Much of this week was spent in London. Monday I was in our London office, and on Tuesday and Wednesday I was at the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education where I was speaking on a panel about collaboration.
I really enjoyed attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education and I am slightly sad that they are taking a fallow year in 2026. What works for me is the structure and format of the range of sessions that happen across the conference. I like the interview format of the keynote sessions which is different to the usual kinds of keynotes we see at other conferences. There was a dearth of PowerPoint slides in most sessions, which I liked. Sometimes slides dominate a session rather than enhance it.
My session was on how to collaborate, which seemed to go down well. Also decent audience for a penultimate session on the final day. The only issue for me was that I had a bad cough all week which meant that I had virtually lost my voice and did have trouble speaking in the session, a number of people referenced my radio voice.
I particularly enjoyed the final session about where will higher education be in 2050. There was an amusing lively debate on the discord channel for this conference session. It reminded me of how we would use what was the Twitter back in the early 2010s at conferences.
At the end of the week I braved the rain and delayed trains to get to the office in Bristol.
Saw on WonkHE that Nestlé had undertaken a survey on student coffee drinking habits, now I had to read that. The survey, Behind the Beans: Coffee on Campus,isn’t too much of a surprise, well it was commissioned by Nestlé, you know they do that Nescafe stuff.
94% of students regularly buy coffee on campus, with mornings being the most popular time…
As we know coffee is getting more expensive, so…
72% of students have changed their coffee-buying habits due to cost increases…
That shouldn’t be too surprising.
With my intelligent campus and learning spaces work I have visited many different university campuses, one constant feature was coffee shops, sometimes chains such as Starbucks and Costa, other times it was home brewed coffee places. Of course, all were selling espresso based drinks. I look back at my university experience in the late 1980s and I trying to recall what was available back then. There wasn’t any espresso type coffee on sale, and I suspect that it was probably filter coffee, or even instant.
Of course in a climate of financial instability, it makes sense to ensure that your campus catering outlets are meeting both the needs of students, but also not losing money. Understanding the purchasing habits of your students can ensure that you are selling what they want, when they want it, and at a price they are willing to pay. The high street chains are always reviewing the profitability of their branches, and I am sure everyone reading this will have seen at least one coffee shop close in their city or town. University catering outlets though are not just about profit, they are also part of that student experience. I did write an interesting blog piece on coffee analytics a couple of years ago and could we combine data on coffee drinking (along with snacks and tea) with other student data sets to better understand the student experience. I actually think we could still do that.
On Monday I was in London, along with my colleague, I was delivering a presentation about Jisc to a delegation of Koreans from KERIS. They were on a study tour of the UK and had asked to see Jisc and hear about who we support higher education. It was an interesting experience presenting and then waiting for the translation, before continuing the delivery. Likewise answering question was equally challenging. I wrote up about the visit for an internal blog.
I was involved in various meetings about a workshop I am helping to deliver next week in Amsterdam.
I spent a lot of time analysing the recent higher education white paper and what it means for higher education, Jisc, and what we can do to support the sector. There was a lot of discussion in the paper about collaboration and sharing.
I noted that Advance HE are getting into the collaboration space as announced on the WonkHE site.
On the site this morning, Alistair Jarvis sets out for the first time his plans for Advance HE to focus its offer to members on transformation and change. Recognising that the sector’s challenges will necessitate significant transformation agendas, innovation and a different set of leadership skills, Jarvis commits to modernising the sector’s development agency and putting transformation and change “at the heart of what Advance HE does.” A new strategic advisory group will support in-house expertise to embed transformation support across all Advance HE’s programmes, products, and services.
There are some interesting comments in the article and the primary focus of Advance HE now to be on transformation and change (rather than improvement).
Firstly, we have made supporting transformation and change a core part of our membership offer.
They indicate that they will do this by:
Supporting enhancement, change and transformation will now be at the heart of what Advance HE does – embedded across our member benefits, our programmes and our consultancy. To help institutions through these challenging times we will apply our expertise, experience and resources to best support enhancement and service improvement, where it is needed.
As we know transformation is usually enhanced and enabled by digital, data and technology. The next comment shows a potential opportunity for Jisc as well.
Collaborating with partner organisations that are supporting transformation and change will be central to our approach. Blending our expertise in leadership development, educational excellence, equality and inclusion, governance effectiveness with the experience of partners that have different but complementary skills and capabilities.
They also see that they have a role for mergers as well as less formal collaboration as well.
…we have launched the Merger Insights and Roadmap, a new resource for navigating institutional collaboration, partnerships and mergers.
This week I actually spent three days of my working week, working in the Bristol office. It was a very busy office, and as a result there was a real buzz. Some of my colleagues in my team were also in the office, so there was much discussion and in-person collaboration.
The beginning of the week I was in a meeting looking at improving internal communication and collaboration within our directorate. It was an interesting meeting.
Spent a lot of time on organising and planning next week. I am off to the Netherlands for a GÉANT TF-EDU (Education Taskforce) meeting in Delft and then will be attending the 1EdTech Learning Impact conference before ending the week meeting up with Dutch colleagues from SURF. I helped put together a presentation which Jisc will be presenting next week at the conference looking at sharing and collaboration.
I did look at travel options for the trip; my first choice was to actually drive and use the Harwich Hook of Holland ferry. Though this would take a lot more time, most of which would be driving to Harwich in Essex, which with charging would be a six or even seven hour drive followed by an eight hour ferry crossing. Another option was to catch the train. There are direct trains from London to Amsterdam, but the timings are challenging as it is a nearly a five hour train journey, but I would need to get to London first, and then at the other end get to Delft. In the end it was easier, quicker (and cheaper) to fly from Bristol. It’s a seventy-five minute flight, though I have to get from Schiphol to Delft, however that is less than an hour away on the train.
The OfS has proposed a revised TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) and is consulting how it assesses and regulates higher education. One key point is putting a lower burden on high-quality institutions; and increased scrutiny on weaker ones. There is still some reliance on NSS scores, which we know sometimes skews how universities interact with students.
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 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?
After attending a conference in Belfast last week, this week I was off to Brighton for TNC25. TNC is the conference for the NREN community.
One of the sketchnotes I did.
At the conference I did four different key things.
Delivered presentation in the TF-EDU side meeting
Delivered presentation in the BoF NRENs 4 Education session.
Delivered presentation in the REFEDS side meeting
Supported Jisc stand at TNC25
I also attended NRENs 4 Education planning and development (side) meeting as well. Here we were working on an NRENs 4 Education proposal.
Attended an UUK Collaboration project update meeting and also spent time reviewing feedback on UUK Collaboration project strategic outline cases (new nomenclature for what were the business cases).
The week after next I am presenting at Networkshop, so reviewed my presentation and presentation notes.
Are students at breaking point? Via WonkHE
More than two-thirds of full-time undergraduate students undertake paid work during term time, up from 42 per cent in 2020 – while students report a notable decrease in time spent on independent study as they balance employment and academic commitments. The Advance HE / HEPI Student Academic Experience Survey also finds that 37 per cent of students perceive their course as good value for money (down from 39 per cent in 2024), and a record low of 56 per cent of students would have chosen the same course and university if they had their time again.
Three-quarters of students report that cost-of-living pressures have notably impacted their studies, nearly one-in-five students have taken on more debt than planned (particularly affecting home students), and other impacts include reduced spending on course equipment, lower participation in sports and societies, and increased commuting costs. Financial challenges mean that 6 per cent of home students selected a different course than they had planned to, and 7 per cent selected a different institution than they had planned to.
Is university still going to be a viable option for many prospective students?
Having spent last week in Brussels, this week I was over in Belfast attending the EUNIS 25 Congress. I was supporting a workshop session on student mobility. as part of our work on NRENs for Education, or as I have been calling it internally E in NREN.
There were lots of interesting sessions, I think for me one of the challenges the sector faces, is that yes there are data and technical issues that need resolving, but there are only part of the solution. Some of the real challenges is rethinking the operating model and making those cultural process changes required to take advantage of the work being undertaken with standards and data.
Spent some time preparing for events and meetings I am attending in Brighton at TNC25.
Universities UK’s (UUK) transformation and efficiency taskforce was established in response to significant financial pressure on the higher education sector in all four nations of the UK. Our aim is to tackle the challenges we collectively face, to support the efforts of individual universities to achieve greater efficiency, and to seek opportunities for collective action to help our universities go further and faster than they can alone. This report is the first of three outputs from the taskforce, and together these mark Phase 1 of a long-term commitment to embark on a new era of collaboration.
I have been working on phase two of the work, though not sure if there will be a similar public facing publication.
As with much of the communication about collaboration, the challenges facing the sector, means the real challenge for many universities will be taking that first step towards collaboration. What and where should a university collaborate and with whom.
The case for university collaboration in the UK has been made with increasing frequency as the financial squeeze starts to make itself felt in profound ways. That said, there has been little tangible activity – the report points to longstanding structures such as the University of London federation, existing networks of research collaborations, and strategic working with local stakeholders. The taskforce adds the multi-academy trust-esque group structures employed by the (HE and FE) University of the Highlands and (cross sector) London South Bank to the list., and there is a nod to the world of sharing expensive research infrastructure too.
Interesting blog from the Competition and Markets Authority
Our universities are one of the UK’s greatest success stories – they produce world-class research, drive innovation across the economy and remain critical to equipping people with the skills they need to get on in life. Skills are, of course, crucial to economic growth and a successful industrial strategy, both of which we support. However, we know that many higher education providers are facing very challenging financial situations and that greater collaboration between universities could help support the sector. This is where competition law – and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) – can play a role. While some collaborations are more problematic under competition law, there are many areas where they are beneficial and pose no competition law risks. We can also support collaborations that benefit the UK by making clear that we won’t prioritise enforcement.
This was a shorter week, as not only was there a bank holiday on Monday, but I also took a day’s leave.
On Tuesday I was down in Southampton for a meeting. Though there are many advantages to Teams and Zoom, sometimes participating in an in-person meeting gives you more insights than the online version. There are affordances with digital, so I always consider them just different, rather than one being better than the other. Also, less train travel with an online meeting.
Spent most of the rest of the week working on the collaboration project we are doing with UUK. There were a few administrative meetings as well in my diary.
Friday I had an early start for an NRENs4Education (what I have been called in these weeknotes E in NREN) meeting about a future meeting in Brussels. As a group we have quite high aspirations, but there are many challenges that we face as we look at student mobility across Europe.
The press this week as been full of depressing detail about the financial state of higher education.
I’m a fan of net liquidity days (a measure showing the number of days a university could run for in the absence of any further income). Anything below a month (31 days) makes me sit up and take notice… there’s 10 large-ish universities in that boat including some fairly well-known names.
More than four in 10 universities in England are expecting to be in a financial deficit by this summer, according to new report from the Office for Students (OfS). The OfS, which regulates higher education providers, said universities were closing courses and selling buildings to cut costs, but “significant reform and efficiencies” were needed to turn the tide. It said a drop in international students coming to the UK was the main reason for the worsening financial position. The report found that 117 of 270 higher education institutions (43%) registered with the OfS expected to be in deficit by the end of July – despite course closures, job losses and selling off assets.
This demonstrates once more for the need for the sector to rethink their operating model. This can’t be just about more money, as we do need to consider the impact that (continually) raising fees will have on students, student wellbeing, and future student recruitment.
Much of the week was about working on the UUK project on collaboration.
I have been working on supporting the work on 12 ideas; combine that with review meetings, writing content, tidying up slides for a presentation, and then some.
Also been working on the E in NREN work looking at student mobility across Europe.
Attended the Wonkhe and Mills and Reeve Connect More webinar realising opportunities for strategic collaboration in higher education which was very interesting and relevant to my current work.
Attended a briefing for Digifest which is happening next week.
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.
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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