SRHE Blog

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Tag Archives: HE and Research Act


by 1 Comment

University autonomy and government control by funding

by GR Evans

A change of government has not changed the government’s power to intrude upon the autonomy of providers of higher education, which is constrained chiefly by its being limited to the financial. Government can also issue guidance to the regulator, the Office for Students, and that guidance may be detailed. Recent exchanges give a flavour of the kind of control which politicians may seek, but this may be at odds with the current statutory framework.

As Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan sent a Letter of Guidance to the Office for Students on 4 April 2024. She stated her priorities, first that ‘students pursue HE studies that enable them to progress into employment, thereby benefitting them as well as the wider economy’. She also thought it ‘important to provide students with different high-quality pathways in HE, notably through higher technical qualifications (HTQs), and degree apprenticeships’ at Levels 4 and 5. These ‘alternatives to three-year degrees’, she said, ‘provide valuable opportunities to progress up the ladder of opportunity’. As a condition of funding providers were to ‘build capacity’ with ‘eligible learners on Level 4 and 5 qualifications via a formula allocation’.  The new Higher Technical Qualifications were to attract ‘an uplift within this formula for learners on HTQ courses’. ‘World leading specialist providers’ were to be encouraged and funded ‘up to a limit’ of £58.1m for FY24/25.

The change of Government in July 2024 brought a new Secretary of State in the person of Bridget Phillipson but no fresh Letter of Guidance before she spoke in the Commons in a Higher Education debate on 4 November, 2024. Recognising that many universities were in dire financial straits, she  suggested that there should be ‘reform’ in exchange for a rise in tuition fees for undergraduates which had just been announced. That, she suggested, would be needed to ensure that universities would be ‘there for them to attend’ in future.

However, commentators quickly pointed out that Phillipson’s announcement that there would be a small rise in undergraduate tuition fees from £9,250 to £9,535 a year would not be anywhere near enough to fill the gap in higher education funding. The resulting risks were recognised. When the Office for Students reviewed the Financial sustainability of higher education  providers in England in 2024 in May 2024 it had looked at the ‘risks relating to student recruitment’ by providers in relation to the income from their tuition fees.

Phillipson was ‘determined to reform the sector’. She called for ‘tough decisions to restore stability to higher education, to fix the foundations and to deliver change’ with a key role for Government.  Ministers across Government must work together, she said, especially the Secretary for Education and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in order to ‘deliver a reformed and strengthened higher education system’. This would be ‘rooted in partnership’ between the DfE, the Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation’.

“… greater work around economic growth, around spin-offs and much more besides—I will be working with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology on precisely those questions.”

In the debate it was commented that she was ‘light on the details’ of the Government’s role’.  She promised those for the future, ‘To build a higher education system fit for the challenges not just of today but of tomorrow’. She undertook to publish proposals for ‘major reform’.  There were some hints at what those might include. She saw benefits in providers ‘sharing support services with other universities and colleges’. Governing bodies, she said, should be asking ‘difficult strategic questions’, given the population ‘changing patterns of learning’ of their prospective students. The ‘optimistic bias’ she believed, needed to be ‘replaced by hard-headed realism’. ‘Some institutions that may need to shrink or partner, but is a price worth paying as part of a properly funded, coherent tertiary education system.’ She saw a considerable role for Government. ‘The government has started that job – it should now finish it.’

Like her predecessor she wanted ‘courses’ to provide individual students as well as the nation with ‘an economic return’. She expected providers to ‘ensure that all students get good value for money’. Other MPs speaking in the debate pressed the same link. Vikki Slade too defined economic benefit in terms of the ‘value for money’ the individual student got for the fee paid.  Laura Trott was another who wanted ‘courses’ to provide individual students as well as the nation with ‘an economic return’. Shaun Davies asked for ‘a bit more detail’ on ‘the accountability’ to which ‘these university vice-chancellors’ were to be held in delivering ‘teaching contact time, helping vulnerable students and ensuring that universities play a huge part in the wider communities of the towns and cities in which they are anchor institutions’.

Government enforcement sits uncomfortably with the autonomy of higher education providers insisted on by the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act. This Act created the Office for Students as ‘a non-departmental public body’, ‘accountable to Parliament’ and receiving ‘guidance on strategic priorities from the Department for Education’. Its ‘operations are independent of government’, but its ‘guidance’ to providers as Regulator is also heavily restricted at s.2 (5) which prevents intrusion on teaching and research. That guidance may not relate to ‘particular parts of courses of study’; ‘the content of such courses’; ’the manner in which they are taught, supervised or assessed’; ‘the criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied’; or ‘the criteria for the admission of students, or how they are applied’.

This leaves the Office for Students responsible only for monitoring the financial sustainability of higher education providers ‘to identify those that may be exposed to material financial risks’. Again its powers of enforcement are limited. If it finds such a case it ‘works with’ the provider in a manner respecting its autonomy, namely ‘to understand and assess the extent of the issues’ and seek to help.

Listed in providers’ annual Financial Statements may be a number of sources of funding to which universities may look. These chiefly aim to fund research rather than teaching and include: grants and contracts for research projects; investment income; donations and endowments. The Government has a funding relationship with Research England within UKRI (UK Research and Innovation). UKRI is another Government-funded non-departmental public body, though it is subject to some Government policy shifts in the scale of the funding it provides through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Donations and endowments may come with conditions attached by the funder, limiting them for example to named scholarships or professorships or specific new buildings. However  they may provide a considerable degree of financial security which is not under Government control. The endowments of Oxford and Cambridge Universities are substantial. Those made separately for their Colleges. may be very large, partly as a result of the growth in value of land given to them centuries ago. Oxford University has endowments of £1.3 billion and its colleges taken together have endowments of £5.06 billion. Cambridge University has a published endowment of  £2.47 billion, though Cambridge’s Statement for the Knowledge Exchange Framework puts ‘the university’s endowment ‘at nearly £6 billion’.  Cambridge’s richest College, Trinity, declares endowments of £2.19 billion.

The big city universities created at the end of the nineteenth century are far less well-endowed.  Birmingham had an endowment of £142.5 million in 2023, Bristol of £86 million. Of the twentieth and twenty-first century foundations, Oxford Brookes University notes donations and endowments of £385,000 and Anglia Ruskin University of £335,300. The private ‘alternative’ providers of higher multiplying in recent decades have tended to have a variety of business and commercial partnerships supporting their funding. Categories of funding provided by such gifting remain independent of Government interference.

The Review of Post-18 Education and Funding (May 2019) chaired by Philip Augur stated ‘Principles’ including that ‘organisations providing education and training must be accountable for the public subsidy they receive’, and that ‘Government has a responsibility to ensure that its investment in tertiary education is appropriately spent and directed’. ‘Universities must do more to raise their impact beyond their gates’, Phillipson said, so as ‘to drive the growth that this country sorely needs’ including by ‘joining with Skills England, employers and partners in further education to deliver the skills that people and businesses need’.

In the same Commons debate of 4 November Ian Roome, MP for North Devon, was confident that in his constituency ‘universities work in collaboration with FE sector institutions such as Petroc college’. Petroc College offers qualifications from Level 3 upwards, including HNCs, higher-level apprenticeships, Access to HE diplomas, foundation degrees and honours degrees (validated by the University of Plymouth) and ‘in subjects that meet the demands of industry – both locally and nationally’. Roome saw this (HC 4 November 2024) as meeting a need for ‘a viable and accessible option, particularly in rural areas such as mine, for people to access university courses?’ Phillipson took up his point, to urge such ‘collaboration between further education and higher education providers’. Shaun Davies spoke of the £300 million the Government had put into further education, ‘alongside a £300 million capital allocation’, invested in further education colleges’.  

However in an article in the Guardian on 4 November 2024,Philip Augur recognised that ‘the systems used by government to finance higher and further education are very different’. ‘Universities are funded largely through fees which follow enrolments’, in the form of student loans of £9,250, now raised to £9,535. ‘Unpaid loans are written off against the Department for Education’s balance sheet’. At first that would not be visible in the full  government accounts until 30 years after the loan was taken out. Government steering had become more visible following the Augur Report, with the cost of student loans being recorded ‘in the period loans are issued to students’, rather than after 30 years.  

By contrast the funding of individual FE colleges is based on annual contracts from the Education and Skills Funding Agency, an executive agency of the DFE for post-18 education. They may then spend only within the terms of the contract and up to its limit. The full cost of such contracts is recorded immediately in the public accounts. This makes a flexible response to demand by FE colleges far from easy. Colleges may find they cannot afford to run even popular courses such as construction, engineering, digital, health and social care, without waiting lists for places. The HE reform Phillipson considered in return for a rise in tuition fees had no immediate place in FE.

Government funding control maintains a pragmatic but very limited means of means of giving orders to universities. This depends on regulating access to taxpayer-funded student loans. The Office for Students measures a provider’s teaching in terms of its ‘positive outcomes’. These are set out in the OfS ‘Conditions’ for its Registration, which are required to make a provider’s students eligible for loans from the Student Loans Company. Condition B3 requires that a provider’s ‘outcomes’ meet ‘numerical thresholds’ measured against ‘indicators’: whether students continue in a course after their first year of study; complete their studies and progress into managerial or professional employment.

An Independent Review of the Office for Students: Fit for the Future: Higher Education Regulation towards 2035 appeared in July 2024. The Review relies on ‘positive outcomes’ as defined by the OfS’s ‘judgement’,  that ‘the outcome data for each of the indicators and split indicators are at or above the relevant numerical thresholds’. When such data are not available the OfS itself ‘otherwise judges’.

The government’s power to intrude upon the autonomy of providers of higher education continues to be constrained, but chiefly by its being limited to the financial, with many providers potentially at risk from their dependence on government permitting a level of tuition fee high enough to sustain them.

GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.


by Leave a comment

What is a ‘research culture’?

by GR Evans

Should  higher education providers foster a ‘research culture’? As the body responsible for research under the Higher Education and Research Act (2017), UK Research and Innovation offers its own definition. Such a ‘culture’ will encompass ‘the behaviours, values, expectations, attitudes and norms’ of ‘research communities’, influence ‘researchers’ career paths and determine ‘the way that research is conducted and communicated’.  The Royal Society adopts the same wording.

Nevertheless, agreed definition seems elusive. The British Academy points to ‘the impact and value research’ in the humanities and related disciplines ‘can deliver to policy makers and the wider public’. The Wellcome Trust is critical of ‘current practices’, which it says ‘prioritise outputs at almost any cost’ It encourages ‘curiosity-based ideas’, even if they fail to make discoveries. Cambridge University has an Action Research on Research Culture project in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, Leiden University, Freie Universität Berlin and ETH Zurich, suggesting international reach towards defining such a culture.  A Concordat and Agreements Review (April 2023) formed a joint attempt to define ‘research culture’ initiated by Universities UK, UKRI and Wellcome. It found it was not sure ‘what a positive research culture looks like’ or what ‘research culture framework to adopt’.

Research is a relative newcomer to the work of English universities. Under the Oxford and Cambridge Act (1877). s.15, the  Commissioners who were to  frame new Statutes for each of the two universities were required to ‘have regard to the interests of education, religion, learning and research’. The inclusion of ‘research’ was still a recent arrival in universities. The prompting had come from German universities, whose influence in linking a doctorate with research had rather reluctantly been recognised. Research-based Doctorates of Philosophy began to be awarded in the USA, with Yale leading the way in 1861.

Oxford and Cambridge took note. Reform of their ancient doctorates was called for in any case. The award of doctorates in Divinity had ceased to depend on advanced scholarship, and had often became more or less honorific as new Bishops began to be granted an automatic Doctorate of Divinity. The transatlantic Doctorates of Philosophy were something new because they were expressly intended for award to younger scholars on the basis of a first research exercise. From the end of the nineteenth century Oxford and Cambridge experimented with postgraduate Bachelors degrees awarded on the basis of a piece of original research. Doctorates for young scholars came next and in 1921 Oxford granted its first DPhil and Cambridge its first PhD, both expecting original research. After some debate the existing ancient doctorates became ‘higher ‘doctorates, to be awarded to more senior scholars, normally on the basis of a significant body of published research. In all this lay the beginnings of an academic ‘research culture’, though well into the twentieth century the Fellows of Colleges did not usually have – or seek – doctorates. ‘Vacancies’ for academic jobs commonly express a preference for a candidate to have a postgraduate degree but do not  require  it.

The multiplication of English universities which began in the early nineteenth century was added to considerably from the end of the nineteenth century with the creation of the ‘redbrick’ universities in major cities. It began to be taken for granted that universities would be responsible for research as well as teaching. However when polytechnics became universities under the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992 they preserved contracts mainly concerned with teaching. That has remained the case with UCU’s ‘Post-1992 National Contract’. An institution may choose to add research to the contracts of its own academics. ‘Teaching-only’, ‘Teaching and Scholarship’ and ‘Teaching-focussed’ academic jobs have  become increasingly common.

Some universities now seek to fix the proportions of the time their teaching-and-research academics may spent on research. The private ‘alternative providers’ encouraged by Governments in the first decades of the twenty-first century have rarely made a significant effort to be research-active so far. with the Office for Students mentioning only one actively seeking research-degree-awarding powers. Cuts to contracted research time are threatened with the increasing pressure on university budgets,  Kent for example lowering it from 40% to 20%.

Doctorates continue to proliferate at DPhil/PhD level, but they may no longer require research as formerly understood. With many providers offering ‘Professional’ doctorates, leading for example to a Doctorate in Business, a Doctorate in Education, a Doctorate in Engineering,  the thesis may be replaced partly or wholly by professional experience and study may take place in conjunction with paid work as a required element.

‘Taught’ Masters degrees and even ‘taught doctorates’  have begun to multiply. For ‘Taught Doctorates’, advanced study may involve taught courses rather than, or in addition to, independent research. The ‘taught’ element may involve lectures on or exposition of the skills needed in research, or include elements in the content of the subject of the Doctorate.

Research expands to include ‘innovation’ and ‘knowledge exchange’

The definition of ‘research’ has been expanding to include ‘innovation’ and ‘knowledge exchange’, both now responsibilities of UKRI. ‘Innovate UK’ had its origins in the ‘Lambert’ Review of Business-University Collaboration (2003). This considered the ‘demand for research from business’ alongside the ‘dual support’ system of university funding, with infrastructure funded from the block grant and funding for research projects dependent on grants and the Research Councils. Lambert ‘proposed a number of principles that should be adopted to encourage world-class business research’. This encouraged the view that the ‘originality’ of research could include ‘innovation’.

Governments have actively encouraged ‘Knowledge Exchange’. The Knowledge Exchange Framework is now the responsibility of Research England within UKRI.It embraces a range of modes of ‘exchange’: partnerships involving collaborative research; contract research; consultancy; working with business; ‘continuing professional development’; intellectual property and its commercialisation; public and community engagement; local growth and regeneration, some but not all  having a defined ‘research’ element. In 2020 a Concordat for the advancement of Knowledge Exchange in Higher Education, was prompted in part to ‘deliver the UK Government’s R&D 2.4% target’ and also to ‘tackle challenges such as levelling up prosperity across the country’, as Amanda Solloway, then Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, put  in her Foreword in 2020.

In 2015 the creation of Degree Apprenticeships added a recognised further addition to ‘teaching’ in higher education, offering a form of  ‘professional’ or ‘technical’ research. Providers were to ‘specialise in working with industry and employers’. Their teaching would be: “hands-on and designed to prepare students for their careers. Their knowledge and research drive industry and the public services to innovate, thrive and meet challenges”.

However an apprenticeship is first and foremost an employment. The relationship with the exercise of degree-awarding powers has been found to carry a  heavy ‘regulatory burden’. Providers complain that they are ‘caught up in a tangle of regulation and unnecessary bureaucracy, which is hampering growth and innovation’. Degree apprenticeships have not yet caught on, for these reasons and because they are found to be ‘costly to deliver’.

Funding for them may be uncertain. The Apprenticeship Levy is a tax dating from 2015 and enforced by the  Finance Act (2016). Its operation is one of the responsibilities of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). It is paid by employers with a pay bill of over £3m, with Government contributing from it to the training costs for small businesses. However the Levy does not fund Degree Apprenticeships.

There have been calls for the Lifelong Loan Entitlement to include degree apprenticeships but the most recent Government Policy Paper (April 2024) embracing Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs) and including ‘modules of technical courses of clear value to employers’, is still working with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) about the possible application of  the LLE when ‘qualifications submitted to the gateway are technical in nature’. There is therefore some way to go before degree apprenticeships can become accepted postgraduate qualifications expressly involving research and with reliable sources of funding.

Funding for an institutional ‘research culture’ goes beyond higher education providers

Taxpayer-funding for universities began to be allocated by the academic-led University Grants Committee (UGC) from 1919. It was to take the form of a block grant, which the recipient university might allocate as it chose. At the end of the twentieth century the UGC was replaced first, briefly, by a single Funding Council and then, under the Further Education and Research Act (1992) by four separate Funding Councils for the nations of the UK, with the Higher Education Funding Council for England taking over the task for England. The new Act stipulated the permitted application of taxpayer funding for higher education between teaching and research, or for the support of either.

Under the Thatcher Government public funding for higher education was reduced, leaving the University Grants Committee less to allocate from the 1980s. (Shattock, 1984; Shattock, 2008) The decision was taken to vary grants for funding according to the research performance of universities. The resulting ‘quality-related’ (QR) research ‘selectivity’ made it necessary to devise measurements of the research results to be rewarded. In 1986 the UGS sought statements from universities on their subject areas by cost, with samples of  five ‘outputs’ from each. Satisfactory research performance came to be shaped largely by measurements of this kind.

A further exercise in ‘research selectivity’ followed in 1989. When the UGC was replaced by the statutory Universities Funding Council, another exercise followed in 1992. Its findings prompted an application for judicial review from the Institute of Dental Surgery alleging that its performance had not been properly measured. The court accepted that the Institute had had independent status for grant purposes under Education Reform Act (1988), s.235(1) and the judgment gave a detailed description of the process which had been followed in arriving at the relatively low rating the Institute was challenging. It faulted the Funding Council for its failure to give reasons for a decision which would affect future funding for the Institute of Dental Surgery.  That prompted some rethinking of the procedure to be used for rating a higher education provider’s research so as to allocate funding selectively.

The Further and Higher Education Act of 1992 replaced the short-lived first single Funding Council with four national statutory funding bodies. The resulting Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) conducted its own Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) every few years,  amending the procedure and requirements each time, with  infrastructure ‘teaching and research’ funding duly allocated on the basis of  its results.

After the exercise of 2001 with its 68 Units of Assessment there was growing concern about the fairness of a method of assessment based on disciplinary or subject ‘units’. The Second Report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (April 2002) heard evidence to that effect and recommended that HEFCE ‘ensure that its quality assessment does not discourage or disadvantage interdisciplinary research’, arguing that ‘such research offers some of the most fertile ground for innovation and discovery’. That adjustment proved difficult to achieve.

The RAE was replaced in 2014 by the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Costing £246m in 2014, the REF proved to be vastly more expensive than the RAE, which had cost £66m for the 2008 exercise. It was last held in 2021 with Research England in charge instead of HEFCE. It is scheduled to be repeated in 2029.

The ‘Stern’ Report, Building on Success and Learning from Experience: an Independent Review of the Research Excellence Framework (2016), was commissioned to report on the REF of 2014. It recommended simplification of the REF submission requirements for HEIs, and rethinking of the use to be made by Government of the resulting data. It approved of continuing the long-established dual support system, with a non-hypothecated taxpayer-funded block grant dependent on institutional performance and separate project funding to be sought competitively from the Research Councils, charities and other funders.

Stern,arguing that assessment should better recognise the reality of the ways in which academic research was conducted in HEIs, used the expression  ‘research environment’ rather than ‘research culture’. In the light of the problems caused for ‘career choices, progression and morale’ for academic and research staff of selection of individuals for submission it recommended that ‘all research active staff should be returned in the REF’ and that ‘outputs’ should not be ‘portable’ to other institutions. It discouraged the hiring of ‘tall poppies’ to improve an institution’s standing in research and urged that peer review should be made more transparent. Like the RAE the REF has encouraged gaming in the recruitment of researchers. However, the REF added the criterion of ‘impact’, broadly conceived in terms of the benefit an institution’s research brought to the economy and society. That addition began to reshape public policy and  encourage the framing of a concept of an institutional ‘research culture’.

The separation of research from teaching

The ‘block grant’ lasted for nearly a century until the Higher Education and Research Act of 2017 abolished HEFCE and placed teaching and research in different Departments of State, allocating the responsibilities respectively to new bodies, the Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation. In future a much-reduced portion of teaching funding was to be allocated to providers by a new Office for Students, to supplement the income now available from higher undergraduate tuition fees. With the abolition of HEFCE, public infrastructure funding for research (laboratories and libraries) was to be allocated by Research England which was placed within  the new UK Research and Innovation. Project funding was to continue to be sought in the form of grants, including those from Research Councils  which were also moved within UKRI.

Uncertainty about the acceptability of the REF continues despite these radical organisational changes. UKRI published a review of ‘perceptions’ about the exercise of 2021. It found that views were mixed. Among the negatives were the institutional cost and negative effects of repeated measurement and the potential distortion of freedom to pursue an inquiry which might not turn out to improve the institution’s ratings, with damaging funding consequences. The review also had something to say on the effect the REF was felt to have on early career researchers. An international Agreement on reforming research assessment was arrived at in July 2022. This called for assessment to ‘reward the originality of ideas, the professional research conduct, and results beyond the state-of-the-art’.  There were calls for the abolition of the REF in England, or for changes to be made before it was held again.   

Public funding of research beyond higher education

In How we fund higher education providers (May 2023), Research England gives an account of its responsibilities in allocating the taxpayer funding of research. It is not limited to providers of higher education. Research England explains that it can fund  the research and ‘knowledge exchange’ activities not only of higher education providers (HEPs)’ and also ‘other organisations that carry out services in relation to research or knowledge exchange in eligible HEPs’.

Plans for completion of the next REF were deferred to 2029 in response to concerns raised about its content and purpose, in particular how it was to reflect the element of ‘People, Culture and Environment’. It was agreed that a ‘pilot’, still conducted in eight disciplinary areas, would be needed to settle the design of ‘indicators’. This agreement was initiated with the help of Technopolis and CRAC-Vitae (part of the Careers Research & Advisory Centre). Vice-Chancellors and other heads of research-active higher education providers funded by Research England were sent a letter explaining the plan and with a link to current expectations. However there were mixed views about the definition of ‘research culture’.

The need for ‘selectivity’ has continued to require ‘measurement’. This encourages an emphasis  on ‘research activity’ rather than the fostering of the still imperfectly-defined ‘research culture’.

SRHE member GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.

Image of Rob Cuthbert


by Leave a comment

Memo to Universities UK: don’t let this crisis go to waste

by Rob Cuthbert

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero[1]

Our text is from Boris and Horace. Boris Johnson had Churchillian aspirations, and it was Churchill who supposedly first said in the 1940s: “never let a good crisis go to waste”, in the context of the formation of the United Nations. And it was Horace much longer ago who urged us to seize the day, and put little faith in the future.

As we survey the present carnage[2] in government, what are vice-chancellors to do? First, take stock of the damage to the machinery of government, both in the Department for Education and the Office for Students. At government level we had three Secretaries of State in the space of just 48 hours. Nadhim Zahawi, the last-but-two incumbent, had shown some signs of common sense, although admittedly his predecessor Gavin Williamson had set the bar very low. Nevertheless Zahawi had done nothing to rein in his universities minister Michele Donelan, who seemed to prefer fighting the culture wars to addressing the real problems of English HE – declining levels of funding, an epidemic of student mental health problems, profound staff dissatisfaction and the threat of mass redundancies and even insolvencies in too many universities. She had taken to telephoning individual vice-chancellors to question some aspect of university management or student behaviour, while enthusiastically pursuing the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which at the time of writing is at the committee stage in the House of Lords, procedurally close to its establishment in statute – perhaps. Her reward as the resignation carnage unfolded was a big promotion to Zahawi’s job, as he moved to be Chancellor of the Exchequer on Rishi Sunak’s resignation. But as the ministerial resignations surged past 50 on Thursday 7 July, Donelan obviously thought that it was safer to join in than to be, perhaps, buried in an eventual massacre of the survivors. But her timing was bad. Her letter of resignation was made public less than an hour before the news emerged that Boris Johnson had bowed to the inevitable and agreed to step down as leader of the Conservative Party – but to continue as Prime Minister, possibly until the Autumn party conference. For a brief period the DfE had no ministers at all, but the Donelan resignation made no difference to the outcome. Had she stayed, she would probably have remained in post and the outcomes for HE might have been different. Instead James Cleverly is the new Secretary of State. He has previously served in the Cabinet, but his views on Education have been “mainly confined to a yearly jeremiad on how A levels were getting easier”, according to David Kernohan’s instant appraisal for Wonkhe on 8 July 2022. At the time of writing the new Universities Minister has yet to be named.

The tsunami of ministerial changes will make waves for the regulator too. While that would be true of any ministerial change, in these peculiar circumstances the waves may reach storm heights. The chair of the Office for Students owes his position to his closeness to Boris Johnson. Baron Wharton of Yarm, as he now is, was simply a former MP when he took on the role of campaign manager for Boris Johnson’s successful bid to replace Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party. (In the past there has been some dispute about whether he really was ‘the’ campaign manager, but no doubt there are now fewer claimants to that ‘honour’.) Wharton was rewarded first with a peerage, and then with the chair of the Office for Students. Controversially, he has continued to take the Conservative whip in the House of Lords although the OfS is by statute an independent regulator. It comes as no surprise that the OfS is fulfilling the prediction made before OfS was established by Director of Fair Access Les Ebdon, when he said “the OfS will do whatever the government of the day wants it to do”.

One of many ministerial letters of ‘guidance’ went to the OfS from the then Secretary of State Nadhim Zahawi and the then Universities Minister Michele Donelan on 31 March 2022. It said in effect that they like the way the OfS is doing the government’s bidding, but they want it done quicker and better. The interim OfS Chief Executive, Susan Lapworth, tried to defend the position in her HEPI blog on 13 June 2022: “ministers are not ‘politicising’ the work of the OfS when they make use of these lawful mechanisms to express their priorities and expectations. Rather, they are making proper use of the powers Parliament gave to them and that feels entirely democratic to me.” She noted that “ministers appoint the members of the OfS board: the OfS chair, independent members, the Chief Executive, the Director for Fair Access and Participation, and, subject to the passage of the Higher Education (Free Speech) Bill, another future director. These are all subject to the normal processes for public appointments. It is, though, hardly a surprise that ministers would wish to appoint people broadly aligned with the policy preferences of the government of the day. And a democratically elected government gets to make those decisions.”

Jim Dickinson and David Kernohan in their 1 June 2022 blog for Wonkhe noted: “… the first meeting for a new [OfS] board member announced by the Department for Education (DfE) as one Rachel Houchen. She’s the wife of Conservative Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, who “lives in Yarm with his wife Rachel” and who until recently was assistant headteacher and governor of a local school, making her arguably more qualified than James Wharton to be on the board. No problem – according to the OfS interim chief executive, it’s OK to appoint the wife of your good friend and neighbour (and Conservative MP) to a seat on the board, if you’re the Chair who still takes the party whip in the House of Lords, because, “once appointed, we all ensure that OfS decisions are taken independently”.  

Now all bets are off. It remains to be seen whether the Higher Education (Free Speech) Bill will be enacted; it might depend on the kind of drubbing it gets in the Lords at committee stage, and whether a limping government has the inclination for a fight on that particular hill. That will determine whether we get a higher education free speech ‘tsar’, directly appointed by the Secretary of State (whoever that is by then). But the Donelan-pleasing initiative announced on 26 May 2022 is already looking more uncertain. The OfS launched investigations into eight universities and colleges to decide whether they meet the OfS’s conditions for quality, which had just come into effect. “Other factors to be considered include whether the delivery of courses and assessment is effective, the contact hours students receive, and whether the learning resources and academic support available to students are sufficient. To support this work the OfS is recruiting a pool of experienced academics to lead the investigative work.” OfS warned that they would be putting ‘boots on the ground’. But on what grounds? Diana Beech (London Higher) was in combative form in her HEPI blog  on 16 June 2022: “In sum, it appears that before implementation of the B3 risk framework, we have moved to a process of investigation based on undefined thresholds or metrics, accepted a subject-based evaluation rather than sector or institution, and accepted that volume balances against scale of variance. Consequently, questions must be asked about the timings, approach and motives for this announcement, which comes before the new Chief Executive of the OfS has been announced and also before a much-anticipated ministerial reshuffle.” Beech, of course had no inkling then of the scale of the ‘reshuffle’, but those questions must be asked with even more urgency now. Will the new DfE ministerial team wish to persist with such an ill-founded venture?

The situation poses existential challenges not just for government and the OfS, but perhaps also for Universities UK. There is an unprecedented opportunity for UUK to reset the terms of engagement between government and universities, by asserting a new and better interpretation of what the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 should mean. There is a chance to put an end to unproductive top-down meddling and reinstate constructive dialogue. But will UUK seize the day?

Some recent signs are not hopeful. OfS have repeatedly criticised ‘unexplained’ increases in the proportion of first class and 2:1s degrees, most recently in a report published on 12 May 2022, readily spun as ‘grade inflation’. In response Universities UK and GuildHE jointly announced on 5 July 2022 their plans to return to pre-pandemic levels of first class and 2:1 degrees being awarded over the next two years. The UUK ‘commitment’ is carefully worded, so the details of how the new arrangements will work are yet to be determined. However UUK accepted the language of ‘unexplained’ increases in the proportions of first class and 2.1s, even though the possible explanations include ‘better teaching’ and ‘students working harder and better’ – for which there is some research evidence. In principle the UUK announcement can only be seen as a shift to norm-referencing and away from criterion-referencing. There is no reference in the UUK announcement to the value of academic autonomy, or the need to be mindful of that autonomy. There must be a danger that UUK will continue to be reactive rather than assert more vigorously the value and the values which underpin the excellence of the English HE system.

But there are encouraging signs too. On 9 May 2022, while Michele Donelan was still fighting the culture wars as Minister for Further and Higher Education, UUK issued a strongly-worded rebuttal of government proposals to cap student numbers and introduce minimum entry requirements: “proposed reforms to post 18 education and funding in England would turn back the clock on social mobility while limiting the government’s own levelling up agenda. … UUK strongly opposes the introduction of student number caps, which would hurt those from disadvantaged backgrounds the most. As well as limiting student choice, student number caps entrench disadvantage because students who are unable to move location to attend university have fewer opportunities to apply and be accepted to university, making them more likely to choose a path with poorer employment outcomes. Limiting educational opportunities is also counterproductive as the UK looks to upskill and meet the growing need for graduate skills. There were one million more graduate vacancies than graduates in 2022. As part of its response to the consultation, UUK has also raised issues with using minimum entry requirements. The universities most likely to be most affected by minimum entry requirements recruit high proportions of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

This is the kind of robust response which UUK will need to maintain and strengthen. The clear statement of values which underpins the statement is the best way to show in practice how UUK will stand up for HE’s best interests and the ‘brand’ that is British (not just English) higher education. Zeenat Fayez (The Brand Education) wrote in a HEPI blog on 11 July 2022: “Brand is a comparatively new concept for universities and can be an intimidating commercial term; but, distilled to an essence, it is simply the reputation of an institution. Marty Neumeier encapsulated the concept best in his description: ‘a brand is not what you say it is. It is what they say it is.’ A brand can therefore be said to be a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. Consequently, brand management is the management of differences, not as they exist on data sheets, but as they exist in the minds of people.”

There are profound differences within HE, not least between staff and vice-chancellors, thanks to the long-running dispute over pay, pensions and conditions in USS institutions, and the equally severe problems facing many other universities as student numbers have shifted upmarket, away in particular from Million+ universities towards those Russell Group universities which have chosen to expand. This jeopardises opportunities for many potential students unable to move beyond their local institution, especially across arts and humanities subjects, as the reported redundancies in too many universities demonstrate. In some cases vice-chancellors have been tin-eared in response, as in the case of one VC announcing redundancies to a mass staff audience online, simply making a statement and not taking questions, and another threatening to stop recruitment to a programme where staff are currently taking industrial action. However a number of individual VCs swiftly and robustly disagreed when Michele Donelan wrote to all English HE providers on 27 June 2022 about “growing concern that a ‘chilling effect’ on university campuses leaves students, staff and academics unable to freely express their lawful views without fear of repercussion.” As for the Race Equality Charter and Athena Swan: “I would like to ask you to reflect carefully as to whether your continued membership of such schemes is conducive to establishing such an environment. On that note, I would draw to your attention that, in May 2022, the interim CEO of the Office for Students, warned that universities, should “be thinking carefully and independently about their free speech duty when signing up to these sort of schemes.” Jim Dickinson for Wonkhe on 27 June 2022 was quick to note there had been no ceasefire in the culture wars.

It is time for the sensible tendency in UUK to reassert itself. That would enable UUK to reset how people inside and outside HE think about the management of differences, especially those between HE staff, UUK, OfS and DfE. It might even enable UUK to give a lead in the broader culture wars. By asserting its position vigorously and properly, and by being proactive on some issues rather than simply responding to another government initiative, UUK has an unprecedented opportunity to restore some faith and trust in its capacity to represent the sector’s interests.

Rob Cuthbert, editor of SRHE News and Blog, is emeritus professor of higher education management, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Fellow of SRHE. He is an independent academic consultant whose previous roles include deputy vice-chancellor at the University of the West of England, editor of Higher Education Review, Chair of the Society for Research into Higher Education, and government policy adviser and consultant in the UK/Europe, North America, Africa, and China.

Email rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk, Twitter @RobCuthbert.

[1] “Seize the day, put little faith in the future” Horace Odes 1.11

[2] After pausing to be grateful that carnage for once refers to somebody else’s mess, rather than commercially-inspired student drunkenness.