Tag Archives: wonkhe

Defining credit – Weeknote #377 – 22nd May 2026

May 22, 2026 James Clay Leave a comment

One of the interesting things for me this week was the WonkHE analysis on the three draft statutory instruments which herald the end game of the biggest change in the student finance system since 2011.

The article notes that…

…arguably the most interesting point in these regulations is section 9(2)(b) which puts into English law for the first time the idea that a single academic credit is equivalent to ten notional learning hours.

This equivalency is important for LLE as it means a student can stack credits for a qualification from different institutions and times. This in itself creates another headache. Does a credit from one institution now mean it is equivalent to a credit from another? Will that be accepted by all institutions. Another question that I saw at a recent event was how long is a credit viable for, will it lose its validity over time, and does that matter, or if it does which subjects would need this.

I did my Economics degree back in the 1980s, and much of what I learnt then hasn’t changed much, to be honest it hadn’t changed much in the previous forty years, let alone the last forty years. Some units I did are probably out of date, thinking about that unit I did on the Economics of European Community. Whilst others, such as that module on Economic and Social History probably hasn’t aged.

One of the other interesting things for me this week was the WonkHE analysis on who gets to offer LLE modules?

You might think that – given past failures to attract learners – that the government would want to spread the net as far as possible as regards lifelong learning entitlement (LLE) provision.

You would be wrong.

There are just 130 providers who have registered for LLE provision. Does this mean anything, will it result in a no one caring about LLE, or is this just the beginning.

I attended a webinar about open education early in the week. It reminded me of many discussions I have had about open over the years. Listening in to the conversations I did pitch in that we have to sometimes think open is the solution, not a problem in itself to be solved. Sometimes I think when we start talking about open, we are trying to solve the open problem, how do we ensure education is open, how do we publish open educational resources, etc… As with my recent post on bridge building, we have to remember that open is a solution. A solution to another problem. What we have to do sometimes is remind ourselves on what problem open is trying to solve.

weeknotes

Is unbookable a word? – Weeknote #376 – 15th May 2026

May 15, 2026 James Clay Leave a comment

A quiet week for me, though there were a few events running this week, including Jisc’s Connect More. I did get to the Bristol office for one day.

I finished writing my blog post on bookable and unbookable desks, PCs, and sun loungers following a couple of BBC News articles.

Reminds me why I never used PC booking software when running my libraries. Students would reserve PCs with their “towels” and then never turn up. The PC was unused and unavailable for others to use.

sun loungers by a pool — Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash

News of another higher education merger hit the headlines, with KCL and Cranfield planning to merge next year. I suspect we will hear about more mergers over the next couple of years. I also suspect we might see some higher education institutions close after the OfS and HESA published financial information about the sector, and in some cases the optimism of the sector, which if doesn’t come to pass may see places close. The Office for Students says that there is widespread and persistent over-optimism about sector finances. What this means is that if plans don’t come to fruition then the only choice might be closure (or forced merger).

The WonkHE analysis (as usual) was excellent.

David Kernohan digests this year’s OfS summary of annual financial returns, and the parallel release of HESA finance data

The priority will be the students.

In LLE news we saw 130 providers approved for LLE provision.

These providers will be able to offer short courses with a January 2027 start date that are fundable (pro rata to academic credit) via the LLE.

So not quite the broad range of providers that the promise of LLE said would happen.

I was doing some planning for TNC 26 even though I am not attending the conference.

I was editing a post on the blog from May 2019 (there was an issue with one of the images) when I read this.

…it was an earlier start than normal as I had a meeting with some European colleagues about a workshop we’re running at TNC in June in Tallinn in Estonia.

Now I know I didn’t attend TNC 19 in Estonia, so when I did some digging into my email archive and saw that there was quite a bit of chat and conversations. The core of which was the creation of GÉANT’s TF-EDU (Task Force Education) including a draft proposal for the group. I didn’t realise (well didn’t remember) that I was involved back then. Getting old!

stuff

Impact of financial challenges – the student perspective

January 30, 2026 James Clay 1 Comment

The Office for Students (OfS) has published the results from a survey (from April 2025) on students’ perceptions of their providers’ response to financial challenges.

WonkHE have done their usual excellent analysis of the polling and is well worth a read.

83 per cent of those polled thought that cost-cutting measures had changed the experience they felt they’d been promised – often through larger class sizes than expected, greater use of online learning, or reduced access to academic resources and student support.

Some of my own thoughts on this.

The survey was actually done last April, so the impact of more recent responses to financial sustainability won’t have influenced the results. Even so, it demonstrates that cost-cutting is impacting on the student experience and this is reducing student satisfaction.

Interesting to read that greater use of online learning is still seen as a negative, the impact of remote online learning during covid is still having an impact. We have to remember that the majority of students been surveyed weren’t actually at university at the height of the covid lockdowns, so their experiences of school and college are having a longitudinal impact on their feelings about online learning.

Changes noted by students included increased class sizes, and my recent post on Nottingham and their changes to student staff ratios shows that this is not going away anytime soon.

What this report and analysis is showing is that student satisfaction is being impacted by the financial situation in higher education. Though fees are set to rise, this is only going to reflect inflation, so costs in real terms is going to stay the same. We might not see so much cost reduction in the future, but we need to reflect that we not going to see much increase in real spending either.

What will this mean, well with fees still set to rise and actual costs of going to university, falling graduate incomes, does this mean that the benefit of attending university becomes less attractive to prospective students in the future?

weeknotes

Writing stuff – Weeknote #354 – 12th December

December 12, 2025 James Clay Leave a comment

Took some leave this week, so a shorter week than normal. Did spend two days in Bristol where we had some Christmas festivities happening. Nice to see people I hadn’t seen in a while.

Spent time looking at and understanding various data models and standards. Over the last few weeks I have been looking at data models. This made me reminisce about the work I did back in the day with the Western Colleges Consortium, which I wrote about.

I also was reviewing some policies this week as well.

I had some mandatory training come up as well. My usual tactic with this is to just get it done and dusted, rather than procrastinating about it, avoiding all those email reminders and management messages on non-compliance and completion.

I found an WonkHE article on insolvency interesting and the current state of thinking at government and by others on what would happen if a university was to fail. I wrote up my thoughts.

Typewriter — Image by Patrik Houštecký from Pixabay

I am trying to do more writing, on this blog, for internal communications, and potentially other places well.

stuff

Insolvency on the horizon

December 10, 2025 James Clay Leave a comment

abandoned room — Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

I found this WonkHE article on insolvency interesting and the current state of thinking at government and by others on what would happen if a university was to fail.

Insolvency legislation “permits continued trading” if a university enters compulsory liquidation. How so?

The view of the Minister

“…were an organisation to enter into compulsory liquidation, we believe that insolvency legislation permits continued trading during that period of compulsory liquidation. It would mean, therefore, that we would be able, as I have described, to support students, to support research and the important capacity of that provider during the period of liquidation, and to make sure particularly that students had the opportunity to be supported through a teach-out of their course, to be supported to move elsewhere, and to have their records and their achievements protected.”

I did think this from Mills & Reeve was interesting as well.

“The vast majority of entities operating as HEIs are not able to go into an insolvency process, save possibly for liquidation. This is because they are mostly incorporated by Royal Charter or are HECs, and are not therefore companies under the insolvency legislation.”

There was news a few weeks back that there were some universities on the verge of bankruptcy. We still really don’t know what will happen if an HEI fails. The smaller failures in higher education we have seen before have been private companies.

From a digital and technology perspective, could a failed institution continue to maintain a secure and stable infrastructure for example? You can well imagine professional services staff leaving, both as the organisation was wound down, but also as they moved to new and more secure jobs.

We know that the OfS perspective in England is to protect the needs of the student, hence the talk of “teach-out” and supporting students move to other providers. I do think that the actual process will depend a lot on the geographical location of the failed provider. For example, a provider in a large metropolitan area offers students more options, whereas a sole provider in a larger rural part of the country, there are less options.

I do think though that a better option is to avoid reacting and being more proactive in avoiding insolvency. This does mean thinking very differently about the way the university as a business is managed and transforming the operating model to something that is a lot more sustainable. Of course the challenge with that is though there are lots of similarities between higher education institutions, there are enough substantial differences, meaning there isn’t one model with fits all.

weeknotes

Your radio voice – Weeknote #350 – 14th November

November 14, 2025 James Clay Leave a comment

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.

coffee

Time for a coffee

November 6, 2025 James Clay Leave a comment

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.

weeknotes

Don’t wait for the translation! Answer me now! – Weeknote #348 – 31st October

October 31, 2025 James Clay Leave a comment

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.

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

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.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past – Weeknote #342 – 19th September

September 19, 2025 James Clay Leave a comment

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.

lecture theatre — Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

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.

There’s something for everyone in the latest rethink of the Teaching Excellence Framework, but as David Kernohan suggests at WonkHE, bringing disparate approaches together can highlight fundamental weaknesses.

news

Let’s get ready to rumble…

September 10, 2025 James Clay 3 Comments

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?

eLearning Stuff

Tag Archives: wonkhe

Defining credit – Weeknote #377 – 22nd May 2026

Is unbookable a word? – Weeknote #376 – 15th May 2026

Impact of financial challenges – the student perspective

Writing stuff – Weeknote #354 – 12th December

Insolvency on the horizon

Your radio voice – Weeknote #350 – 14th November

Time for a coffee

Don’t wait for the translation! Answer me now! – Weeknote #348 – 31st October

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past – Weeknote #342 – 19th September

Let’s get ready to rumble…

news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…