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Monthly Archives: April 2023

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Oppenheimer

by Paul Temple

A movie about the life and work of J Robert Oppenheimer, called simply Oppenheimer, with Cillian Murphy in the title role, is due to be released in the UK this summer. It looks as if the movie will deal mainly with the three years of Oppenheimer’s life when he led the Manhattan Project’s scientific team which produced the first atomic bomb in 1945, but his life story holds many other points of interest for those of us studying higher education. Oppenheimer was primarily a university teacher, researcher, and administrator, before the war mostly at Berkeley and after the war as the Director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, where his staff included Einstein, Bohr and Dirac.

A particular point of historical interest is that Oppenheimer’s academic career spanned the period during which Europe, as a result of self-inflicted wounds, ceded world scientific leadership to the United States. When Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, young American scientists wanting to work with the world’s best researchers crossed the Atlantic as a matter of course. As a theoretical physicist, Oppenheimer’s choice was between Germany, particularly Göttingen and Leipzig, and England, particularly Cambridge. Cambridge didn’t work out well, so in 1926 he went to work with Max Born, one of the leading figures in quantum mechanics, at Göttingen, receiving his doctorate there just a year later. There were presumably no wasted words in his 25-page thesis.

Several factors came together to allow America to build an atomic bomb in a stunningly short period. The crucial phase of the Manhattan Project, from when the first scientists arrived at the newly-created Los Alamos laboratory (a collection of army huts) to the “Trinity” test in the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945, lasted a mere 28 months. But the Manhattan Project built on the best available physics and engineering research, created in American universities in the 1930s – Berkeley and Chicago in particular – largely with public funding for the purest of research. Through the 1930s, for example, Berkeley seemed to have no particular difficulty in obtaining funding to build ever more powerful cyclotrons (the first particle accelerators, allowing the production of radioactive isotopes), but with no practical aim in view: nobody seems to have asked them for an impact statement.

America also took full advantage of talent sucked in from Europe, particularly Jewish refugees from Germany, Hungary and Italy. Britain also took in foreigners: Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch, both German-Jewish refugees, worked at Birmingham University in the 1940s and made a vital contribution to building the bomb by showing that the amount of uranium-235 needed to sustain a chain reaction was a matter of kilograms, not tons as had been thought – thus making the bomb a practical proposition.

A lot of things supported the Manhattan Project’s success, but large-scale, long-term funding for blue-skies research, together with a policy of grabbing talent from wherever it could be found, and a sophisticated manufacturing economy, were all crucial. Hard to decide which of these factors is the least likely to apply in Britain today.

Oppenheimer’s loss of his security clearance in 1954 was devastating for a man with a strong sense of national duty. There are several ironies here. One is that, while Oppenheimer’s politics were certainly left-wing, he was notably clear-eyed about the Soviet Union, concluding as early as 1947 that negotiations with Stalin over the control of nuclear weapons would be a waste of time. And, just as past service to the Soviet state was no guarantee of one’s future safety, so the fact that Oppenheimer had given America the bomb (“What more do you want, mermaids?”, a friend asked at his Security Board hearing) did not protect him from the FBI’s unshakeable obsession about his political unreliability (of course, they missed the actual Soviet spies). There is a depressing contrast between this cold war paranoia and the open, international culture which Oppenheimer had known before the war. Princeton’s refusal to bow to pressure from Washington to sack him must have been a consolation of sorts.

There was a reflective silence in the control bunker immediately following the “Trinity” explosion. Oppenheimer later said that he thought of the line from Hindu scripture (he read Sanskrit),”Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”. It seems not to be entirely clear whether he actually uttered the words; someone present recalls him saying, “Well, I guess it worked”.Let’s see how the movie handles this era-defining moment.

Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.

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Irregulation: is the Office for Students fit for purpose?

by Rob Cuthbert, SRHE News Editor

The House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee has decided to investigate the OfS. The Committee, with a remit “to consider matters relating to industry, including the policies of His Majesty’s Government to promote industrial growth, skills and competitiveness, and to scrutinise the work of UK regulators”, published 12 questions on which it invited evidence. The first three questions nail it:

  1. Are the OfS’ statutory duties clear and appropriate? How successful has the OfS been in performing these duties, and have some duties been prioritised over others?
  2. How closely does the OfS’ regulatory framework adhere to its statutory duties? How has this framework developed over time, and what impacts has this had on higher education providers?
  3. What is the nature of the relationship between the OfS and the Government? Does this strike the right balance between providing guidance and maintaining regulatory independence?

Michael Salmon, News Editor for Wonkhe, said on 3 March 2023: “This is much of what sector groups have been calling for, and reflects concerns raised in OfS’ recently published review of its engagement with universities.” The HE sector’s ‘mission groups’, memorably labelled ‘gangs’ by the late David Watson, wrote collectively to the new Education Select Committee chair Robin Walker on 16 January 2023 to ask for a proper review of the Office for Students: “… there is growing concern that the OfS is not implementing a fully risk-based approach, that it is not genuinely independent and that it is failing to meet standards that we would expect from the Regulators’ Code.”

The concerns are not limited to people within the sector. Ian Mansfield, now at Policy Exchange, former special adviser in the DfE to Gavin Williamson and Michele Donelan, wrote for Times Higher Education on 16 February 2023 complaining that “The OfS has thus far failed to live up to the ambition of its creators to be light-touch and proportionate. … However, universities must take their share of responsibility. Despite being part of a mass participation system, receiving significant taxpayer funding, too many do not accept the basic fact that they should be regulated.” Lawyer Smita Jamdar of Shakespeare Martineau tweeted: “I come across v few institutions who resist being regulated. I come across more who are unhappy about the lack of pretty basic safeguards for procedural fairness. People like Mansfield who have egged the OfS on to rush to start investigations carry some (much?) of the blame.” She then wrote in Times Higher Education on 8 March 2023 that “the Office for Students’ published approach to monitoring the risk of breaches of registration conditions demonstrates that it lacks basic safeguards around transparency, fairness and accountability.” Sometimes if you are attacked from all sides you might be in the right place, but the OfS will struggle to argue that case: consider those three questions from the Lords Committee.

Are the OfS’ statutory duties clear and appropriate? How successful has the OfS been in performing these duties, and have some duties been prioritised over others?

This goes to the heart of the statute establishing the OfS, the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA).  HERA explicitly aimed to institutionalise a market for higher education because former Universities Minister David Willetts believed that market competition would ‘drive up quality’. One of his  successors Jo Johnson continued in that mistaken but fervently held belief as he steered HERA to become law. However the ‘disruptive’ innovators encouraged as new entrants have mostly created more problems than solutions, despite some small but distinctive successes like the Dyson Institute.

There is no space here to explore the failure of this kind of market, but one repeated motif in policy pronouncements before and since might be summarised as ‘Why won’t they do what we want?’. The answer is not that universities resist regulation (though some may do) but, more surprisingly, is that ‘You can’t buck the market’. There has always been intense competition between HE providers, for reputation and for the things which flow from that – students and research income – but often the competition is not overtly financial. Policymakers failed to understand institutional realities then, and even more so now. Policymakers introduced £9000 fees in the mistaken belief that a spectrum of fees would emerge reflecting quality differences. Anyone in any university could have told them, as many did, then that no self-respecting university would charge less than £9000, for the real reputational fear of declaring ‘low’ quality. The Higher Education Funding Council for England no doubt did advise just that, but HEFCE was of course abolished by HERA. Now we have a regulator which seems as ill-informed about institutional realities as policymakers continue to be.

Institutions actually respond rapidly to market forces and regulatory threats. At one end of the market, conditional unconditional offers by some universities were a predictable and rational response to accentuated competition for students. A combination of shame and regulatory threat forced their abandonment. At the other end, the declining real income from home undergraduate students drives expansion of international student numbers with higher fees at the same time as well-qualified home applicants are rejected – a saga which is yet to play out but may have toxic consequences for government. And there are growing lacunae of provision in some geographical areas and in some subjects, as market behaviour which makes sense for institutions delivers irrational distribution of provision across the country. This is market failure – because we have the wrong kind of legally-enacted market, and the wrong kind of regulation. The OfS’s duties may be clear, but they are not appropriate.

How closely does the OfS’ regulatory framework adhere to its statutory duties? How has this framework developed over time, and what impacts has this had on higher education providers?

Andrew Sentance (Cambridge Econometrics) argued in The Times on 14 February 2023 that there has been a broad failure of regulation since privatisation and it was time for a complete overhaul. The OfS may be an example, but it is probably untypical because it was so likely to fail. The history of OfS deserves to be written as a case study in regulatory failure, and one chapter will surely start with former Director of Fair Access Les Ebdon’s accurate prediction that “I can tell you exactly what the OfS will do. It will do whatever the government of the day wants it to do.” OfS shortcomings were at first masked by the skills and knowledge of its first chair, Sir Michael Barber, and first CEO Nicola Dandridge. Barber had been in and around government and HE for many years, and though not popular in HE was deeply thoughtful and knowledgeable both about the sector’s performance and about the nature of regulation. Dandridge had been CEO of Universities UK with a broad appreciation of the contribution of the whole range of the HE sector. They were respected and trusted, or at least given the benefit of any doubt, as they sought to respond to the growing range of issues which the government laid at the door of the OfS, now including unexplained grade inflation, harassment and sexual misconduct, mental health and well-being, freedom of speech and increasing the diversity of provision.

The shortcomings of the OfS might even have been overcome through evolutionary change, but the government, with Gavin Williamson then still Secretary of State for Education, doubled down on its earlier mistakes when it replaced Barber and Dandridge (see below), destroying the relationship between the OfS and the sector as it struck entirely the wrong balance for a supposedly independent regulator.

What is the nature of the relationship between the OfS and the Government? Does this strike the right balance between providing guidance and maintaining regulatory independence?

The notes to the 2017 Act say: “This Act creates a new non-departmental public body, the Office for Students (OfS), as the main regulatory body, operating at arm’s length from Government, and with statutory powers to regulate providers of higher education in England.” (emphasis added). It was rumoured that Barber sought a second term as OfS chair but was denied. Former UUK chair Sir Ivor Crewe (former VC, Essex) was interviewed, as Sonia Sodha and James Tapper reported for The Observer on 14 February 2021: “Perhaps it was the long passage in Professor Sir Ivor Crewe’s book The Blunders of Our Governments about the way ministers’ mistakes never catch up with them that led Gavin Williamson to reject the expert as the new head of the Office for Students. Or maybe the education secretary was put off by the section of the 2013 book, written with the late Anthony King, dealing with how ministers put underqualified, inexperienced people in charge of public bodies. The job of independent regulator of higher education in England was instead handed to James Wharton, a 36-year-old former Tory MP with no experience in higher education who ran Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign.”

The Education Select Committee questioned Lord Wharton of Yarm on 5 February 2021 and endorsed his appointment, which was announced by OfS on 8 February 2021. Rob Merrick reported for The Independent on 2 February 2021 that Lord Wharton had been subject to ‘hard questioning’, in the course of which he said he didn’t see why he could not retain the whip, nor why his role as Boris Johnson’s campaign manager should raise any conflict of interest issues. So the ‘independent’ regulator was to have a partisan chair who would retain the government whip. Conflict of interest issues raised themselves almost immediately, as Lord Wharton was revealed to be a paid adviser to a company seeking to build a cable connection through land at the University of Portsmouth, which had also made donations to several Conservative MPs.

Wharton’s appointment was greeted with incredulity in HE, but with no signs of embarrassment on his part; he even brazenly secured the appointment of Rachel Houchen, the wife of a friend and political colleague, to the OfS Board, which has just two people with extensive and current HE institutional experience, one from Oxford and one from UCL. Chris Parr of Research Professional News elicited the surprising information from the OfS on 13 March 2023 that the OfS Chair has only visited five universities since his appointment more than 2 years ago – Nottingham, King’s College London, Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam University and The Engineering and Design Institute in London.

OfS, ‘having regard to ministers’ as statute demands, started to leave HE realities behind. DfE wrote frequent letters to the OfS and the OfS jumped to respond. An OfS consultation document issued on 26 March 2021 put into practice the ‘instructions’ received earlier from Secretary of State Gavin Williamson, proposing to steer more funds to STEM subjects and, among other things, halve additional funding for performing arts, media studies and archaeology courses. WonkHE’s David Kernohan gave his critical analysis on the same day. OfS announced on 30 March 2021 that after the first phase of a review of the NSS, commissioned by Universities Minister Michele Donelan, there would be ‘major changes’ including dropping all references to ‘student satisfaction’. Consistent reports that 85% or more of students in most universities are satisfied with their experience would be embarrassing for a government determined to prove otherwise.

Not a buffer, an irregulator

In the past funding councils were statutorily responsible for in effect providing a buffer between HE and government, to regulate excesses on either side. There is no danger of ‘provider capture’ now that the arm’s-length relationship with government has such short arms. However the limitations of the OfS are being increasingly exposed, not least by the remaining Lords Committee questions, especially No 4: Does the OfS have sufficient powers, resources and expertise to meet its duties? How has its expertise been affected by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education’s decision not to continue as the OfS’ Designated Quality Body?

The QAA withdrew as DQB because the OfS expectations were incompatible with QAA’s broader remit and international roles and indeed the requirements of the European Association for Quality Assurance (ENQA) – which makes it unlikely that an international provider in Europe would agree to take its place as DQB. The OfS as ‘interim’ quality body has lived up to its threat to put ‘boots on the ground’; even though repeated tweaks of its Key Performance Measures have not yet produced any persuasive identification of ‘low quality courses’.

Nor has OfS shown that it will take any notice of widespread HE opinion, as UUK’s Charlotte Snelling reported in despair in her Wonkhe blog on 31 October 2022. On 9 March 2023 OfS announced a consultation on how it should have its investigations funded. The OfS has powers to make such charges following orders laid in Parliament only in December 2022, and “This consultation is not seeking views on the powers that the Regulations give the OfS or whether we should seek to recover the costs of our investigations. We are also not seeking views on matters relating to the OfS’s approach to monitoring registered providers, which may lead to us opening or conducting investigations.” The OfS plans to recover all staff and other costs attributable to the investigation, which it is entitled to do by those orders. It is a sham ‘consultation’, since it is clear what is intended and it is wholly predictable that the OfS will do almost exactly what is proposed.

The role of buffer was condemned as ‘backward-looking’ by Jo Johnson in his recent evidence to the Lords Committee; for good measure he also described QAA as a legacy from a previous era, even though he made clear the undesirability of OfS being more than an interim quality body. But we might at least expect the OfS to show some understanding and appreciation of the difficulties which institutions face, especially with rapidly declining levels of real income from tuition fees. Instead OfS put its fees up by 13%: Gloucestershire VC Stephen Marston, a former senior civil servant who also worked in HEFCE, said in Times Higher Education on 16 January 2023 that the increase was unacceptable. John Morgan reported in THE on the same day that the ‘shameful’ 13% rise would push the largest universities’ fees above £200,000. OfS chief executive Susan Lapworth blogged shamelessly on 26 January 2023 about how OfS plans to ‘refresh its engagement’ with universities and other providers.

To sum up, in the words of Paul Ashwin (Lancaster) and former Secretary of State Charles Clarke:

“Overall, we have a situation in which the OfS has become more interventionist to protect ‘the student interest’, apparently as defined by ministers and certain sections of the media, while its expertise to understand what such interventions involve has fallen significantly. Moreover, it is very unclear what forms of intervention the OfS considers could be effective in changing university behaviours in the desired direction. Together, these points represent a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the OfS as a regulator.”

Effective regulation in higher education depends on the willing, or at least grudging, consent of the regulated, but that consent has been deliberately dismantled. Instead the Office for Students is collapsing in an orgy of partisanship and wilful disregard for the real interests of higher education and its students.

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. Twitter @RobCuthbert


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Freedom of speech and students’ unions

by Phil Pilkington

In March 2023 Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), wrote a review of Freedom of Speech in Universities: Islam, Charities and Counter-terrorism by Alison Scott-Baumann and Simon Perfect (both SOAS), covering freedom of speech, populism (of the left and right), ‘no platforming’, and students. I disagree with his argument and his conclusions.

Nick Hillman’s review may appear a slight text, but it demands a response as it sheds light on a particular and influential perspective on higher education. The comments on freedom of speech interest me as someone who over many years had to ensure events with guest speakers either did or did not take place, running to hundreds of events. Hillman notes correctly on risk assessment: ‘you do not always know which event which will be the one that flares up’. One event I approved did not go well: the experience of a student’s conversion from Sikh to Islam caused a furore, not on campus, but throughout the region and nationally, ignited by formidable Sikh activists. Nick Hillman perhaps has limited experience of the consequences of such events, which can include death threats, social media storms, massive impact on ethnic minority groups on campus and their alienation from the culture of the university. ‘Flaring up’ is a delicate euphemism. Many opinions in the review are misleading because they are ahistorical and expressed without the benefit of material, practical experience.

The book identifies four possible responses to the issue of free speech on campus: libertarian; liberal; guarded liberal; and no-platforming. Hillman says the authors back the ‘liberal’ approach and “the authors regard the threats to free speech on campus as coming almost wholly from the right”. He argues however that there are threats from the left, exemplified by Jeremy Corbyn’s period as leader of the Labour Party and its association with anti-semitism. The authors argue that right-wing populists “sneak into the gap” between neo-conservative and right-libertarian, an argument Hillman criticises because: “the right are portrayed as wrong if they want to limit more extremist speech, wrong if they push for a looser libertarian approach and wrong if they take a position in the space between these two positions. If you’re on the right and you have a view about free speech, it is deemed to be incorrect on sight, which seems unconducive to a reasonable conversation. At this point, the careful architecture of the authors’ argument starts to crumble, not least because left-wing populists and others (eg the NUS) are in exactly the same ‘gap’, which is really a chasm.”

Hillman’s suggestion is that to have a ‘no platform’ position while opposing the PREVENT strategy is to occupy an equally inconsistent liberal ‘gap’. But there is no inconsistency: the matter is much more subtle, complex and dangerous. There is a case for both positions on practical and historical grounds. Historically, a ‘no platform’ position was taken up in the 1970s by many students’ unions against the rise of the far right (the National Front and later the British National Party) which had gained some questionable success in marches in the East End of London and some success in local election results into the 1980s. Students’ unions are often conflated with the National Union of Students (UK), but  many students’ unions[1] did not have ‘no platform’ policies and a few were not affiliated to NUS, which is a confederation of students’ unions, guilds and associations.

A university or polytechnic campus was a focal point for the far right, not to gain support from the students or staff in debate but as a ‘piece of theatre’ for their supporters, who would have been suspicious of higher education. This situationist political action had the lineaments of populism, more recently shown in the occupation, and videoing for social media, of campus buildings by National Action, an organisation which celebrated the murder of Jo Cox MP and is now proscribed by the Home Office. No platform policies were subtitled ‘for Racists and Fascists’. Nick Hillman may have had in mind more celebrated and extremely rare cases of ‘cancel’ culture, but these should not be confused with ‘no platform’ policies nor the actions taken by students against the rise of racist political groups and parties. This stand was important in itself and influential in later legislation for protected characteristics in the Equalities Act. The other purpose of the policy was of course to ensure support and harmonious relations on campus when ethnic minorities were threatened.

No Platform policies were arrived at by debate, with motions democratically passed by the student body. PREVENT in contrast is a statutory duty of universities, instructed by the Secretary of Education under the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 to have a PREVENT policy and strategy which should “balance freedom of speech with the assessing of risk of external speakers”. Unlike No Platform policies it was not debated by the student body. Responsibilities under the Act rested with university trustees/governors, but as a member of staff at a students’ union I was allocated some responsibility for ensuring duties were met and I liaised with anti-terrorism police officers on the adoption of the policy. My experience confirmed the findings of Greer and Bell that the liaison was almost entirely taken up with intelligence of far right and multinational far right groups active in the area who could target the ethnic minority community and students. Political objections by some students’ unions (and NUS) to PREVENT were based on the perception that it was Islamophobic. Attacks on Muslim students on campus at that time, both verbal and physical, reinforced their perception that PREVENT discriminated against them. There was no causal connection between the Act itself and the attacks, but the ‘hostile environment’ was a reality: I established a Hate Crime Reporting Centre within a students’ union to support Muslim students (amongst others).

For many the practical objections to PREVENT were insuperable. The monitoring required to trigger concern for ‘indicators of being drawn into terrorism’ was impossible: for example, that lecturers and other staff should note changes in behaviour, declining academic performance, etc. What might have been possible in a school classroom setting could not apply to a cohort of hundreds of students on a computer science course, for example. Staff training was advised, so that they might notice changes in behaviour likely to be related to susceptibility to terrorist activities. This might have focussed on academic staff and personal tutors, but in our mass HE system I prioritised training for staff working in halls of residence to notice changes in behaviour; it was nevertheless unlikely to be effective.

Overall, to suggest a ‘liberal gap’ between no platforming and opposition to PREVENT fails to recognise the details and the historical roots and practices of the two. It was and is more complex than that.

The review then goes on to address failures in understanding right and left populism and the related threats to free speech. There are some difficulties with this application of populism. I have suggested that the historical origin of no platforming was a reaction to the rise of a violent far right in the UK using a campus and its students as part of a situationist spectacle, against an (educated) elite rather than for support. These historical origins open up a wider discussion. Speech is more than opinion and our right to hold or possess it. Freedom of speech has some conditions of origin and direction, otherwise it would be simply incomprehensible noise. The theatre of speech has attributes beyond facts, truth conditions, empirical evidence, or whatever other enlightenment features may be included in ‘debate’. Debates are rare – most external speakers give a presentation, answer a few questions and then leave. These linguistic details are rarely considered in the discussions about free speech. The focus is on the handful of cases involving ‘cancelling’ or postponement, among the tens of thousands of events each year. Why is this a priority for HE, given the problems facing the sector? Why has it become such a priority? Who has driven this as an issue? Has it been tangled up with a populist view of HE in the UK?

Using the criteria developed by Michael Cox (LSE) for an understanding of populism, it can be argued the UK government is not so much right of centre, as Nick Hillman suggests, but is a government becoming right-wing populist. How is that possible and how could it be related to interests in free speech and universities? Cox’s criteria for right wing populism match many government policies and rhetoric in the UK. Populism of the right is nativist, declaring allegiance to those living ‘somewhere’ (with no social or actual mobility in deindustrialised regions) against the socially and literally mobile who live ‘nowhere’ (graduates, the metropolitans). It distrusts elites, has a disdain for intellectuals, promotes a conspiracy theory of the establishment as traitors, is sceptical about science, and seeks to ensure cultural elites (eg Arts Council, BBC, museums, university governance et al) are ‘loyal’. Some of Cox’s criteria may not be met, but recent developments in the Illegal Immigration Bill, following Theresa May’s Home Office policies of creating a ‘hostile environment’ and the Windrush generation deportations, contribute to a perception of the current government as right-wing populist.

Cox argues that left wing populism is rare, given that the basic condition of populism is nativistic (or ethnically based) whereas the left will focus on class divisions across ethnicity and be internationalist. However, Hillman identifies Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party, and ‘Corbyn-mania’ as left populism because of the antisemitism attached to his time as leader. The apparent implication, since half of university staff and two-thirds of students supported the Labour Party at the time of Corbyn’s leadership, is that many in universities also supported a form of left populism.  This leaves hanging the thought that perhaps they presented dangers as a form of populism to the university spirit, essence or whatever it is about freedom of thought and speech. Hillman says the ‘gap’ between free speech and clamping down or cancelling becomes ‘a chasm’. But that depends on who is deciding what happens in that gap. The free speech imbroglio – if it is that – flows from some deliberate choices. We should ask not how it happened – it began as a counter to racists and fascists attempting to threaten campus unity and vulnerable individuals – but how it became such an obsessive issue for some. An issue which crowds out the academy precariat, the loss of research collaboration with Europe, the financial instabilities of HEIs, the enormous foreign investment in halls of residences, the rise of AI to challenge the curriculum and assessments, graduate indebtedness, et al.

Hillman’s review then turns to students’ unions, suggesting that stricter controls have been introduced; his meaning is not clear unless he means the incorporation and charitable status formalised by the Charities Act of 2006. That Act made students’ unions accountable to a board of student trustees, with charitable status no longer depending on the ‘parent institution’. The recruitment of external lay trustees by student officers allowed for greater expertise on financial, commercial and employment matters but overall control and campaigning policy remained in the hands of elected student officers via student councils, referenda and general meetings according to their constitutions. Ironically, this is the strongest form of democratic control on a UK university campus, notwithstanding trade union activities, in terms of size and scope of activities. Hillman went on to say: “the authors condemn the common idea that student unions should avoid political campaigning that is not focused on students. They envisage students backing a motion that devotes resources to protesting about a national economic policy and argue ‘we think their students’ union should have at least the possibility of enacting the motion if they so wish.’ This sounds more like finding an excuse to divert charitable funds from their proper use than protecting free speech. If a group of students want to campaign against a national economic policy, there are plenty of existing and legitimate routes for them to do so (including joining a political party) aside from (mis)using their fellow students’ charitable financial resources.”

The misuse of funds by students’ unions has long been a trope. It was certainly around in the 1970s and early 80s over alleged support for the IRA or hunger strikers. Probably the biggest financial scandals within students’ unions were the seeming misuse of funds to support rock bands – or to put it another way, to provide grants and arts subsidies to future global rock stars such as Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This was considered to be ultra vires by the then Attorney General in 1973, at a time when there was no legal identity for students’ unions. Unions subsequently separated commercial operations from charitable core activities.

The case against students’ unions campaigning on ‘non-student issues’ because it would be a misuse of students’ resources is simplistic on two grounds. Firstly, there is the question in a universal HE system of what is and is not a student issue. NUS research showed that over 80% of students were concerned or very concerned about climate change – an NUS led survey won a UN award for environmental understanding in the tertiary sector.  So is global warming a student issue? Tick. What about the growth of foodbanks? Students have been accessing them through agreements between students’ unions and the Trussell Trust. A tick for the cost-of-living crisis. Inflation and government fiscal policy are connected, so what are the limits? Childcare costs and the mature students’ society? Disabled students and the benefits test? And so on. A student body is a global body. There is interconnectedness and there is empathy. Who is to decide if ‘x’ is a worthy subject for a students’ union to campaign about? The student body decides on policy collectively. As a charity the students’ union has a legal personality; to make a collective decision is to form a corporate opinion.

Secondly, charities have been deeply concerned with their gagging by the Lobbying Act of 2015. This goes much further than students’ unions and their alleged profligacy in ‘irrelevant’ campaigning. The Act states that charities (including students’ unions) may have political activities in accordance with the aims and objectives of the charity, but not party politically. When there is a close correlation between a charity’s position and that of a political party manifesto (which is usually a position opposing the ruling party) then there is considered to be a contravention of charitable status. The objection to the Act’s powers over charities is not limited to students’ unions, it has been an objection voiced by many large and respected charities such as Amnesty UK, Friends of the Earth, Shelter, et al. Is the condemnation of supposedly ‘irrelevant’ campaigning another aspect of right-wing populism?

Assumptions about parallels between left and right wing populism are highly questionable, and practical knowledge and experience of campus issues around freedom of speech and counter-terrorism points in a very different direction to the one encouraged by topical but superficial political narratives, such as those represented in Nick Hillman’s review.

Phil Pilkington’s former roles include Chair of Middlesex University Students’ Union Board of Trustees, and CEO of Coventry University Students’ Union. He is an Honorary Teaching Fellow of Coventry University and a contributor to WonkHE. He chaired the SRHE Student Experience Network for several years and helped to organise events including the hugely successful 1995 SRHE annual conference on The Student Experience; its associated book of ‘Precedings’ was edited by Suzanne Hazelgrove for SRHE/Open University Press.

[1] Note: ‘students’ unions’, not as in the review ‘student unions’


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The value and values of third sector collaboration for equality of opportunity

by Ruth Squire

In October 2022, as part of a foreword to the Office for Student’s consultation on ‘regulating equality of opportunity in English higher education’, the Director for Fair Access and Participation set out that he expects ‘more, and more impactful, strategic, enduring, mutually-beneficial partnerships with schools and with the third sector’ (OfS, November 2022).

The expectation has carried through into more recent guidance issued by the OfS (OfS, March 2023a), which names the third sector as potential collaborators in supporting school attainment and student outcomes. This is not a new expectation – the OfS, its predecessor organisations, and the DfE have repeatedly stressed the value of collaboration and HE providers (HEPs) collaborating with the ’third sector’ for access and participation – but it does warrant some scrutiny, as it can carry several implicit assumptions about the value and values that the ‘third sector’ can bring to access and participation. In its summary of consultation responses, the OfS notes that some respondents were ‘unsure’ whether third sector collaboration was appropriate (OfS, March 2023b), suggesting that not everyone has the same understanding or enthusiasm around these potential relationships as the OfS.

Questioning the third sector imaginary

The term ‘third sector’ (as opposed to a voluntary, community or charity sector) carries with it a lot of political history and assumptions. Organisations considered ‘third sector’ have been generally assumed to be, in some ways ‘better’ than alternatives in the public or private sectors, whether ethically or in terms of structures that make them more effective at tackling social issues (Macmillan, 2015). These organisations have been assumed to have innovation, effectiveness and (the right) values ‘baked in’ to their organisational structure. These assumptions can become particularly problematic when they are framed in opposition to the work of HEPs, whose widening access work has sometimes been criticised for making slow progress and being informed by institutions’ market interests. Rather than considering these qualities as attributes of ‘types’ of organisations or sectors, it might be better to ask what qualities we need and value in widening access and participation, and how these can be supported in all contexts. Simply ascribing qualities or values, even implicitly, to third sector organisations can frame them either as an ‘add on’ or even antidote to access and participation within HEPs – not particularly collaborative.

The examples of third sector collaboration offered by the OfS and its predecessors have tended to focus on particular ‘types’ even within the third sector – mostly social enterprises and philanthropic organisations. These are often ‘hybrid’ organisations that explicitly combine social and economic value and/or blend public and private sector practices. Among these, the Sutton Trust, with its blended focus on research, lobbying and activity delivery, and a message focused on access to the most elite professions and universities, has become the most prominent. However, the majority of non-HEP access and participation organisations do not have the resources of the Trust, nor is it appropriate for all organisations to follow this blended model of delivery. The presence of such a dominant model of ‘third sector’, which is particularly attractive and well-known among political figures, can create both opportunities and challenges for other third sector organisations, particularly in terms of advancing alternative visions of widening access and collaboration.

If we look wider than this narrow understanding of the ‘third sector’ and how it should operate, then there are a whole range of different organisations that could be and have been collaborators in access and participation. These include campaigning organisations, grassroots community organisations, parent-teacher associations or students’ unions. Collaboration with charitable and/or community organisations around widening access is not new for HEPs. Nor is it a new way of delivering on widening participation aims. However, with a dominant view of what qualifies as ‘third sector’ it is unclear whether these organisations offer the value or values expected by the OfS.

Looking more closely at the capacities and qualities of third sector collaborators can also reveal some assumptions we make about the shape of collaboration and the role of HEPs. Many third sector organisations, even those referenced as exemplars by the OfS, need to collaborate with universities to deliver their missions and to survive. However, they rarely have the security of long-term relationships that can support the effectiveness and innovation that are supposedly their essential characteristics. Examples of existing partnerships have tended to frame third sector organisations as deliverers of activity or consultants, with the HEP in control. What ‘impactful, strategic, enduring and mutually-beneficial’ looks like may require a change from current practice, questioning that power dynamic.

Values-driven organisations

The supposed neutrality and (non-partisan) values of third sector organisations working in widening participation have sometimes made them particularly attractive to political figures and to policy makers, singling these out as examples of good work. Despite values being seen as a positive quality in the work of the third sector, relatively little scrutiny has been placed on values in access and participation practice and policy more broadly. The quality of ‘good people doing good things’ is certainly not unique to the third sector, especially given that they are often the same people and same values as those working in HEPs or even the OfS.

Personal and institutional values have a core role in the enactment of widening participation in all settings. In a survey conducted with widening access professionals in 2021, personal experiences and values were a motivating factor in their roles for all respondents, regardless of the type of organisation they worked for (McCaig, Rainford & Squire, 2022). However, this is not to say that context is not important. Third sector organisations are often materially different to HEPs, not least in their relationship to widening participation policies. In that same survey, there were notable differences in how respondents described their organisations’ motivations, both within and between third sector organisations and HEPs.

There is a growing argument that we need to look more closely at the enactment of widening policy and how it is translated into practice within organisational and national contexts (Rainford, 2020; Benson-Egglenton, 2022). This is as true of third sector organisations working in this space as it is of HEPs (and of the FE colleges, employers and virtual spaces which are also often not included in policy and research). Understanding more about the different contexts in which widening participation is enacted and about those who enact it is an important component in understanding how some of the broader goals of widening participation can be achieved. We also need to pay critical attention to the different roles and capacities of organisations in the widening participation policy space, and their interests. Third sector organisations, just like HEPs, are not neutral by virtue of being charities. Values matter and they offer the potential for meaningful and enduring connections that are not based on organisation ‘type’. If we are to build the type of partnerships the OfS is calling for it will be crucial to move beyond assumptions and develop greater understanding of our similarities and differences .

Dr Ruth Squire is Evaluation and Impact Manager at Leeds Trinity University. Her PhD thesis explored the role of third sector organisations in widening participation policy and practice and she continues to research the enactment of policy, evaluation practice and widening access and participation work.