published on the Education Department website.

Many of our universities and colleges have been working hard to ensure Covid-secure face-to-face teaching is offered and I know that, for many of you, this face-to-face teaching is a vital part of getting a high-quality student experience. As you know, whilst the country was implementing wide-spread restrictions, the majority of teaching had to be moved online. There are some great examples of effective and innovative online teaching, and universities and colleges have been delivering a high-quality blended approach since before the pandemic. Maintaining the option of online teaching for those who are vulnerable or isolating is to be encouraged. However, face-to-face teaching should remain the norm and the pandemic and must not be used as an opportunity for cost saving or for convenience. I know that students expect and deserve face-to-face teaching and support, and you have my full backing.

But if universities were in any doubt about what they could do and what they should be doing, we had this from the Universities Minister.

The reality is that universities are now under pressure from Government and students to focus on and prioritise in-person face to face teaching.

So, the prediction that the pandemic restrictions and lockdowns would have a positive impact on the use of online and digital learning technologies across the board, may have been slightly off the mark.

I might predict that the job of embedding digital into higher education is now more difficult than it was before the pandemic.

What do you think?