A start of a new year for Jisc, our year runs from the 1st August to 31st July. This new year means for me, a new line manager. This will be my seventh manager in seven years. I hope that doesn’t say too much about me…

One of the things I have learnt both as a manager and one who had been managed is that an effective management relationship is about understanding one another. Its early days so much to learn about what works and what doesn’t.

As with last week, stuff is quiet, with universities closing for the summer  and lots of people going on holiday.

Spent a lot of the week writing up my quarterly review, and reflecting on the previous twelve months. This is more for me, as I am expecting my review meeting to focus on the next twelve months.

 I started planning for the next twelve months too, setting up a new Jira board for my weekly scrums, and a Confluence site for notes, planning and collating documents. I will also review my use of Dovetail going forward and link it all with Teams and OneDrive.

Website was still offline and therefore writing this without a blog, and will post it later…

Well the site was offline for most of the week, problems with the site and my provider. So, at this time I am writing this post, but it won’t be on the site for a while, however I am guessing for a few days, it should be back online.

It’s July, so stuff is quite quiet, with universities closing for the summer  and lots of people going on holiday.

Back at work this week, after I was on leave last week. Though I did write up a blog post on electrification, decarbonisation and smart energy based on my recent attendance and presentation at an (online) event looking at estates and work we did on the past on the intelligent campus.

Many in the sector, as part of their net zero ambitions are looking at decarbonisation of their campuses. One method is to move from oil and gas use to electric in the main for heating and hot water. Generation of electrical power can be then derived from sustainable and renewable resources such as wind and solar. I was reminded of some of the work we did a few years ago on smart energy.

I read a couple of reports this week and reflected on what this meant for higher education and for Jisc.

I read the Government response to the Education Committee Report – Higher Education and Funding: Threat of Insolvency and International Students.

There was nothing new in here, as we had heard about the Education Committee Report earlier in the year, this was about the Government response. One of the key messages for me from this report, was the reinforcement and emphasis on the responsibility for the financial situation within the sector lies with the sector. 

…higher education providers are responsible for managing their finances and must have robust contingency planning in place to protect students…

Though with the many different constraints on the sector, this isn’t always easy or straightforward.

The other report I read was from the Institute for Government who published a report titled Government and academia: How government can better engage with researchers. The message here was that the research sector and government could work together much better and that both sides need to work out how to function more effectively.

Again, I was involved in various consultancy meetings this week. My main role in these are about quality assurance.

I managed one day in the Bristol office this week. I wasn’t planning to to do more than one day. I do enjoy working in the Bristol office, but at this time of year, it’s a little bit quieter than normal. Working with a geographically distributed team, in-person working as a team is a rare event.

I was on leave this week, so no weeknote this week.

This week I was at an (online) event looking at estates. I was chairing the first half of the event and presenting in the second half. The event was entitled Next steps for university estates in the UK.

It was a really interesting online conference with a keynote from the CEO of AUDE, along with panel sessions on a range of topics. There was quite a focus on net zero and decarbonisation. I personally found the discussion on electrification of university campuses really interesting. Something I think I might write a longer blog post about, as the move from oil and gas use to electric in the main for heating and hot water is something that the sector is looking at, as they aim to achieve their net zero ambitions.

My own session was on internationalisation and the impact that this could have on estates and the way they are managed. I spoke about student mobility, what is happening in Europe with the Higher Education Interoperability Framework and the potential synergy and alignment this has with the LLE aspirations in the UK.

With our third heatwave I did head into the office, which is air-conditioned (partly powered by solar panels). I enjoyed reading David Kernohan’s article on keeping cool on campus.

I think this section is something that the sector should take note of.

Direct sunlight heats the structure of a building – bricks, glass, concrete, roof tiles – and these elements heat the inside, often for hours after the direct sunlight has gone. Dense foliage from fast-growing trees is a cheap (far cheaper than altering and adapting the building) and renewable way to cool down, all while lowering pollution. And, with appropriate maintenance, it looks fantastic.

Many of the campuses I have worked on have been very hot in heatwave weather. The cooling functionality was often not sufficient. Having also been involved in many new builds, often the planning restrictions meant that for environmental reasons air conditioning wasn’t allowed to be installed and in many cases would have been quite expensive to run.

I was involved in various consultancy meetings this week. My main role in these are about quality assurance.

Busy week with lots of meetings.

I have done very little travel over the last few months, my last trip was back in April when I was up in Leeds for the AUDE conference. My original plan was to head to TNC in Helsinki in June last month, but didn’t make the cut, as too many people from Jisc wanted to go. Though I enjoyed TNC last year, my main reason for attending, wasn’t in fact attending TNC, I was part of two side meetings on the Monday before TNC. Next year TNC 27 is in Belgium, this should be easier to get to for the side meetings, as I could literally drive there, well and hop on a ferry to get across the channel.

I had considered going to the EUNIS conference in Romania, I was there last year when it was held in Belfast. Last year I was speaking, if I had gone this year it would have been as a delegate. It would have been useful to go, buy I have been asked to cut back on my travel and conference attendance. I have missed a lot of conferences this year, compared to last year, but at most of these there were others from Jisc in attendance.

I did though publish a few things on the blog.

I didn’t write about snow, but I did write about heatwaves and response from schools and colleges.

Following the Met Office weather warning and forecasted high temperatures, we are making some temporary changes to teaching arrangements for the remainder of this week to help ensure the comfort, wellbeing, and safety of learners and staff. Campuses will be closed to curriculum teaching from Wednesday to Friday inclusive. 

In another blog post I discussed the importance of discovery in enabling student mobility and some of the issues that would be faced in the UK.

Margo wants to study towards a degree but wants to combine different modules from different courses across Europe. She knows the subjects she is interested in; she also knows which countries where she would like to study. However, she doesn’t know which universities across Europe offer which modules. Discovery would allow Freya to access the course and module catalogues from across a range of universities, compare different offerings and would be able to refine her search based on specific criteria. She would also be sure that the information she finds is up to date.

This was the first in a series of articles where I will be looking at student mobility in the UK. What I mean by student mobility is how a student can choose when and where to study, at a time and place that is suitable for them. It’s about enabling students to take parts of courses from different institutions. This (in theory) is possible now, but was challenging for students from both a financial perspective and administratively.

I wrote about two stories on collaboration.

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.

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.

I was involved in various consultancy meetings this week. My main role in these are about quality assurance.

Next week I am presenting at the Westminster Higher Education Forum policy conference on the next steps for university estates in the UK.

A busy week with lots of meetings, research, and responding to emails and questions.

I have been reflecting on the challenges that the higher education sector are facing and how difficult it appears to be for the sector to respond to these challenges. 

Looking back over my blog posts, back in August 2024, I wrote about how hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I wrote then 

There are lots of examples of how organisations and companies did not respond to changes and trends. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as you can ask, why didn’t they change, they could see the challenge, they could have changed, they could have adapted. The problem often is that though internally the organisation may know it needs to change, the current situation means they are unable to change.

Higher Education knows that they are facing challenges, and that they need to change. They know this. However a deeper question is not the one that Higher Education needs to be told they need to change, they know that, but they are actually unable to change and so the question is how do we change a sector, that knows it needs to change, but actually can’t make that change.

Two year after writing that post on the need for change, I am not seeing significant change or transformational change. There have been at most two mergers, but not a huge amount of collaboration either.

Where we have seen significant change has been in job losses across the sector. This week I wrote a post about the implications of the current round of redundancies at the University of Dundee.

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.

They are not alone in needing to make savings and job cuts.

One of the unanswered questions is how will all this impact on the student experience.