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The Society for Research into Higher Education


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Five things we learned from universities’ pensions accounting disclosures in 2025

by John Ingoe

It’s been a period of good news for university pensions: Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) costs are set to fall from next year, the USS preliminary valuation results show a sizeable surplus and the aggregate funding position of self-administered trust (SAT) schemes sponsored by universities improved materially over the year to 31 July 2025. But beneath the headline improvement there are stark gaps between  institutions with a SAT defined benefit (DB) scheme. Some universities may soon be considering how best to use a pension surplus, while others could face higher contribution demands under the Pensions Regulator’s new funding regime.  I should note that for trust-based schemes, it is the trustees who are the legal owners of the pension scheme assets. They must act “in line with the pension scheme trust deed and rules, in the best interests of the pension scheme members [and] impartially, prudently, responsibly and honestly.”  As such, decisions on both use of surplus and making up shortfalls do not rest solely in the hands of the universities involved.

We reviewed the 2024/25 pension disclosures of 29 universities that sponsor their own SAT DB scheme for some groups of staff. We looked at how their funding positions have changed, how much universities are contributing, what their schemes cost to run and how these arrangements compare with the wider DB universe and USS. Five findings stood out.

Finding 1: Things are looking up

Balance sheet positions improved and contributions paid by universities fell over the year. Driven by a combination of higher bond yields, strong returns from growth assets, and employer contributions, all but three universities saw an improvement in their balance sheet position over 2024/25.  All else being equal, those same factors should also mean that funding positions, which drive contribution requirements, have improved in recent years. We saw some evidence of this over 2024/25, as aggregate contributions fell to around £190m from £220m in 2023/24.

However, there’s a big caveat – the Pensions Regulator’s new funding code is now in place, and so all else is not equal.  The new funding code may lead to the trustees of SATs pushing for stronger funding targets and less time being given to making good any shortfall, both of which could lead to an increase in contribution requirements. Exactly how contributions change will, as always, depend on each institution’s particular set of circumstances.

Finding 2: The aggregate position hides material differences between institutions

Pension schemes have legal obligations to balance assets and liabilities in the long term. Schemes are frequently reviewed to check the  – “the extent to which the employer and any suitable contingent assets can support the scheme, now and in the future, and the risks to this support being available when needed.” If normal employer contributions are not currently sufficient they may be obliged to pay extra deficit contributions to restore the balance.

Universities and trustees carry out valuations of their pension schemes for a variety of reasons. Every year, universities carry out a valuation to determine the pension scheme asset or liability to recognise on their balance sheet, and the cost of the scheme to show in their accounts for the year.  For universities reporting under the UK accounting standard, the requirements for this valuation are set out in Section 28 of FRS102.

Separately, every three years (or more frequently if needed), trustees will assess whether they have sufficient assets to meet their liabilities (ie the pensions that are promised to members).  In carrying out this valuation, and placing a present value on future pension payments, assumptions are made around future investment returns, inflation and mortality (among other things).  If the valuation shows a shortfall (ie if the assets are not sufficient to cover the liabilities), the sponsor may be obliged to pay deficit contributions to ‘balance the books’.  The requirements for funding valuations are governed  by the Pensions Regulator.

The aggregate position across the 29 universities in our survey is healthy, with an FRS102 surplus of £620m at 31 July 2025.  But funding levels vary significantly and different universities are having to consider very different questions. For a handful of better funded schemes there is a surplus and attention will turn to how the surplus could be used. Could it subsidise the cost of new benefit build-up or improve member benefits, could it improve defined-contribution (DC ) benefits, or could it be returned to the university? For the five best funded arrangements the total surplus on a Low Dependency basis could be in excess of £600m. (Low Dependency is the minimum measure that could be used to determine whether a surplus could be released to a sponsor, ie the university).  Potentially, that £600m could all be used for one or more of the aims set out above.

Others are still facing a shortfall and are continuing to pay extra deficit contributions. The new funding code could mean that scheme trustees look to strengthen funding targets and remove any shortfall more quickly. For the five least well-funded schemes, annual contributions by universities might increase by 50% to meet the new DB funding code’s “Fast Track” parameters. 

Finding 3: HE funding positions lag behind the wider UK DB universe

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) estimates that, for all the DB schemes it regulates, around 80% of schemes are fully funded on a Low Dependency basis and 60% on a buy-out basis. However at 31 July 2025 we estimate that the equivalent figures are 25% and 15% in higher education. On average, DB schemes in the HE sector are not as well funded as their counterparts elsewhere. 

University accounts do not give definitive information, but an educated guess is that:

  • As part of a funding valuation, trustees consider the ‘covenant’ – “the extent to which the employer and any suitable contingent assets can support the scheme, now and in the future, and the risks to this support being available when needed.” – provided by the sponsoring employer.  Historically, employers in higher education have been viewed as having a strong covenant (or certainly, a stronger covenant than many UK DB scheme sponsors). Having a stronger covenant means that trustees and sponsors are more able to adopt less prudent funding targets, and to allow any funding shortfall to be made good over a longer period. 
  • Most of the schemes in our study have now hedged a significant level of interest rate and inflation risk, but the timing of any change in investment strategy matters.  A scheme that hedged these risks before the “mini-budget” in September 2022 will not have benefitted as much from the subsequent bond yield rises (as other schemes, including USS, have). 
  • Many of the DB schemes considered remain open (three in four still have benefits building up).  That means that there is naturally less focus on the “end-game” of the scheme, which may in turn mean less stringent funding targets are in place.  For example, an open scheme is unlikely to be targeting the very prudent level of funding needed for a buy-out transaction (ie securing benefits with an insurer – an option that is increasingly targeted by closed private sector schemes). 
  • The SAT DB schemes do not represent the most significant pension cost or risk for HE institutions. For some institutions, the level of contributions required for USS is also likely to have constrained their ability to address funding shortfalls in their SAT schemes more quickly.

For many institutions it may well remain the case that they are not as prudently funded as the average DB scheme – and that’s absolutely fine. However, for some universities, scheme trustees may become more uncomfortable with shortfalls and/or weaker funding targets. The general improvement in funding levels across the DB universe, combined with the Pensions Regulator’s new funding code, may mean we see scheme trustees pushing for higher contributions to strengthen their scheme’s funding position more quickly.

Finding 4: Running a DB pension scheme is an expensive business

Running a DB pension scheme is not cheap, but our survey suggests that the costs of running schemes in the HE sector may be particularly high. We might expect the core running costs for schemes to be around 0.33% of assets for smaller schemes and as low as 0.15% of assets for larger schemes. Based on the information in our study, the average running cost for those that disclosed it in their 2024/25 pension note was almost 0.6% of assets, with 1 in 8 spending more than 1% of assets on running their scheme over 2024/25.

There will undoubtedly be reasons for this “overspend”. Benchmarking of costs is likely to be dominated by closed schemes, and it is more complex (and therefore more expensive) to run an open DB scheme. Universities may also have provided additional work beyond the “core service” requirements of a pension scheme. But even taking those factors into account, there may still be scope to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Pension running costs may not receive the same scrutiny as other university expenses, especially if they are met directly by the scheme, but these costs are still ultimately borne by the employer, and so should face the same scrutiny as other costs.

Finding 5: The importance of these arrangements is overshadowed by USS

Across the universities in the survey, less than 10% of total pension expenditure was in respect of benefits building up in a SAT DB scheme. This partly reflects the fact that DB is not the sole method of pension provision for non-academic staff in the sector – many institutions offer a DC option alongside, or in place of, their DB arrangements. But most pension expenditure is on academic staff who, for the institutions in our survey, are mainly members of USS. As a result, the contributions to USS were materially higher than contributions to other arrangements.

In total, the 29 universities considered recognise around £6bn of pension liabilities on their balance sheet.  The USS preliminary funding valuation (for all universities in the scheme) puts USS pension liabilities at over £60bn. There are more employers participating in USS than the 29 universities considered in our study, so we cannot conclude that each university has ten times as much exposure to USS as to its own SAT DB scheme. At a sector level, however, it does illustrate the relative scale of USS – and, given its strong current funding position, the significance of that improvement for the financial outlook of the sector as a whole.

What should universities be thinking about?

From a pension perspective, things have greatly improved in recent years, with an expectation that the position at 31 July 2026 is likely to be even better. Continuing increases in bond yields have improved accounting and funding positions, while also reducing the cost of providing future benefit accrual. There is also good news from the other schemes in the sector (USS, TPS and the Local Government Pension Scheme).  Coming at a time of significant uncertainty for the sector, falling pension costs are certainly welcome.  Decisions made on the ongoing USS valuation will have a material impact on employment costs for the sector.

But it’s not all good news for the sector.  For the 29 universities we have considered it is very much a story of the haves and have-nots. The Pension Schemes Act 2026 is expected to make it much easier for employers to access surplus, although employers and trustees will first need to consider the appropriate balance between using surplus for the benefit of members and returning it to the employer. Those institutions still facing a funding shortfall will need to be aware of the potential implications of the new funding code, and whether that will drive up contribution rates.

In both cases, monitoring and managing running costs will be important. For employers making good a deficit, every pound spent on expenses is a pound not being used to close that gap. For those considering a surplus release, keeping running costs under control will help maximise the surplus available and make a release more achievable.

John Ingoe is an Associate Partner and Head of Employer Actuarial Services at First Actuarial, a Gallagher Company. He has over 19 years’ experience working with employers such as higher education institutions and other not‑for‑profit organisations. He helps them meet strategic pension challenges including defined benefit scheme funding, multi‑employer pension arrangements and complex pension change projects. www.firstactuarial.co.uk. john.ingoe@firstactuarial.co.uk..


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Tell it slant: what universities miss in the joins

by Joanne Irving-Walton

Universities are increasingly good at recording fragments of student experience. But fragments do not automatically make a whole. The work of connecting them remains stubbornly human.

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant —” Emily Dickinson advises.

It is an odd instruction for universities increasingly committed to straight lines: lines of accountability, lines between strategy and delivery, pathways through programmes, and data intended to show, cleanly and conclusively, what is happening. Yet neither learning nor universities behave quite like this. Students move between modules, systems, academic staff, professional services, regulations, placements and increasingly distributed forms of provision. Each part of the institution sees something. None necessarily sees the whole.

At the same time, we are becoming increasingly accomplished at recording these fragments. Attendance is captured. VLE activity can be traced. Marks, referrals, extensions and interventions leave institutional records. Processes generate evidence that something has happened. Reliable systems, fair regulations, consistent decisions and clear routes to support all matter. The problem begins when increasingly detailed representations of student experience are mistaken for increasingly complete understanding of it. A university can know a great deal about what a student has done while understanding remarkably little about what is happening.

Students experience the joins

Students rarely experience universities as organisational charts. They encounter them at the joins: between module and course, academic and pastoral support, partner and university, attendance and wellbeing, policy and circumstance, one team’s responsibility and another’s. This is where seemingly small difficulties can accumulate.

A student is sent the correct information but does not understand what they need to do next. A concern is referred, but nobody knows whether they reached the service. Marks are recorded module by module, while the pattern across them goes unnoticed. One part of the university knows about caring responsibilities; another sees only absence. Nothing necessarily fails. The failure sits in the joins — and those are rarely what institutions measure.

Each part of the institution may have done what it was required to do. The record contains multiple fragments of truth, carefully documented and separately owned. The student lives them all at once. That mismatch will be familiar to anyone who has ever sat with a student while several perfectly reasonable institutional answers fail to add up. But for those fragments to become a coherent experience, someone has to connect them.

Course leaders, personal tutors, module teams, administrators and support staff notice when several small things form a pattern. They translate formal language, recognise when an apparently straightforward case is not quite straightforward, contact another team rather than simply redirecting the student, remember context that is not visible in the current system, and follow up after the formal handover.

This kind of work has a substantial intellectual lineage. Strauss described the ‘articulation work’ required to coordinate complex activity, while Star and Strauss (1999) examined how work essential to keeping systems functioning can remain invisible to formal accounts of what work is. More recent higher education research has similarly drawn attention to boundary-crossing work and the expertise required to operate across institutional divisions (Vere, Verney and Webster-Deakin, 2024).

Pugh (2024) uses the term connective labour for the relational work through which people recognise, read and respond to one another in professions such as teaching and care. The work I am interested in here operates at a different level. It is the interpretive and relational work of connecting the fragments of an institution so that students experience something more coherent than a series of separate systems, teams and processes. I call this institutional connective labour: recognising which elements belong together, what context matters, where apparently routine cases require another look, and when completing a process has not resolved the problem that prompted it.

The work that disappears when it succeeds

Institutional connective labour is remarkably difficult for organisations to see, particularly in the large and distributed environments of higher education. Successful repair tends to leave little trace. An experienced member of staff spots a problem before it escalates, finds the colleague who knows how to resolve it, explains an opaque process, reconciles contradictory information or prevents an administrative delay from affecting progression. Eventually, the student continues. On paper, very little happened. Indeed, the successful outcome can make the system itself appear to have worked. This creates an uncomfortable organisational paradox. The people who are best at compensating for fragmented systems may inadvertently make that fragmentation less visible. Their judgement, memory, relationships and persistence absorb the gaps.

Workload models record formal roles more readily than the accumulation of noticing, translating, connecting and following through around them. Restructures may identify apparent duplication without asking whether overlapping roles are providing connection or resilience. Processes can be streamlined without recognising the informal knowledge through which they were previously made workable.

The visible machinery remains. The less visible capacity that made it function is weakened. As universities become more distributed across campuses, partners, professional services, digital environments and different forms of provision, fragmentation is not necessarily evidence of poor organisation. Complex institutions will always distribute responsibility. But distribution creates a corresponding need for integration. We tend to design carefully for the former and assume the latter will happen.

Greater resolution is not greater understanding

Data and process offer partial institutional views. An attendance pattern can signal a problem without explaining it. A referral records movement through a system without showing whether useful support was reached. A completed process can demonstrate compliance while the original difficulty remains unresolved.

Learning analytics scholars have long warned against treating data as neutral representations of student experience. Signals require interpretation, context and attention to student agency (Slade and Prinsloo, 2013). The same problem extends beyond analytics. Rules, records and processes are representations of reality, not reality itself. Their application still requires decisions about relevance, context and meaning. Informal systems can reproduce inequality, make support dependent on encountering the right person and leave both students and staff unprotected. But neither can the need for context and interpretation simply be designed out.

The difficulty becomes clearest when several individually reasonable accounts do not quite align. Low attendance may indicate disengagement, but it may mean something else entirely. A missed deadline may be habitual delay or the point at which an otherwise successful student can no longer absorb a series of pressures. A student may appear to have been referred successfully while moving repeatedly between services without ever finding somewhere their problem fits. Greater resolution does not necessarily produce greater understanding. Sometimes it simply gives us a more detailed picture of the fragments. The difficulty is not that any one account is false. It is that each tells the truth from only one angle.

Seeing slant

Dickinson’s ‘slant’ offers a useful way of thinking about this. Seeing slant is not an argument for indecision, endless consultation or gathering every possible perspective before acting. It is the recognition that complex experience rarely arrives from one direction. For universities, two questions can help expose the joins:

  • What alternative stories could produce the pattern we can see?
  • Where are staff repeatedly having to translate, reconnect or repair what a formal process has separated?

These are questions about judgement rather than additional process. The aim is not to collect every possible view before acting. Universities must simplify, classify and make decisions. But credible judgement requires some awareness of what has been simplified in doing so. The more useful institutional question may therefore be not simply whether a process has been completed, but what had to happen around that process to make it work.

The institution between the boxes

The point is not simply that this work should be recognised. It should tell us something. If staff repeatedly have to reconnect the same processes, translate the same information or recover context lost at the same handover, those interventions are evidence. They show where the formal account of how the institution works diverges from how it works in practice.

That makes institutional connective labour potentially diagnostic. A workaround may solve an immediate problem, but repeated workarounds reveal something more useful: where information stops travelling, where responsibilities do not quite meet, or where a process produces completion without resolution. That does not mean turning connective labour into another metric. Formalising it too heavily would risk flattening the very context and interpretation that make it useful. The point is to create ways for recurring patterns noticed through this work to inform institutional learning without reducing them to another dashboard. Nor should institutions depend on a few experienced individuals to hold the system together. The challenge is to make the conditions for noticing, connecting and escalating less accidental — and the knowledge generated through that work less private.

A practical starting point is to ask, in course reviews, service reviews or handover discussions: where are staff repeatedly having to reconnect what the formal process separates? Then take one recently ‘resolved’ case and ask a simpler question: what had to happen outside the formal process for this to reach a workable outcome? If the same kinds of repair appear repeatedly, that is not merely evidence of helpful staff. It is evidence about where the institution itself needs attention. For the student, the difference between a fragmented institution and a coherent one may simply be whether somebody noticed the joins.

Joanne Irving-Walton is a Principal Lecturer at Teesside University, working across learning and teaching and international partnerships. She is particularly interested in how academic judgement and professional identity develop through the emotional realities of higher education.


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Bringing GTAs into the career development conversation

by Kristyna Campbell and Kaiyun Feng

The 2026 report published with HEPI by Dr Charlotte Fawcett entitled More than academia: Expanding career support for doctoral researchers sheds light on a timely challenge faced by swathes of PhD graduates. Notably, that much of their studies and professional development is shaped on the premise that an academic profession will be the destination for most. Fawcett weighs in on this issue, illustrating that PhD candidates are increasingly applying themselves to professions both across and beyond academia in today’s fierce employment landscape, and goes on to explain that preparation for this reality is made more difficult by the varied availability of resources to PhD candidates, mainly through their supervisors. While the report calls for better collaboration between stakeholders and more opportunities for work experience, we expand Fawcett’s work by offering insight into professional learning and career development experienced by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) during the doctoral journey.

Fawcett’s report gives the sector something it has lacked for some time: a clear, current picture of how doctoral researchers experience career support, set against a labour market that no longer resembles the one for which doctoral study was originally built. Its central contribution is not simply diagnostic. By tracking change since 2019, and by pairing survey data with the voices of students and careers professionals, Fawcett provides institutions with meaningful evidence to work from, and a set of recommendations for action. It is essential reading for anyone with a stake in doctoral education, and it sets a benchmark for the kind of practical, student-centred research this space needs. 

Our recent study highlights the significance of the GTA role as a site for doctoral employment, within which wide-ranging skills are fostered pertaining to teaching, research and service. Using a model that explores how GTA career trajectories were shaped by expectations and realities of the role, and aspirations beyond graduation (Feng, 2024), qualitative data from eight GTAs from different disciplinary contexts were explored. The intention of our study was to make explicit the connection between GTA professional development and career development, through consideration for how GTAs understand teaching, research and service roles and their implications for identity.

In the GTA role, doctoral candidates are encouraged to ‘try on’ identities, and to undertake dedicated skills training designed to ensure high-quality teaching and assessment practice.  Their capabilities can include interpersonal, leadership, and organisational skills. Our findings indicated that the GTA role remains oriented toward academic careers, despite the various professional pathways taken by today’s doctoral candidates, a point also raised by Fawcett. Building on this understanding, we consider possible internal institutional and experiential opportunities designed to elevate the competence and confidence of doctoral candidates applying for work beyond academic teaching roles. Like Fawcett, we argued that support in recognising and articulating the transferability of knowledge and skills acquired through employment as GTAs is needed and instead suggest that learnt skillsets should be understood as competencies that can be applied across many careers and contexts.

From our study, we sensed that the expected linear academic career trajectory was falling away as graduate numbers rise and post-doctoral positions become fewer. While, as Fawcett reports, an increasing number of career-focused resources are becoming part of supervisory toolkits, we believe the responsibility extends to other members of the institution (including disciplinary experts, careers teams, and education developers) whose tailored care may have implications for preparedness.  

Our data add another perspective to Fawcett’s work regarding a shared understanding of the benefits of GTA-related competencies. Where Fawcett finds that only 27% of PhD students believe their supervisor has useful advice for non-academic careers, a related opportunity for helping supervisors and GTAs to better articulate GTA competencies was found in our data. We asked GTAs to plot their expected, actual, and hoped-for relationships with teaching, research (doctoral studies), and service, and the participants’ responses scattered without forming any discernible cluster. This variation has been attributed to the challenge of communicating tasks, responsibilities, and learnt skills, which may be a disciplinary concern. Helping PhD students to identify and articulate their current work within Feng’s (2024) framework could, in turn, support supervisors and other significant colleagues to help with locating prospective career paths and understand the transferability of competencies developed as GTAs and doctoral researchers. While the GTA lived reality appears varied, individual-level insight now can prepare for career clarity later, pointing to a single intervention with dual benefit rather than two separate problems to solve. 

We also noted a shift in GTAs’ present-tense identities and their imagined post-graduation selves. Participants who located themselves around teaching and service when reflecting on their reality consistently repositioned themselves towards research when projecting beyond their PhD studies. This shows that participants experienced their current role and future career as distinct rather than continuous. This resonates with Fawcett’s finding that, while 82% of students feel prepared for a research career, only 40% feel similarly prepared for non-research careers, and suggests that building this preparedness is partly about how GTAs are supported to narrate their experiences, not only about the information or resources on offer. This speaks to our earlier diagnosis about how aspects of a role are articulated, and how this is translated for work within and beyond academia. One participant’s insistence that they do not ‘identify as teaching staff’, despite teaching being a substantial commitment, points to an opportunity: helping GTAs to recognise the significance of teaching and service to the development of academic identity, rather than as detours from it, complementing the signposting Fawcett recommends.

Our third contribution sits slightly outside Fawcett’s frame but strengthens the recommendations: the emotional and relational labour GTAs absorb, for example, patience, diplomacy, and responsiveness to ‘unexpected situational cases’, is central to how participants experienced the role, even where it goes unnamed in formal role descriptions and training. This matters for career-readiness in a very practical sense. If pastoral and interpersonal skills are what GTAs are actually developing, naming them explicitly, alongside ‘research’ or ‘teaching experience’, would help doctoral candidates translate what they already do into what they can put on a CV. This lends weight to our suggestion of a competencies glossary, and points to a further opportunity that Fawcett’s supervisor-focused recommendations open up: module conveners, disciplinary leads, and GTA programme teams each hold partial knowledge of what a given candidate has developed, and bringing this knowledge together, alongside continued investment in careers advice, could be a valuable and immediately actionable step for institutions. 

Fawcett’s timely report creates an important point of departure for conversations about career readiness and stakeholder provision. It highlights the myriad resources available to doctoral candidates across the academy, whilst gently drawing attention to areas in need of development. Bringing this together with our study of GTAs offers a more holistic view of careers following doctoral study. Together, the studies describe support structures and the opportunity for work experience, thus initiating a conversation about translation and transition. Instead of asking what additional support is needed, we should emphasise supporting doctoral candidates to articulate the capabilities they are developing.

Dr Kristy Campbell is a Lecturer in Education (GTA Development Programme Lead) at King’s Academy, King’s College London, supporting staff with continued professional development through workshops and professional accreditation. She is also Unit Lead for the PGCHE and MA Creative Education courses at Norwich University of the Arts. Kristy completed her PhD at UCL Institute of Education, specialising in Higher Education. Her interests include adult teaching and learning, transition, and identity. Kristy is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of Postgraduate Pedagogies, a developmental journal dedicated to showcasing the experiences of GTAs.

Dr Kaiyun Feng is a Lecturer in Education at King’s College London, specialising in higher education policy, institutional management, academic identities and professionalisation, and impact and evaluation. Previously a Researcher at the University of Cambridge, she analysed access and participation and evaluated widening participation projects. She earned her PhD from UCL Institute of Education, investigating institutional strategies for undergraduate teaching in world-class universities across China, the UK, and Canada. She leads master’s and undergraduate seminars on social policy, higher education management, and research engagement. Her evidence-based teaching is informed by her research into the teaching-research nexus and academic career development.


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The technical turn and what it means for higher education

by Tim Savage

When I began my career as a photography technician in higher education 25 years ago, the distinction between academic and technical work was clear and helpful. Academics were thought of as the ‘master practitioners’ who taught creative and professional practice, while technicians prepared facilities, maintained equipment, and helped students to use specialist resources safely. However, as my career progressed, I observed the boundaries between academic and technical roles and responsibilities becoming increasingly indistinct and porous.

In my most recent role, as Director of Technical Learning at a leading UK arts university, I led a technical team of 130 staff whose remits became deeply involved in teaching and learning; many gained teaching qualifications and sought professional recognition, and it became increasingly common for technicians to transition their careers into academia, particularly in disciplines driven by new and emerging technologies.

Technical duties at my institution evolved informally to include writing and delivering progressively developmental lesson plans aligned to module outcomes, devising innovative and differentiated ways of teaching advanced disciplinary skills, collaborating with students to define and solve complex problems without precedent, contributing to feedback and assessment, and helping students develop both the skills and mindsets to succeed in their studies and to flourish in their lives and careers beyond university.

The scale and impact of pre-planned technician-led teaching was evident in the timetable and in the quality of work presented for assessment, but remained much less visible during periods of self-directed study, when students sought personalised advice and guidance at the point of need, sometimes seeking assistance to realise an idea, or having reached the limits of their knowledge, or wanting to understand why something in their work had failed or resulted in an unanticipated outcome. Anecdotally, and through formal feedback channels, students consistently reported these unstructured exchanges with technicians as being among the most valuable and impactful pedagogies they experienced, both in terms of the quality of their outputs and in their confidence and abilities to enter their chosen careers.

The workforce, it seemed, was changing. Academic roles were becoming increasingly focused on theory, research, and curriculum development, while technicians took on more responsibility for teaching practical skills. In this new model, technicians increasingly found themselves positioned as the new ‘master practitioners’ holding specialist knowledge and occupying the pedagogic spaces their lecturer colleagues had previously held.

From my position within the university executive, I saw this change driven by role creep rather than strategy, and neither the operating model that funded it nor the structures or policies used to describe, manage, and quality-assure it kept pace. Furthermore, despite the clearly transformed roles and responsibilities, it remained problematic for technicians to claim that they teach.

My new book, Technical Teaching in Higher Education: Insights from the Creative Arts, examines and attempts to make sense of this shift, exploring the rich and textured pedagogies involved, and considering how institutions might use that understanding to improve teaching and learning.

Making sense of the technical turn

In my research, I describe the growing educational responsibilities of technicians as a ‘technical turn’. Within creative arts HE, I attribute this evolution to a combination of political, economic, social, and technological factors shaping the sector, accentuated by the incorporation and mergers of art schools and former polytechnics into universities.

Susan Orr theorises this shift in arts education as an ‘academic turn’ in which institutional missions and the hierarchies of knowledge taught and learned changed. Previously essential practical, tacit, and technical knowledge and skills became deprioritised in the curriculum, even as they remained central to student learning, experiences, and graduate outcomes. Jonathan Harwood’s concept of ‘academic drift’ offers a way of understanding these changes, which some critics associate with the loss of the traditional art school.

But neither the technical nor the academic turns, nor the role convergences they have enabled, are new or restricted to the creative arts. In 1997, the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education identified how the formerly clear distinctions between academic and non-academic roles were becoming increasingly blurred across the sector.

More recently, the UKRI-funded TALENT Commission on which I served provided evidence of the extent of technical involvement in teaching. Its national survey found that 95% of creative arts respondents were involved in teaching activities, compared with 75% of respondents from other disciplines. Subsequent studies have illuminated the scale and breadth of technician teaching across UK universities. These findings show that technical teaching extends across the sector, although how technicians understand and approach this work remains comparatively under-examined.


Five conceptions of technical teaching

My doctoral research addressed a related question: how do visual arts technicians understand and approach their teaching? Using phenomenography, I explored variation in participants’ conceptions of their pedagogies. I interviewed technicians across the UK in different kinds of institutions, spanning art, craft, design, and media disciplines. I examined what participants believed they taught, how they taught it, and why. I identified five approaches: Demonstrator, Instructor, Consultant, Collaborator, and Transformer. Each describes a different way of understanding and approaching teaching, and participants drew on several of these approaches depending on the learner and the context.

Demonstrators see their role as introducing learners to safe and competent practice. Their teaching makes equipment, materials, software, and specialist environments accessible through clear explanations and repeatable processes. They use didactic methods, while prioritising the clear understanding of foundations and conventions from which students can begin to work independently.

Instructors help students acquire, develop and apply skills in unique and personalised ways. Their emphasis moves towards adapting techniques to different purposes and developing the practical judgement needed to use them. Learning how to operate a camera, for example, becomes less about controls and functions, and more about understanding how its use can serve a photographic intention.

Consultants see themselves as subject authorities, whose role is to respond to a learner’s particular problem or ambition. A student may arrive with an unsuccessful process, a technical problem, or an idea they cannot realise. Teaching involves diagnostic assessment, questioning, and advice that help the learner evaluate possible solutions, evaluate risks and benefits, and make informed decisions.

Collaborators work alongside students, sharing in their processes of exploration and discovery. Knowledge develops through dialogue, experimentation, iteration, and encounters with materials or processes. These interactions and exchanges can take both student and technician beyond their existing understanding, supporting unknown and uncertain outcomes.

Transformers focus on changes in how learners understand their practice and themselves as practitioners. Their aim is to challenge and expand what students believe they can do, how they approach their work, and to broaden their ambitions and move beyond perceived limits. Transformative pedagogies were also found to influence curricula, more effectively integrate with academia, and inform institutional approaches to practical learning.

These five qualitatively distinct conceptions span a spectrum from teacher-centred content delivery to student-centred, transformative learning. They describe ways of understanding technical teaching, and an individual may adopt different pedagogies at different times. The range was broadly comparable with that identified in research on academics’ conceptions of teaching.


Putting the framework to use

The taxonomy’s practical value lies in making these different educational approaches and purposes more explicit. For individual technicians and their managers, it can provide language to reflect on practice, discuss teaching with peers, and identify development needs. It can also help educational developers connect teaching qualifications, mentoring, and professional recognition, such as Advance HE Fellowships, using authentic technical teaching and learning scenarios and case studies.

For curriculum teams, the framework can help identify where technical learning can be deployed most effectively within a programme and aligned with learning outcomes and assessment criteria. An equipment induction may prepare students to enter a workshop, but subsequent projects may depend on consultation, experimentation, and feedback.

Quality assurance and enhancement follow the same logic. Peer observation, student feedback, and shared reflection could help teams understand how technical pedagogies contribute to learning and where they need improvement.

For senior leaders, a clearer understanding of who teaches the curriculum and how is essential to linking strategy and operations. The academic/technical polarisation of the workforce is becoming increasingly unsustainable, prompting legitimate but challenging questions about workload planning, staffing structures and cost, and curriculum development. Such debates are likely to become more urgent as universities increasingly describe technician pedagogies as evidence of institutional teaching excellence, prioritise technical expertise and skills teaching, and place both at the centre of graduate outcomes and employability agendas.

The framework offers an evidence-based starting point for these conversations at a sector level; for institutions, it can help improve the integration of academic theory and technical practice within a constructively aligned curriculum, strengthen collaboration and understanding across role boundaries and break down longstanding silos in support of student education, experiences, and outcomes.

Dr Tim Savage is a consultant, author, and trainer specialising in technical learning, technicians, and institutional change in higher education. He previously served as Director of Technical Learning at the University for the Creative Arts and is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE, recognised for sustained strategic leadership in technical learning and teaching. His latest book, based on his doctoral research, is Technical Teaching in Higher Education: Insights from the Creative Arts (Routledge, 2026)


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Reconnecting Smart Thinkers with Communities in Search of Solutions

by Hamish Coates, Ellen Hazelkorn, Hans De Wit, Tessa DeLaquil, and Angel Calderon

This blog is based on the editorial for the latest issue of Policy Reviews in Higher Education

Executive Snapshot

All around the world, academics struggle to publish articles, editors grumble about review complexities, and communities raise eyebrows over the quality and relevance of the contributions. Unfortunately, readership and relevance seem to be inversely linked to the growing volume of papers. ‘Publish or perish’ anxieties have been overshadowed by concerns about ‘publishing in peril’ and a fading halo around university research.

These are serious issues for the academy. They are serious for editors, including for ourselves at Policy Reviews in Higher Education. Publication relevance matters professionally, and terms of the real-world of policy in which the journal plays. In our latest editorial we formulated steps towards a solution: Editing academic struggles in the era of robot instrumentalism

We also have clarified imperatives and concrete options to step ahead:

  • Academic networks and stakeholder communities should re-connect with each other
  • Journal papers should be connected through seminars, social media and blogs with the communities they are intended to benefit
  • Open webinars are a natural imperative for connecting the solutions posed in academic papers with the problems which prevail in broader communities e.g. Who will fund us? The drifting dynamics of “who pays for what” in higher education

The Big Lion in the Bush

Around the world students flock to universities in seemingly unprecedented numbers and with great zeal but questions abound regarding value-for-money as a result of rising costs and concerns about learner outcomes and quality. At the turn of century, the ‘world class era’ swept in a suite of mechanisms to define and distinguish excellence.

University rankings and other commercial firms positioned themselves as the arbiters of quality and value. In response, universities acquiesced and strove to distinguish themselves using the proffered metrics to build reputation and status and submit hordes of institutional data to be privatised by growing conglomerates. They compiled bibliometric lists to fluff-up brands and augment their purported reputation among academic communities, policymakers and wider society. Universities began to compel academic staff and doctoral students to publish as many journal papers as possible. This game has contributed to the overproduction of papers, of which many are questionable in terms of quality and relevance.

Creaks and hollowness in this game have grown to spur much angst as higher education providers in major powerhouse countries chase increasingly narrow goals. While hitherto profitable for publishers and rankings/ratings agencies, the situation is hardly sustainable. It has become difficult especially for young scholars who are compelled to publish to secure jobs and livelihoods, let alone to raise a family. The value contribution of this ‘publish or perish’ regime is yielding diminishing returns, especially in an era when computers have started citing themselves. Even more challenging is that among these young scholars, doctoral students are forced to publish articles as a requirement for the degree, and in several cases in replacement of the thesis. Not only does this increase the submission and acceptance challenge for them, but also transfers the responsibility of quality review from the supervisors to the journal editors and reviewers, already overloaded with submissions.

Millions of the world’s researchers now work in middle-income economies where far greater value could be given to highly trained faculty. And many of the world’s doctoral graduates will not pursue careers in academia yet are still required to publish as part of their doctoral programmes.

Making Differences not Just Papers

Clearly, university leaders  and researchers must work together to stake out a productive future for publishing research or face growing questions of relevance and mistrust. We contend that journal editors must step up to advocate for and design feasible options which go beyond those we find in place today. To have an impact on policy, the application and benefits of higher education research must be communicated appropriately to the wider community.

In a big lumpy world, we must embrace indeed create more diverse publication settings. Even as the robots flourish and do even better at ‘firing digital packets’ between themselves, there remains the problem of how we can promote the idea that publishing multiples of papers is not an end in itself.

It is time to promulgate institutional reforms which ensure that community service related to the academic functions of teaching and research at local, national, and international scales becomes integral to academic roles, beyond merely a focus on mass, global publication.

It is time to recognise more contextualised roles that brilliant academic talent already take in our communities and stop over-egging publication statistics.

Editors in applied fields of research must prioritise academic contributions which make real-world difference. It is ineffective to sit in offices producing ‘papers’ which sit within server farms chewing up fossil-fuelled energy and go nowhere near education communities, institutions, teachers, researchers, industries, or governments. ‘Open access’ has arguably broadened readership somewhat but has failed to reach key sections of society who live and work beyond the rich-world academy and thus address broader questions about substantive value. Indeed, it is ironic that the ‘impact’ forore operates within a paywall echo-chamber!

Academics need to get into their communities. Eating, sparking dialogue, engaging, advising, arguing and building, and linking with leaders and communities who do education, seem to endure as things that matter. It is understandable that certain countries are launching their own publication platforms.

Researchers need to find ways to better communicate their research to the broader societies they intend to serve and find meaningful ways from within their academic functions to respond to social changes. Words like ‘impact’ and ‘engagement’ have been invoked to retrofit relevance around academic practice, though with limited success. It is time to re-humanise academic life and rejoice in its corporeality.

With around half the humans and universities on the planet, it is coming time for Asia, Africa and Latin America to forge their own paths. Most rating agencies, publishers, journals, editors and reviewers are based in Europe and North America, while researcher and author communities are growing elsewhere, especially in Asia. The global system is not in balance, and with the disharmony compounded by politics and competitive tension, it is unlikely that current arrangements will be sustained in coming years, especially given that research in non-Western regions is sprouting and flourishing.

Bringing Thinking Humans Together

A paper which is good for publication is also good for promotion, and for pontification, and pioneering. As academic publication has grown, researchers have become often dangerously detached from the communities they are constituted to serve. Is it too wild to expect that editors should only publish situated papers which are potentially going to have a genuine impact on communities? No, this is not crazy thinking. It is post-digital thinking that reclaims community and collegial purpose in ways which even global tech leaders have started to advocate.

Obviously, there are infinite ways to re-kindle connections between academics and communities. Online webinars are a great way to begin. In 2026 Policy Reviews in Higher Education launched an online global series of webinars. Lamenting the lack of dialogue between policy researchers and policymakers, the journal editors had previously forged links between published papers and blogs and social media.

The webinars shift outreach and engagement to the next level. While modest in terms of contemporary social media ecosystems, such efforts are reasonably venturesome for journals which have grown beyond their initial scholar community and into a global and very much larger world. ‘Global’ has a great ring to it but also implies simultaneously ‘everything to everyone’ and ‘nothing to no-one’. Webinars restore human connection, moving papers and ideas and intellectual advocacy beyond server farms back into real professional, institutional and social lives.

The very first webinar focused on ‘Striving for recognition: University manoeuvres for societal outcomes’. As nations have called for universities to serve different communities, institutions have sought different ways to succeed. Desideria Cempaka Wijaya Murti contributed from Indonesia, Michael Fung and Sabur Butt from Mexico, and Michael Shattock from the United Kingdom. The three policy pitches provided perspectives from their respective countries / regions and highlighted emerging research trends and present thought-provoking ideas to help shape future policy directions.

Webinar number two focused on a hot topic of our times: ‘Transnational education (TNE) in the wild: Quality shocks, international anarchy, and academic disconnection. The three policy pitches approached this phenomenon from distinct yet complementary perspectives. Jason E. Lane (United States) talked about geopolitical infrastructure, Lilan Chen (Japan) provided compelling insights into student-centred quality and access, and Jeanette Baird (Australia, Papua New Guinea) gave expert insights into tertiary regulation and risk governance. Together, the discussion highlighted the growing complexity of TNE and the need to better understand its implications for students, institutions, governments, and societies.

The third webinar focuses on money, pricing, transparency, and value. It is titled: ‘Who will fund us? The drifting dynamics of “who pays for what” in higher education’. This webinar will explore questions around who pays and what kind of service to expect and need into the future.  The policy pitches will be made by Christopher Millward (United Kingdom), N.V. Varghese (India), Lorraine Dearden (United Kingdom) and Huw Morris (United Kingdom). Almost everything which is known about higher education funding refers to rich countries. With major growth now erupting in Africa, ASEAN and Eurasia, it is time to build evidence and dialogue into other situations and growth options.

We are lucky to work as professionals across the fantastic and expanding tertiary landscape. Now is a time for us to work together to co-create new futures. We have no time to wring our hands and give up higher thinking to commercial raters. We cannot afford to let computer scientists and accountants alone define all the futures. These professionals are part of our broader academic and professional community. They need our help as much as we need theirs. The challenges and opportunities before us are great. We need all experts to work together.

Hamish Coates is a global leader in higher education with major contributions to policy and innovation who designs and strengthens higher education systems, institutions and leadership.

Ellen Hazelkorn is Joint Managing Partner, BH Associates education consultants, and Professor Emeritus, Technological University Dublin (Ireland).

Hans de Wit is Professor Emeritus of the Practice and Distinguished Fellow and Former Director (2015-2020) of the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, USA.

Tessa DeLaquil is Associate Professor at the Department for Pedagogy and Lifelong Learning at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Angel Calderon is director, strategic insights, at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.


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Enhancing student learning through innovative scholarship

by Jenny Burnham, Matt Mears, Kennedy Offor, Jane Woodin and Tim Herrick

This blog is a report on the Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship (ESLTIS) conference held at the University of Sheffield in July 2026. The conference involved participants from 24 different universities and nearly 50 sessions.

When higher education faces real pressure, coming together to reimagine how we teach and learn is more than just professional development – it is a vital act of community. In July 2026, 97 educators, researchers, and student partners gathered at the University of Sheffield for two energising days at the Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship (ESLTIS) conference.

Across two inspiring keynotes, 39 talks and oral bites, and seven hands-on workshops, the atmosphere was filled with practical optimism, bold experimentation, and genuine connection. At a time when financial constraints weigh heavily across the sector, ESLTIS 2026 proved that an exceptional, high-impact academic gathering does not have to cost the earth. By keeping delegate fees as low as possible without compromising on quality, the conference demonstrated that transformative scholarship can remain accessible, inclusive, and deeply rewarding for everyone involved.

To capture the spirit of those two days, this blog brings together the key ideas, personal reflections, and practical insights that defined the event. We explore the overarching themes shaping the sector, followed by firsthand perspectives from our keynote speaker, insights from a session chair navigating AI in the curriculum, and the invaluable contributions of our student partners.

Key Conference Themes

With the tone of ‘Dealing with Disruption’ set by Professor Sam Nolan, the conference explored how learning and teaching in higher education is responding to and being shaped by the outside influences bringing both adversity and opportunity into the sector. A recurrent theme of innovations drawing on AI technology encompassed support for diverse student needs, its use in assessment, and as a teaching aid. The conference mirrored the acknowledgement of the evolving higher education demographic, with discussions covering inclusivity, decolonisation, engagement, identity, and self-worth, with structured gap-filling support, and breaking down of participation barriers, busting out of disciplinary silos to support students’ belonging and wellbeing. Wide-ranging talks covered: curriculum both hidden and carefully designed, strategies to augment students’ development of their skills and their readiness for their post-graduation world, and experiences of collaboration with and between students, staff, and professional services teams

Underpinning it all was the continuing ethos of the ESLTIS community that recognises and celebrates the education-focus of academia, exploring this with talks and workshops on academic identity – how it grows and develops, the things that shape it, and how it can be described and evidenced. The conference was not one thing for all delegates, it had something for everyone; areas with which we are familiar and aspects provoking thought and reflection, from which we could learn.  Yet again, I have attended a conference and come away with more than I expected. 

Reflections from a keynote speaker 

Dr Jenny Burnham is a Senior University Teacher in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield. Here she writes about her career and how she shared her experience at the conference.

I am interested in everything and my career highlights have been similarly eclectic. Rather than focus on a single speciality, I used myself as the common thread to weave a story that would be useful, relevant, or inspirational for a diverse audience of enthusiastic and accomplished educators. Taking inspiration from the conference name and conference themes (academic identity, community in learning and teaching, SoTL, supporting student success, and learning and teaching possibilities), my keynote made a virtue of the meanders of my academic career so far.  

My academic journey started in chemistry, shaping my relationship with information (evidence is key) and placing the primacy of experimental investigation at the centre of my disciplinary awareness. My early scholarship interests grew from this, exploring the development of inquiry skills through laboratory education. Spending a lot of time teaching students in the lab and enjoying their individuality shaped a desire to see them all succeed. This developed into an education philosophy that students are clever and capable with enormous potential, which permeates my work. An MEd drawing on what can be learned from sharing practice and insight (Rowland, 1999) transformed my approach to education. The benefits I felt in sharing my work with people who were interested motivated me to extend my networks. These have been a source of inspiration, opportunity and support, and allowed me to define my leadership identity; supporting, facilitating, promoting, and enabling collegial interaction and growth within my community.

My keynote aimed to provide a little of something for everyone, and evidence that I succeeded in this is captured in three different post-keynote interactions. I was thanked for owning my nerves: “it helps” she said. I had lunch with a PhD chemist considering an academic career; and I received an enquiry about a Learning Landscapes initiatives I worked on. There was something for me too: a final, unexpected result of my talk was that pulling it together reminded me of the cool stuff I have done.  Celebrating successes is definitely something I intend to do more of.  

Reflections from a session chair 

Dr Kennedy Offor was a member of the local organising committee and reflects on his experiences at ESLTIS in the role of session chair.

Chairing the ‘AI in the Curriculum’ session gave me with a unique perspective on how colleagues from different disciplines are responding to the rapid emergence of generative AI in higher education. Although the eight presentations ranged from institutional policy to engineering, mathematics, business, humanities, and language learning, a common thread emerged throughout the session – how learning, assessment, and curriculum design should evolve to ensure that students continue to develop critical judgement, disciplinary understanding, and professional responsibility. The discussion reflected a noticeable shift from reacting to AI as a disruptive technology towards designing learning environments that make purposeful and educationally meaningful use of it.

Laurie Wilson opened the session by introducing the University of Sheffield’s developing ‘Common Approach to AI in the Curriculum’, emphasising “harmonisation rather than homogenisation” and arguing that AI should support good disciplinary teaching rather than drive it. Joanne Irving-Walton then offered a thought-provoking perspective by examining the “gaps” where judgement develops, suggesting that AI increasingly participates in the uncertainty, rehearsal and reflection through which students and educators learn. 

Panos Kloukinas, Nick McCullen and Will Roberts built on this by arguing that mathematics and computation education should increasingly prioritise application, interpretation and problem formulation over procedural execution, while Dawn Whitton demonstrated how students could critically evaluate AI itself through a staged business assessment that required them not only to use AI, but also to critique its assumptions, biases and wider societal implications.

The engineering perspective was represented through our own presentation, which used longitudinal Graduate Teaching Assistant reflections to show how observations of student uncertainty, teamwork and AI use informed iterative redesign of an MSc engineering design module. Mireilla Bikanga Ada’s graduate study provided an interesting counterpoint by showing that, despite widespread AI adoption, teamwork remained the strongest predictor of graduates’ perceptions of degree relevance. 

Rachel Johnson illustrated how a simple, low-stakes classroom activity could encourage students critically to examine AI-generated information and its biases, while Franziska Collier demonstrated how AI avatars could provide authentic, low-risk opportunities for students to practise high-stakes language assessments.

The discussions reinforced my own view that the key educational question is no longer whether students should use AI, but how curricula can help them develop the professional judgement needed to use it responsibly. Rather than diminishing the role of educators, the session demonstrated that AI makes thoughtful curriculum design, assessment, and disciplinary expertise more important than ever, and highlighted an encouraging direction of travel for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning community.

Students as Partners 

Dr. Jane Woodin was a member of the local organising committee and offers her thoughts on working with students as volunteer partners 

The conference ethos of inclusive dialogue was also evident in the organisation of student volunteers who were invited to participate in whatever they wished, from visiting and advising on the venue beforehand, supporting registration and general enquiries, and co-chairing sessions together with a staff volunteer. Responses from the eight volunteers ranged from tentative interest in helping out to requests to ‘have a go at everything’, and others who did the minimum in terms of active volunteering because they found the topics of the talk so interesting and important.

It was heartening to hear one volunteer offer to sit at the front of the large auditorium to oversee a presentation session, handling the Q &A masterfully, including interventions from the co-chair. Another volunteer started out shyly offering to help at the registration desk, but seeing fellow students taking the chairing role, threw herself into it enthusiastically. 

These experiences remind us how the processes surrounding education are as important as the education itself – or perhaps are or should be inseparable, as the ‘way that you do it’ melds seamlessly into ‘what you do’; offering an example of SoTL in action at its best.  

Final Reflections

Dr Matt Mears is a Senior University Teacher in Physics at the University of Sheffield, and was chair of the Local Organising Committee for ESLTIS2026

As Conference Chair, reflecting on the energy across those two days fills me with immense pride and a distinct sense of gratitude. While hosting an event of this scale undoubtedly takes work, the dividend it pays back to the host team and the wider community is extraordinary. Watching colleagues reconnect, draw genuine inspiration from such a rich variety of presenters, and spark new collaborations in real time reminded me why these gatherings are so vital for our sector.

If you have ever toyed with the idea of organising a conference, or perhaps bringing ESLTIS to your own institution, I cannot encourage you enough to take the leap. The effort involved is far outweighed by the connection, camaraderie, and fresh momentum it generates. Whether as an attender, a presenter, or a future host, I look forward to seeing where our community goes next.


Dr Jenny Burnham is a chemistry university teaching specialist with 20 years’ experience teaching and learning about education at the University of Sheffield. 

Dr Matt Mears is a Senior University Teacher in Physics in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on inclusive education practices and laboratory-based teaching.

Dr Kennedy Offor is an engineering educator and researcher with experience teaching undergraduate and postgraduate engineering at the University of Sheffield’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and, more recently, apprenticeship and technical engineering education at the AMRC Training Centre.  

Dr. Jane Woodin is a Senior University Teacher in the School of Languages, Arts and Societies at the University of Sheffield. She has taught and researched in intercultural communication, focusing on peer interaction and dialogue approaches.

Dr Tim Herrick is a Senior University Teacher in the School of Education, and a National Teaching Fellow. He was part of the ESLTIS conference committee and helped co-ordinate this blogpost.

Reference Rowland, S (1999) ‘The role of theory in a pedagogical model for lecturers in higher education’ Studies in Higher Education, 24(3), 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079912331379915


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When assessment goes local, who keeps what students bring back?

by Carlene Kyeremeh

A student sent me a photograph of a handwritten waybill. Dated November 2022, it records a unit price for printed sachet film. It also carries the names of a supplier and a customer and the given name of the person who issued it. The waybill appeared in a term paper on fiscal consolidation as evidence of a cost increase that no statistical series I have found records.

It is in my files. Not the department’s. Mine.

I describe the waybill here but do not reproduce it, identify those named, or give the figure it records. The students who wrote the paper agreed to this account. I have no record that the supplier, the customer or the person named agreed to the document’s retention or wider use, so I have minimised the identifying detail, including the price, which is the most commercially sensitive thing on the page.

I have argued elsewhere that the curriculum can help to thicken a thin documentary record. Ask each student to obtain one item of locally sourced evidence: an interview, a quoted price, a document from a firm or public office, and, over successive cohorts, a course can assemble material that no database previously held. This is no longer only my ambition. Programmes are already redesigning assessment in response to generative AI, and one attractive move is to require evidence a model cannot retrieve: a price obtained in a market, an interview conducted locally, a document held by a firm or public office. That redesign brings third-party material into course files at scale, often without a parallel decision about what should happen to it after assessment.

That is the promise. The waybill in my files is the problem that follows it.

What universities already know how to govern

Research ethics and commercial confidentiality are not routinely ignored in student work. Professionally oriented programmes have long had to decide what an organisation may disclose, who may see it and when it must be returned. For example, McMaster University’s course-based research guidance explicitly covers undergraduate, MBA and graduate courses. The University of Toronto provides both a course-based ethics route and a classroom confidentiality agreement for third-party proprietary information. In the UK, the University of Manchester’s ethics guidance asks researchers to establish first whether an activity is research training conducted as coursework, described as collecting and analysing a small amount of data to gain experience in method, or research proper. These arrangements show that collection, consent, confidentiality and use within a defined project can be governed. My argument is therefore not that universities lack such protections. It begins where a normal project would end.

The problem begins when the course ends

If material is returned, destroyed or retained only with the assessed work, its lifecycle has a clear end. But the design I am proposing depends on the evidence outliving the assignment. A document collected by one student in 2026 should be available to another cohort in 2028 or 2029, alongside prices, interviews and documents gathered in the intervening years. The course is not only assessing students. It is building a local source collection.

That changes the questions. What exactly does the university hold after the assessment period? Who is its custodian? How long may it be retained? May another cohort consult it? What fresh permission is needed if it is later used for research or publication? These procedures can help answer those questions, but not automatically. An agreement that properly confines information to one course may rule out the very reuse on which the proposed archive depends.

The evidence is not the assignment

The student’s analysis is coursework. The material used to produce it is not necessarily the same thing. A waybill may contain personal or commercially sensitive information. Interview notes are harder still: they are neither the source’s own record nor the student’s analysis, but one person’s written account of what another person said, made for an assignment and now held by a lecturer.

Where the activity is classified as teaching rather than research, this third-party material can still raise a lifecycle question: do institutional rules cover its custody, retention and reuse after the assessment for which it was collected? The Manchester distinction is instructive here. A course collection built to outlive its cohorts is not a small amount of data gathered to practise a method, but neither does it fit neatly within research as that definition intends. It is a lifecycle problem created by a particular curricular ambition.

The reuse is the point

Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) requires personal data to be collected for a specific, explicitly defined and lawful purpose, limits retention and requires further processing to be compatible with the original purpose. Material obtained for one student’s term paper and later made available to another cohort may involve further processing. Nothing in the waybill I received establishes permission for it to become part of a standing course collection.

The Act contains provisions for historical, statistical and research uses where the relevant conditions are met. Those provisions offer a governed route, not a retrospective blank cheque. They do not turn a lecturer’s folder into an institutional archive. The underlying principle is not unique to Ghana: UK guidance likewise treats purpose, storage and research-related reuse as connected but distinct questions.

Ordinary assignment governance is adequate for ordinary assignments. The problem appears when coursework is asked to do something additional: to enlarge a locally available documentary record over time.

The archival value and the governance risk arise from the same feature. An archive that cannot be consulted next year is not an archive. A collection that can be consulted next year without the source having been told is not a defensible one.

A small institutional answer

The answer need not be a new bureaucracy. It could begin with a short institutional instrument that separates use in a student’s assessment from retention in a course source collection. Before collection begins, it should state the teaching purpose, what may be collected, who may later consult it, how long it will be kept, which unit is responsible and what choices the source has. Research use or publication should require a separate decision rather than being hidden inside the phrase ‘educational purposes’.

The remaining requirement is custody. What one lecturer can require, only an institution can keep. A named custodian, controlled access, a retention and disposal schedule, and a record of what the course has produced would convert a personal folder into an accountable institutional practice. Existing MBA, ethics and confidentiality processes provide models; the task is to extend their discipline to the intended afterlife of the evidence.

Proportionality matters. If the process becomes heavier than the assessment it supports, colleagues may stop asking students to gather local evidence. But a department unable to provide a clear collection notice, a retention rule and somebody accountable for what returns should not require the fieldwork. Otherwise, institutional risk is transferred to students and to the businesses that agree to speak with them.

Readers can test this in ten minutes. Take your own institution’s course-based ethics route or classroom confidentiality agreement and look for two things: whether either says anything about third-party material after the assessment period, and who is named as responsible for it. If neither appears, ask where else the institution governs the evidence after the assignment ends. If there is no answer, the arrangements may govern the assignment without governing its evidentiary afterlife.

Before we ask for more

The curriculum can enlarge the archive. The qualification is that the archival ambition creates an additional governance obligation. The question is not only whether the evidence was collected ethically and kept confidentially. It is whether its intended custody, retention and reuse were made explicit before collection began.

I have a waybill in my files and no good institutional answer to those questions. That is not an argument against asking students to go and find out. It is an argument for deciding what we will do with what comes back, before we ask them to go.

Dr Carlene Kyeremeh is Associate Professor and Vice President, University Advancement, Recruitment and Research at All Nations University, Koforidua, Ghana. Her research addresses curriculum decolonisation, higher education policy in Africa and the Caribbean, and the political economy of educational technology.This post develops a governance question raised in Issues 14 and 15 of The Decolonized Curriculum, her LinkedIn newsletter.


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Professor Rosemary Deem (January 1949-August 2026)

by Louise Morley

Rosemary Deem was a great feminist scholar, friend, colleague, and mentor, known and respected worldwide for her major contributions to the field of higher education studies, her service in national and international agencies, and her extensive senior management experience at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she was Dean of History/​Social Science (2009–11); Vice-Principal, Education (2011–17); Vice-Principal for Teaching Innovation & Equality/​Diversity (2017–2019); and Doctoral School Dean (2014–19).

Rosemary’s long and extremely productive career in higher education began with her BA in Sociology at the University of Leicester from 1968-72, followed by an MPhil in Education. She was awarded a PhD by the Open University in 1990 for her thesis: Women and Leisure: A Sociological Investigation. During her career she held academic posts at North Staffordshire Polytechnic, Loughborough University, the University of York, the Open University, the University of Lancaster, and the University of Bristol, as well as Royal Holloway. Her first highly influential book in gender studies, Women and Schooling, was published in 1978. She initially researched women and leisure and educational governance and went on to develop significant expertise and experience in equality, diversity and inclusion, doctoral education, higher education management, qualitative research, and the sociology of power and policy in education. Her work on neoliberalism continues to lead the field and her ongoing and relentless commitment to research, scholarship, and peer review resulted in over 100 publications.

Known and respected widely, Rosemary had national and international professional networks. A regular participant in conferences globally, she learned the Portuguese language and became an external adviser to the Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies (CIPES) in 2024 at the Universities of Aveiro and Porto. She supervised and examined many doctoral students in Education, Sociology, Management, and Gender Studies and regularly supported her colleagues and students when they presented conference papers and seminars around the globe. She was a loyal and active participant and speaker in the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research’s events (CHEER) at the University of Sussex, and always offered incisive and informed feedback.

Rosemary was a formidable influence at national level. She was elected three times to the Research Assessment Exercise panel in 1996, 2001 and 2008. From 2013, she served as co-editor of the journal Higher Education, published by Springer, and was a member of the Peer Review College of the European Science Foundation. She also served as co-convenor of the Higher Education Network of the European Educational Research Association. Between 2015 and 2018, she was the first woman to chair the UK Council for Graduate Education. She also served on the Editorial Boards of Higher Education Quarterly and Studies in Higher Education.

Rosemary at the SRHE Conference, December 2017

Rosemary played a significant role in the Society for Research into Higher Education and embodied the very essence of good citizenship. She was a member of the Governing Council (from 1999), the Research and Development Committee (from 2001), and chair of the Publications Committee (2003-6), leading the negotiation of contracts with publishers which re-established the financial stability of the Society. Rosemary was Vice-Chair of the Society from 2007-9, was elected Fellow of the Society in 2010, and was a keynote speaker at the 2016 SRHE Conference ‘International Contexts and Collaboration: The Implications and Impact of Brexit’. She even found time to deliver several Professional Development Programme sessions for SRHE including Peer Review: How to do it and get it right: Building confidence in your peer reviewing skills (June 2018) and Peer Review – a workshop for newer researchers (March 2015).

Her intellectual generosity meant Rosemary freely shared her substantial knowledge with colleagues and mentees. She was a critical friend on various SRHE funded research projects: in 2011 – Assessing the impact of development in research policy for research on higher education.  An exploratory study by Carole Leathwood (London Metropolitan University) and Barbara Read (Roehampton); in 2023 – Towards a Community-Informed Model for PhD research? A place-based exploration of attitudes to doctoral research programmes in Nottingham by Rachel Handforth (Nottingham Trent University); in 2024 – Navigating Microaggressions and EDI Initiatives: Lived Experiences of Chinese International Academics in England by Ming Cheng  (Sheffield Hallam University).

She was elected as a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 2006. Her extensive services to Higher Education and Social Science were further recognised in 2013 when she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.This was celebrated with a wonderful party at Royal Holloway attended by friends and colleagues from across the globe.We all reconvened six years later to celebrate her joyful 70th birthday. Her alma mater, the University of Leicester, recognised her work in the sociology of higher education by awarding her an honorary DLitt in 2014 and the University’s College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities bestows the annual Rosemary Deem Awards for Social Science Doctoral Researchers in her honour.

Rosemary’s husband since 1985, Professor Kevin Brehony, died in 2013. This was a tremendous loss for Rosemary as they had shared such an intellectually and socially rich life together. I knew Kevin before I knew Rosemary, as we worked together for 10 years at the University of Reading. Kevin was so proud of Rosemary and talked extensively about her and the happy times they shared travelling, cycling, camping, cooking, and of course, debating!

While Rosemary was a serious, committed and abundantly respected professional, she will also be remembered for her tremendous wry sense of fun, her kindness, energy, and joie de vivre. Her wit, wisdom and dry sense of humour could transform any situation into unbridled joy: we always laughed a lot whenever Rosemary was present. She will be hugely missed.

Emerita Professor Louise Morley, University of Sussex

Rosemary and Louise at the European Women Rectors’ Association Conference, Lisbon, May 2018


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Learning spaces, educational technology and the future of the physical learning environment

by James Rutherford

To look into the near future, it would be sensible to start by avoiding this typical question: ‘What technology do we need to install in these rooms?’ We would be wise to ask instead: ‘What do we want our education to look like?’ Future learning spaces and associated educational technologies require an approach that supports teaching and student collaboration, with accessibility features and environmental adaptations embedded within the design of learning spaces rather than delivered through standalone audio-visual equipment.

Research on learning spaces highlights the importance of aligning technology decisions with pedagogy and intended learning activities, rather than allowing the space and in-class technology to dictate educational practice. (Radcliffe et al, 2008) This principle resonates strongly with my experience working in HE learning environments, where the most successful spaces are those that enable effective communication and participation for all learners. The technical and physical space itself must therefore support diverse forms of engagement, ensuring that staff can teach effectively and that students can participate fully through listening, discussion, collaboration, practice and observation. (Jamieson, 2003)

Audiovisual technology

At City St George’s, University of London, the educational technology allows staff to enter any learning space, connect a laptop, teach, collaborate, record or stream sessions with minimal effort. This has largely been achieved through the learning spaces project (Designing Active Learning Initiative (DALI), 2026) and subsequent upgrade work, with room controls and user experiences standardised across the institution to reduce complexity and support requirements.

Design for learning and teaching

However, this can mean that technical decisions are made before the educational intent has been planned and shared with all stakeholders. It is advisable that educational technology supports the intended teaching activities rather than determines them, with the educational strategy and signature pedagogy of the university driving the learning environment design (Rudd, 2006; Hasper, 2024). Spaces ought to be designed around the learning and teaching needs of an institution, making it straightforward for staff to teach effectively and for students to engage successfully.

Environmental prerequisites

In many learning environments, audio quality often receives less attention than display technology, but it is obvious that students need to hear clearly, be able to participate in discussions and access lecture capture recordings. It is increasingly recognised as a key contributor to students’ learning outcomes, and there is evidence that speech intelligibility and the control of background noise are fundamental requirements for effective learning. This is because the design of each space directly influences effective communication. (Acoustic Design for Schools, DFE, 2015) This includes unwanted noise from corridors, neighbouring rooms, ventilation and external sources, as extraneous noise can be a real hindrance to learning and teaching capabilities.

Therefore, acoustic treatment needs to be considered as fundamental, now and in the future, not least with accessibility at the forefront of our minds. Universities can often improve existing spaces through acoustic treatment and interventions designed to reduce reverberation, although the feasibility and cost will vary by building.

Controllable lighting, appropriately designed and ergonomic furniture, thermal comfort and excellent sightlines all contribute to an effective learning experience. Classroom furniture is now expected to be comfortable, robust and appropriate for the type of teaching taking place. Spaces need to accommodate different body sizes, the requirements of student movement, with diversity and accessibility alongside different timetabled patterns of use and perhaps involving longer teaching sessions.

Accessibility is fundamental

Future learning spaces will need to be designed with diverse learners in mind, consistent with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (Universal Design for Learning｜CAST, 2026). Spaces are required to include captioning, recordings, remote participation and flexible methods of seating and student engagement. Across HE, accessibility is increasingly being incorporated into space planning from the outset through features such as captions, accessible controls, suitable furniture for students with access needs, clear audio and barrier-free access. Real inclusion is developing into a measure of quality rather than an afterthought.

Design for hybrid delivery

Hybrid delivery could be seamlessly integrated into learning space design while ensuring that the on-campus experience remains the priority. Spaces need to support clear sound and appropriately intelligent camera angles. Video conferencing tools permit content sharing, recording and online participation as standard, but hybrid teaching must not feel like an add-on; rather, it should be a flexible and inclusive addition to the learning approach (Beatty, 2007; Melcher et al, 2025). In hybrid spaces, students need to hear the lecturer, hear questions from the room, follow discussions and revisit recordings afterwards.Consequently, excellent microphones, clear loudspeakers, robust voice support, as well as captions and assistive listening are expected to be core requirements.

AI tools

AI is likely to support areas such as transcription, captioning, camera tracking controls, fault detection and remote monitoring for the service teams. Its role would be to improve accessibility, as well as provide data analysis of how the space is performing environmentally and reduce workload rather than add complexity. Such developments must, however, consider how AI tools relate to privacy, ethics, and data governance, which will remain important factors in their implementation.

Support and maintenance

Learning spaces will become easier to monitor, maintain and update through centralised management tools that do exist, but with emerging AI capabilities that could enhance these processes through predictive maintenance, intelligent system monitoring, automated troubleshooting, and data-driven insights. Support teams would then be able to identify and resolve many issues remotely, improving reliability and assisting with planning of new environments.

The transformation of accessibility and inclusion

Accessibility is no longer regarded purely as a matter of compliance, but as an essential component of the learning environment. Future learning spaces ought to be planned and designed on the basis that:

  • some students will need captions
  • some students will rely heavily on lecture capture recordings
  • some students will be neurodivergent
  • some students will join remotely
  • some students will be working in noisy or shared environments
  • some students will need language support

This is key because it changes accessibility from a ‘special provision’ into part of the normal learning experience, in particular the essential role that lecture recordings play for neurodivergent and disabled students (Horlin, Hronska and Nordmann, 2024).

The AI-supported room

AI technology is likely to be adopted within learning spaces with support for:

  • automatic camera framing
  • lecturer tracking
  • capture of student questions
  • reduction of background noise in lecture capture
  • live transcription
  • searchable lecture capture recordings
  • automatic chapters in those recordings
  • summaries of sessions
  • early warning of equipment faults
  • better support information for technical teams
  • information about how rooms are being used

There are obviously numerous risks with adopting AI: too much monitoring; weak governance; data protection and privacy concerns; intellectual property questions; and technology that looks clever but does not help teaching. However, as two recent literature reviews illustrate, the opportunity that AI tools can bring is undoubtedly significant, with the potential for less pressure on academics to operate the technology in a classroom and by offering better access for students (Crompton and Burke, 2023; Adamakis and Rachiotis, 2025).

Conclusion

If the last twenty years were defined by the digitisation of teaching, the next decade could be defined by the redesign of learning itself. Will higher education across the UK embrace this opportunity? Can it afford not to in the current climate of financial uncertainty and geopolitical vulnerability? Accessibility, hybrid participation, intelligent systems and engaging learning environments can no longer be regarded as enhancements, as they will surely become the standard to meet the expectations of students and staff. The institutions that thrive will not be those with the most technology, but those that use it most purposefully. The future of learning spaces is not about what technology we install; it is about what we enable.

James Rutherford is a Senior Educational Technologist at City St George’s, University of London, specialising in learning spaces, educational technology, and hybrid delivery. With over 35 years’ experience in higher education, he has worked as a learning space designer, AV project manager, and video producer, leading initiatives that support innovative and inclusive learning and teaching. James holds a Master’s in Advanced Educational Practice from the UCL Institute of Education and is a Fellow of Advance HE.

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How universities behaving sensibly could destroy access to HE

by Rob Cuthbert

Since the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, national policy for higher education has left HE institutions to the mercies of a market overseen by a regulator, the Office for Students. Each year A-Levels results shine a spotlight on the consequences, which are already visible – major financial difficulties, academic staff redundancies, reductions in course and programme offerings. What everyone knows is that these are the consequences of the wrong kind of competition and a mix of government policies which have combined to slash HEI revenues. These consequences flow from behaviour by students and universities responding rationally, as best they can, to the policy context. But if higher education policy stays the same, the behaviours which seem so rational at institutional level will destroy opportunities for access to the whole higher education sector.

Everyone knew that 2026 would be another ‘highly competitive’ results round – for universities. Applicants, on the other hand, have discovered that there are higher-tariff universities making lower-tariff offers. Increasingly, their ‘insurance’ choices are not insurance against lower grades, but instead simply offer two chances to apply to high-tariff providers. Clearing increasingly offers more flexibility and more chances, if results are not what some had hoped. And things will only get better for applicants over the next five years or more. This is good news for some – the offspring of the mobile middle classes will be experiencing a buyer’s market for some time. But it may be increasingly bad news for others, who just live in the wrong place, may not have much social and financial capital, and can’t move far to go to university or another HE provider.

Everyone also knows what Bahram Bekhradnia pointed out in his recent HEPI Report, Demographic decline and predatory recruitment: the twin threats to English higher education into the 2040s. Population decline means that the number of 18 year olds will be almost 20% lower than at present by the late 2030s. It follows that unless an increasing proportion of young people apply to HE there will be 20% fewer students in English HE in ten years’ time, with a corresponding loss of revenue. However there is no sign of an increase in the proportions applying for HE, which is unsurprising given the intensity of media coverage of student debt and the associated question ‘Is higher education worth it?’. This, of course, is despite the evidence that there is still a ‘graduate premium’ in lifetime earnings, even if it is declining. There is no sign of demand weakening, and students’ satisfaction with their HE experience remains high, even edging higher in the most recent national survey.

Phil Hill in his OnEdTech blog on 13 August 2026 spotted the parallel contradictions in UK and US education policies: “Omar Khan … published a piece at Wonkhe this week arguing that UK policy on graduate earnings contradicts itself. The government wants the graduate earnings premium to rise … It also wants parity of esteem for young people who don’t go to university. Khan calls out the problem: “no amount of rhetorical flourish can make both graduates and non-graduates earn more than the other in their monthly payslips.” … Based on the latest ED [US Education Department] data, 29.0% of undergraduate certificate programs and 6.6% of associate degree programs would fail the earnings premium rules, while just 1.2% of bachelor degree programs would fail. The actual policy is about to put a massive constraint on non-degree student programs. … So which is it? Are we building short-form pathways or auditing them out of existence? The UK can’t decide whether it wants the premium up or the gap closed. The US can’t decide whether it is promoting the alternatives or testing them to death. The earnings premium is not solely an American idea being argued in American terms. Not only is the earnings premium idea bipartisan in the US, it is international and may be growing in scope.”

Phil Hill’s associate Glenda Morgan underlined the parallels between the US and the UK in her On Student Success website. “Two recent reports – one on American public higher education from NCHEMS and another on English universities from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) – show what this looks like in practice. Higher education systems are, like it or not, stratified by prestige, selectivity, wealth, and recruiting power. That is a description of institutional position, not a judgment about educational quality or public value. But what happens when the number of prospective students stops growing? In a stagnant or shrinking market, institutions cannot all maintain their enrollment by capturing a larger share. Growth becomes increasingly redistributive: one institution’s gain is more likely to produce losses elsewhere. Better-resourced institutions expand into markets traditionally served by other colleges and universities. Institutions with less power in the hierarchy respond by adding programs, recruiting new student populations, or moving into the territory of still more vulnerable institutions. Each decision may be rational for the institution that makes it. Collectively, however, these decisions can leave higher education systems more hierarchical, less stable, and less capable of serving students who depend on affordable and geographically accessible options”

UK government policy restricting applications by foreign students, driven by concerns over immigration, has severely reduced the alternative revenue-generating options for most universities, as recently recognised by the mainstream media. Louise Eccles, Robert Watts and Yennah Smart wrote in The Sunday Times on 8 August 2026, previewing A-level results day: “Foreign student slump forces A* universities to accept BBB grades”. At the same time there are now 700,000 (31%) of UK students, facing the prospect of huge debt from student loans, who choose or are compelled to stay in the family home and become commuters to a university within reach.

Applications from the UK are increasing for STEM and related disciplines, which applicants probably believe will offer better career and financial prospects for graduates. (FFT Education Datalab provides authoritative analyses of trends and variations in patterns of achievement.) Institutions respond by taking a medium or long-term view and reshaping their academic offering in response to changes in application patterns. Rather than making across-the-board reductions. many institutions choose to eliminate entire subjects or fields of study. The British Academy’s recent report, Cold Spots: Mapping Inequality in SHAPE Provision in UK Higher Education, spelt out the danger underlined in the recent SRHE blog by Christopher Playford and colleagues at Exeter: “Some students travel far from home to attend university. But many do not, and many cannot. The rising cost of higher education means that for students from lower-income families, mature students, commuters, carers and those with strong local ties, the possibility of studying close to home can determine whether higher education is realistic at all. Local provision of higher education therefore affects what courses are available to young people.”

UK government policy choices have made things worse for HE, by encouraging the mis-framing of HE as ‘academic’ and FE as ‘vocational’ and putting HE and FE sectors into competition rather than supporting the FE-HE collaboration which is essential, and seems to be appreciated much more in Wales and Scotland than in England. Other policy initiatives have significantly reduced HE revenues, with increased National Insurance charges for employers, a levy on overseas student fees, and changes to student visa requirements reducing demand from overseas applicants. There were media reports on 21 August 2026 that the government might agree to cut overseas fees for EU students as part of its broader attempts at rapprochement with Europe, further reducing revenue for already cash-strapped universities. These reductions have far outweighed the benefit from ending the long-term freeze of undergraduate fee levels. Real-terms institutional income has been reduced to levels not seen since 2010, well below the economic cost of delivering undergraduate education.

Institutions are behaving rationally in their own interests, within the prevailing policy context. Applicants are behaving rationally and consistently in responding to the incentives and opportunities presented to them. It is the policy that needs to change – we urgently need financial incentives or rewards for institutions seeking to maintain opportunities for reasonably local and regional study across the country. Without such changes the HE sector may see the participation rate decline, in sharp contrast to the global trend almost everywhere else. That would be an astonishing response, in one of the UK’s most globally successful sectors, to the UK’s need for economic growth. This is a particularly English problem: different government structures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland offer more opportunities for intervention. But the market in English HE has failed to protect access, and things will get worse unless the government chooses to intervene. Those earlier policy creations, the University Grants Committee and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, as funding agencies delivering most of the funds for teaching, would have found it feasible, perhaps even comparatively straightforward to address the problem. The question is whether government now wants it to happen, and whether the Office for Students as regulator has the competence and capability to do what needs to be done.

Rob Cuthbert is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics rob.cuthbert@btinternet.com. X/Twitter @RobCuthbert. Bluesky @robcuthbert22.bsky.social.