Tag Archives: uuk

weeknotes

Through the medium of dance – Weeknote #319 – 11th April 2025

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Image by Bernard-Verougstraete from Pixabay

On Monday I was prepping stuff for the rest of the week. In the main developing and writing activity for UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce meeting. This involved diamonds and scissors.

I spent the day in London on Tuesday, the afternoon was taken up with the UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce meeting, however as I had a two hour online meeting with the HEAnet Group Advisory Forum I spent the morning in the office.

I had some necessary Dovetail admin and Miro admin to do this week. I hadn’t used Miro for weeks and then all of a sudden, I was asked to input to an influx of Miro boards. I do use Miro, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t much like the alternatives either.

We had a discussion about capturing the senior voice and then what do we do with that once we have that. A bit of we can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Spent some time planning a session for AHUA Conference next week, which is taking place at Swansea University.

Recognised the need to plan out E in NREN work I am undertaking in some more detail. It has been agreed that this will continue into 2026.

I am attending and presenting at a couple of online conferences later this month, so spent time planning, developing and writing those presentations. Yes you would be right in thinking there will be lots of photographs.

Image by Tom from Pixabay

Noted that the situation in higher education is still not good, and in some sense is getting worse.

As higher education institutions shed thousands of jobs, Times Higher are tracking developments and bringing together latest analysis with resources for affected staff and students.

As a mounting financial crisis grips UK universities, thousands of jobs are being axed across the sector. This page tracks latest updates, exploring the reasons behind the redundancies, how they will affect staff and students, and the long-term impact on higher education and research.

In similar news the sustainability of higher education was discussed at Parliament. Where the Augar report was reviewed as Education Committee learn about university finances

Notably, Augar argued that no university should fail – the impact on local areas and the international reputation of the sector would be too big – and called for “behind the scenes” support for struggling providers. Universities UK’s Malcolm Press argued once again for a transformation fund to support universities in adapting to the current circumstances.

Our work with UUK was mentioned in passing.

Malcolm Press (vice chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University, at the committee representing Universities UK) emphasised just how hard universities were working to drive efficiencies – highlighting examples of collaboration, and the ongoing Universities UK project in response to the government’s reform agenda.

Made me smile for the end of the week. This from WonkHE on Sussex on taking the position that universities can’t prohibit any speech unless it’s already explicitly banned by civil or criminal law.

 “The University would have to tolerate an academic conducting every lecture through the medium of song or mime (noting that freedom of speech protects the manner of speech as well as the content).”

weeknotes

Raising the standards – Weeknote #308 – 24th January 2025

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I was off to London again this week. I was attending an 1EdTech Event in London, Innovate your way out of the funding crisis. This was my first engagement with the standards community for some time. Before I joined Jisc and when I was working in Further Education I did a lot of work looking at standards in relation to moving student data around so it could be imported into the VLE. Then there were standards for learning objects and ensuring that they would work on the VLE, both importing and exporting the right data. I also being very impressed with LTI and what it would enable in allowing students to use a WordPress installation for blogging. Blogging, what was that, and is it still around?

We are starting work on a collaborative project with UUK on collaboration. Part of that is reviewing the original terms of reference and bringing in a consultant to undertake some of the work as well.

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Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

I have been spending time researching, planning and writing initial draft for a higher education state of activity report.

In February Jisc has one of its regular meetings with the OfS and I have been preparing some notes for that meeting.

Spent time on the planning and logistics for a workshop I am attending in Helsinki in February. The workshop is about NRENs for Education. NRENs are the National Research and Education Networks that most countries have for connecting their universities and research institutes. In the UK Jisc is the NREN. This workshop is bringing together a group of like-minded NRENs to work together on essentially student mobility.

I am anticipating that Helsinki will be cold. I have been before, for an EU e-Learning Conference which took place in July 2006 in Finland. I reminisced about that conference back in a weeknote in July 2019.

I also signed up for TNC in Brighton in June. It’s the first TNC I go to, and it’s in the UK. Reminds me when I got funding to go to the international conference mLearn, and the year I went, it was in Dudley.

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I haz a cold… – Weeknote #307 – 17th January 2025

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The week started off well, but by the end of the week I was off sick with a bad cold.

Have been having meetings with UUK in regard to strand two of the work of UUK’s Taskforce on Efficiency and Transformation in Higher Education. Strand two covers: Developing detailed business cases on options for national collaboration, which will be externally published, and will give the sector clear paths towards transformation. This builds on the recent report I worked on, Collaboration for a sustainable future which looked at collaboration and shared services.

On Thursday, decided I would get to London for our team away day. It was exhausting and certainly I regret a little bit in heading off there feeling rough as I did.

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Conditional creativity – Weeknote #303 – 20th December 2024

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Image by mohamed ramzee from Pixabay

An interesting blog post from WonKHE about the challenges that exist with restructuring higher education. It’s not as simple as we think it is. There is a lot of resistance and scepticism about merger that we have seen elsewhere as well.

Connect more: creating the conditions for a more resilient and sustainable HE sector in England

There is a startling dearth of law and policy around structural collaboration for HE; some issues such as the VAT rules on shared services, are well established, while others are more speculative. What would the regulatory approach be to a “federated” group of HE providers? What are merging providers’ legal responsibilities to students? What data and evidence might providers draw on to inform their planning?

Alignment, standardisation, rationalisation, and commonality, though requisite for merger, you don’t need to have merger to undertake the work to allow for greater alignment.

The Times Higher Education published an article about collaboration, and mentions the Jisc collaboration report by name.

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.

In addition, Jisc is involved in and working with the Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce. I am working in collaboration with UUK on a joint project working on the following strand:

  • Developing detailed business cases on options for national collaboration, which will be externally published, and will give the sector clear paths towards transformation

The launch of the taskforce is on the UUK website as well. I like this quote:

“While institutions have been doing more and more to be as efficient as possible, they have largely been doing so at an individual level. Truly impactful transformation will best be delivered through partnership and collaboration at both a regional and a national level. It is time for some blue sky thinking on what that looks like.”

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Blueprint – Weeknote #292 – 4th October 2024

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Image by GrumpyBeere from Pixabay

This week saw UUK publishing their blueprint for higher education.

Opportunity, growth and partnership – A blueprint for change from the UK’s universities

We stand at a fork in the road in the history of the UK’s universities. There is now a clear choice. We can allow our distinguished, globally competitive higher education system to slide into decline. Or we can act together, as institutions and with government, to ensure that higher education is able to deliver for the nation into the 2030s.

It is 143 pages long, so for the recommendations, head to page 128.

I did participate in the process of contributing to the report, in the main chapter six.

In relation to my work, there are two recommendations worth noting.

  • removing VAT on higher education shared services
  • introducing a transformation fund to enable and accelerate changes to universities’ operating and business models in order to achieve greater efficiency

It is a frustration for many higher education institutions that if they decide to outsource or collaborate on a shared service, then the institution has to pay VAT on the costs of that. Whereas if they decide to undertake the service in-house they obviously do not need to pay VAT. So even if there are savings to be had from shared services or collaboration, the reality is that any such savings are wiped out by the additional VAT costs.

I recently wrote about the need for universities to change.

So universities may know and realise that they need to change, but they can’t afford to make those changes now. As a result they may never change.

So, it was welcome to read in the UUK report about introducing a transformation fund to enable and accelerate changes to universities’ operating and business models in order to achieve greater efficiency.

blueprints
Image by Reto Scheiwiller from Pixabay

I have been reviewing and commenting on the draft of a report I have been working on.

Undertook some organising and planning for HEAnet Group Advisory Forum which is happening next week.

I also had a preparatory meeting for Education Summit presentation and conference, where I am presenting on the Intelligent Campus.

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Time back – Weeknote #275 – 7th June 2024

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I spent most of the week working from home, it is exam time for some in the house, so I was around to provide lifts to early revision sessions, or to ensure functionality in case of delayed buses. I had intended to work in the office at least one day this week, but I was also expecting a call from the garage about my car, and it would have been easier to pick it up travelling from home, than from the office.

I am currently taking a leadership course at Jisc, and this week I completed some more units from the Institute of Leadership. I have extensive management and leadership experience, running teams of various sizes, complexity and geographically distributed. I have planned, designed, and delivered shared services for consortia and complex organisations. I have also managed multi-million pound budgets and projects. In addition I have delivered management and leadership training, both at Jisc, to universities, and was a Management and Business Studies lecturer back in the 1990s.

Having said all that there is still room to both learn new things and to update existing knowledge. I also want to affirm my understanding of leadership as well. The course has been useful for these things.

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Image by Monoar Rahman Rony from Pixabay

Had a couple of internal meetings this week, they were scheduled for longer than they actually took. Though it’s nice to have time back, it would be even better if we had that time back before the meeting took place. Planning meetings takes time for the person planning the meeting but can save a lot more time for those participating in that meeting. Do they even need to be in that meeting?

I have written about meetings over my Technology Stuff blog.  Back in 2021 I reflected on an article by Atlassian on making meetings better, useful and interesting.

Running effective meetings isn’t simply a matter of doing the obvious things like sharing the agenda and starting on time. While those things are important, they’re just table stakes. The real key to running a great meeting is organizing and running them with a human touch – not like some corporate management automaton.

I also wrote about how “Meetings are a waste of time”

The perspective we can solve engagement issues by having meetings, and so we need to improve the online meetings, misses the key problem, which is the lack of engagement. This is a leadership and management challenge not just about improving online meetings. People have a personal responsibility to engage with corporate communication, give them choice, make it easier, but to think you solve it by having a meeting, is a similar thinking that people read all their e-mail.

I enjoyed reading this HEPI article on future scenarios for Higher Education.

The author, Professor Sir Chris Husbands, is the former vice-chancellor at Sheffield Hallam University. He develops four plausible scenarios for the future of English higher education and looks at what they could mean for students, universities and government.

Scenario 1 considers what happens on the current funding trajectory.

Scenario 2 looks at what a higher education sector fully funded for high participation, research and innovation might look like.

Scenario 3 explores the implications of a tertiary system.

Scenario 4 considers what a more differentiated system might look like.

I have written some scenarios up as future visions as prompts for discussion. The HEPI visions are much more near-future (and probably more realistic) than my visions. However my future visions are not supposed to be accurate predictions of the future, more as discussion pieces to prompt thinking about how higher education can change.

Found this article on Wonkhe interesting on the future financial sustainability of higher education: Why I wouldn’t bet against a fee rise after the election.

It’s long been assumed that whatever the outcome of the coming general election, fees would remain stuck in the freezer for the time being. We’ve pored over Public First polling that has neatly demonstrated how unpopular raising fees would be and concluded that no political party could feasibly contemplate this. But the ground is now shifting beneath our feet and I think a modest but significant fee rise looks more likely than ever.

I think that may happen, as a last resort if there are real possibilities of universities failing, as well as declining international student recruitment, then the (next) government may need to raise fees to ensure that universities survive financially.

I continued to do some researching and then writing June Intelligent Campus newsletter. This is posted over on the Jiscmail mailing list for the Intelligent Campus.

I have been working on an Intelligent Campus Maturity Tool, this has required me to map out competency statements    that institutions would require to assess their current state of readiness in relation to smart and intelligent campus.

Wrote a section for our board report on the work I have been doing.

I planned, prepared and then cancelled my Senior Education and Student Experience group meeting. I have now been asked to attend UUK Round Table on the same date.