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Engaging policy review to smooth lumpy futures into transformative higher education

Hamish Coates, Ellen Hazelkorn, Hans de Wit, Tessa Delaquil, and Angel Calderon

Hans de Wit, Ellen Hazelkorn and Hamish Coates are editors and Tessa DeLaquil is associate editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education. Angel Calderon is a member of the PRiHE Editorial Board. This blog is based on their editorial for issue 2, 2025.

Brewing troubles and wobbles

It often feels like there is lots more ranting and moaning than imagining and evidencing around higher education these days. With excellent policy research, it does not have to be this way.

The immediate post-millennium era was arguably a golden age for universities, with huge interest in massification, investment, especially in research, and institutional autonomy. But the global financial crisis followed a decade later by global pandemic shocked higher education into different worlds. Most countries still promulgate objectives for a sustainable and cost-efficient, equitable and accessible, high quality education system as the basis for growth. In OECD countries, however, assumptions that massification would on its own provide opportunities for everyone with mechanisms for social inclusion and social mobility are being heavily questioned. In developing and emerging economies, the challenge is meeting demand and being able to absorb graduates. Yet, too many countries and research-focused universities keep chasing ‘quick prestige’, leaving others to put up with disproportionately lower funding, as well as poorer facilities, resources and opportunities.

Wealth and opportunity inequalities are increasingly greater within rather than between countries. At the same time, questions about educational outcomes such as employability, skills gaps and skills mismatches and over-qualification which have been long ignored by academic communities as irrelevant, are gaining public and policy traction. Governments and industries document the shift away from credentials towards greater focus on competencies – what people can do with what they know – and alternative accreditation processes.

A few large countries are in the foothills of a demographic cliff, while others are (currently) privileged by demand. Traditional public systems in many countries face an identity crisis and appear too sluggish to grasp new opportunities. Parts of the private subsector are progressively active and more responsive to the needs of diverse and older learners and to competency-based learning, micro-credentials and other forms of just-in-time learning. Accordingly, the private sector is the fastest growing segment of postsecondary education worldwide.

Countries vary considerably in their ability to cover costs associated with policy objectives due to revenue challenges and competitive demands elsewhere within society and the economy, alongside student and public unease about cost. Certain systems promote a laissez-faire or marketised approach whereby individual colleges and institutions (public and private) pursue their own agendas, while others grasp at opportunities for a more strategic state-led approach. Countries are beginning to examine the opportunities of a more joined-up post-secondary tertiary system (Hazelkorn, 2025). As Piketty has written, “it is access to skills and diffusion of knowledge that allow inequality to be reduced both within countries and at the international level” (2020: 534). But funding a mass system is very different from one catering to a small minority especially at a time when geopolitical/geoeconomic power shifts reshape the global landscape.

Deglobalisation and populist nationalism are shaking these issues out differently around the world. In many countries, these tensions are contributing to a growing sense of people and communities being left behind, and to social unrest. The dominance of information technology over universities, challenging the value of graduates for entry-level work and of faculty, will spur heightened questioning of the value of higher education (Coates, 2017; The Guardian, 2025; Roose, 2025). While others look on in disbelief, there is a sense that this may not be a problem for higher education today, though it is likely to be so one day.

It is too easy to blame governments and other external stakeholders. What role has higher education played itself, and what role can it play into the future? Is the sector, especially the public side, sufficiently strategic, forward-looking and adaptable? What are the implications for the governance of the system and of its many institutions? Or is it wandering unchained in the global wilds? Universities praise themselves as being one of the world’s oldest and most enduring institution, but as Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Once, such questions may have been ludicrous to provoke at the outset of a Policy Reviews in Higher Education (PRIHE) editorial. Not anymore. Accordingly, in the balance of this editorial we sketch frontier topics which higher education can embrace to drive positive reform, then current journal contributions (Figure 1). We conclude with a call to engage and transform.

Figure 1: Current and frontier contributions

Frontier topics to bump beyond lumps

Any higher education policy zealot who has read Arnold Lobel’s brilliant treatise on Owl’s strange bumps in the bed (in which the Owl is afraid to go to sleep because of two strange bumps at the bottom of his bed, which are, in fact, his feet) (Lobel, 1982) understands that fear is created by running scared and can be tackled by uncovering and addressing matters in ways that unlock innovation and progress.

Policy Reviews in Higher Education plays this important role, though to date with fewer endearing drawings. Springing from inspiring intellectual dialogue with a member of the PRIHE Editorial Board and consequently guest author, Angel Calderon, we mark out a handful of narratives to carry forward policy research over the coming decades:

  • Moving beyond academic comfort communities
  • Handling looming demographic shifts and diversity
  • Addressing concerns about academic value
  • Creatively unpacking university clusterings and characteristics
  • Leaders who lead in smart ways.

Higher education researchers must explore how universities and the academics who comprise them can move beyond comfort communities. This means finding ways to move beyond conservative research literatures and straightjacketing bibliometrics, beyond discipline and collegial communities, beyond the academic treadmill, beyond the subsector itself, and beyond naval-gazing research. A doctorate followed by decades toiling in the same institution is no prudent recipe for forging broader cognitive or tangible engagement with enterprise and industry (public and private) and the broader world. How can career trajectories be redefined to evoke and even provoke experimentation, fertilisation, and broader contribution?

Policy researchers must find productive ways for helping universities handle looming demographic shifts. The Asian investment in higher education which has fuelled the last thirty years will plateau and in major instances decline. Smart countries and universities are already looking beyond increasingly risky ‘foreign and school-leaver markets’ at reconfigured alignments with career-inspiring work and adult life. As yet, however, few if any countries have policy and associated regulation or funding to spur new ventures and directions. Beyond the sensible need for regional or perhaps global ‘harmonisation’, what is the scope for more imaginative forward-thinking about the sort of institutional reconfigurations needed to deliver for societies in 2050? Also, universities continue to see international students as an alternative for demographic declines as well as for income generation, adopting imperialist approaches to new markets rather than anticipating global and local shifts. Internationalisation is still seen as an income source based on mobility flows, instead of as a possible change agent for innovation in education, research and service to society.

Genuine political concerns about academic quality and value are unlikely to be assuaged by fluffing up the fame of elite researchers who typically have little to do with students or voting communities. Graduate outcomes and relevance are some of the most pressing challenges for all governments pushing people to question the value of higher education and ensure it translates into good jobs. Broadening rankings to include topics like sustainability, while useful, misses the more substantial need to focus on local engagement rather than global striving. It is folly to think that all the ~88,000 higher education institutions (UNESCO, 2022: 12) should aspire to look the same. Pursuit of ‘world-class’ sameness is no substitute for critical research and delivery of more robust and compelling public information on value, quality of educational delivery and outcomes, and at the same time nuanced differentiation of the difference each and every institution can make. And arguably rankings bear increasing responsibility for distorting funding allocations and institutional/government priorities across many post-secondary systems.

Higher education sector growth in recent decades has spawned exciting, misunderstood and very important institutional and national configurations. There is an urgent need to creatively unpack university clusterings. Far too much time and money has been invested in studying groups characterised by bibliometric performance. More interestingly, there are university-defined groups, ranging from ‘presidents’ dinner clubs’ to disciplinary groups of nationally aligned associations. There are broader political, cultural and religious associations. There are groups connected through graduate or professional diasporas, or research connections. There is an emergent clustering of associations shaped by geopolitical/geoeconomic and national security imperatives. Ownership and tax-status has long been a means of shuffling universities into groups. What novel patterns and projections can be revealed?

Leading universities and the sector in smart ways will be imperative to ensuring the sector’s promise does not demise. Finding effective leaders is an obvious necessary step, which surprisingly little research has clarified. Cultivating and developing leaders is an obvious next step, though it is tackled in so many perplexing ways. Diversity is important, of course, including in intellectual as well as manifest characteristics. Assuring value and delivery is paramount, with increasing suspicions but to date far too little warrant is given to importing governance techniques from other sectors. Strengthening institutional governance and management is required to ensure that the right leaders are appointed and that they have the capacity and capability to deal with more frequent and overlapping crises and conflicting externalities in uncertain circumstances. There should be willingness to find new ways to govern tertiary education sectors more robustly considering turbulence and increased uncertainty and the level of emergent discord between the public and universities. No doubt policy governance can be tricky, but it needs to be more strategic and forward thinking, willing to take innovative steps to ensure the education system meets the needs of all learners and society. Governance systems were designed based on periods of relative stability and the occasional minor disturbance. What can be done, for instance, to build more resilient leadership for public and private vocational and higher education, encouraging active engagement with each other and their communities beyond the campus? Is there renewed scope to refresh ‘old public management’?

Research that twirls headwinds into tailwinds

With the intent of curating even more purposeful contributions, PRIHErecently launched a call for experts around the world to curate cognate collections on a high-impact policy contributions. These contributions which relate to hot topics in higher education policy seek to engage a group of scholars around important themes, and work with the journal and related networks to convene hybrid global seminars and deliver substantial insights on consequential frontier issues. PRIHE’s Editorial Board and Editors have spotlighted six shaping themes which raise questions, insights and issues to be addressed by policy, drawing on experiences from around the world. These include:

  • Proving contributions: Restoring public trust in higher education and universities
  • Emerging formations: Transnational, online and private higher education, regulation, ethics
  • Geopolitical upheavals: Collaboration, sovereignty, nationalism, deregulation
  • Global challenges: Sustaining autonomy, academic freedom, purposeful research, independence
  • Lifelong learning: Valuing higher learning and skills across the lifespan, and
  • Valuing education: Raising the profile of large-scale teaching and learning.

Higher education in many if not most countries is confronting strong headwinds and needs strident thinking and reform rather than rent-seeking complacency. Carving out intellectual architectures to stimulate dialogue from disorder creates tailwinds for the tough work then required to create and promulgate the evidence which may sway policy and reform practice. In this editorial we have advanced a handful of non-ignorable developments as a guide for authorship, deliberation, and reforming practice.

Reference: Hazelkorn, E (2025) ‘Building a Unified Tertiary Education System. Trends and Propositions to Provoke Discussion, Trending Topics’ New Directions for Community Colleges  Forthcoming.

Professor Ellen Hazelkorn is Joint Managing Partner, BH Associates. She is Professor Emeritus, Technological University Dublin.

Hamish Coates is professor of public policy, director of the Higher Education Futures Lab, and global tertiary education expert.

Hans de Wit is Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, Senior Fellow of the international Association of Universities.

Tessa DeLaquil is Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Angel Calderon is Director of Strategic Insights at RMIT University and expert on global tertiary education


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Am I the Weakest Link?

by Paul Temple

Call me a sad old geezer, but I’m finding the never-ending positivity that characterises LinkedIn’s sunshine world rather wearing. To take one example, the “comment” options you’re offered after each post might run from “awesome“, through “love this,” to merely “impressive”: where is “misleading”, “time-wasting”, or “plain wrong”? Anyway, turning this negativity (my “inner snark” as a kindly colleague once put it) into a business proposition, in a way that LinkedIn’s owners (Microsoft paid $26 billion for it back in 2016) would surely understand, I’m about to pitch a rival version,  provisionally titled PissedOff – though the investors might want to focus-group that first. (Warning: if this title offends you, please stop reading at this point.) It will instead tap into the deep wells of pessimism that characterise so much of British life (though the French surely are just as good at it). The sociologists refer to this kind of thinking as “narratives of decline”, supported by Britain’s unofficial national motto, “Could be worse”.

So a typical post on my new site might be: “Dave has just been fired from the University of Hounslow – ‘I always hated the place anyway, and the VC was a complete ****er,’ he said.” “Dave, absolutely with you, mate, the place is beyond awful, surprised you stuck it as long as you did”. “Dave, you speak for all of us who have suffered at Hounslow – I got out as soon as I could. Nobody who values their integrity should think of working there”. I’m confident that the latest from PissedOff will be the first email that everyone working in higher education will open in the morning, to see who/where is getting the flak. An absolute rule of the site will be that references to “seeking new challenges” or similar euphemisms are banned: if you’ve been fired, let’s hear about it, it’s (usually) nothing to be ashamed of – be loud and proud. What you’re now going to do is make them very, very sorry…

What will then happen is that everyone with a grudge about Hounslow (and which university doesn’t have an army of grudge-bearers?) will pile in, Four Yorkshiremen-style: “You think you had a bad time, let me tell you about what happened to me…”, and pretty soon the place will be a national laughing-stock. After the VC has had a torrid meeting with the governing body, and the HR Director has been fired as a pointless gesture, there might possibly be some improvements. I’d be surprised to learn of any institutional changes as a result of another glowing LinkedIn endorsement.

LinkedIn’s Californian roots are its problem. Up to a point, and having seen it working first-hand, I am actually in favour of American-style positivity in organisations: there is a sense that if the people around you are saying “Yes, we can do this!”, then maybe the difficulties can, actually, be overcome – what the Navy calls the “Nelson Touch”. But equally, some of those difficulties may be intractable, and pretending they don’t exist won’t make them go away. If you want some actual American examples of difficulties being overcome, or not, look at George Keller’s still-excellent Academic Strategy (1983), or my own more recent reflections on it (Temple, 2018). Or my review of some honest American case studies of university leadership and – the book’s best bits – of its failures (Temple, 2020).

What these studies show is how real problems are identified and how they then might be overcome. One of the weaknesses found in too many university strategy documents is the inability to face up to problems and creating instead a make-believe world (call it LinkedIn World) where everything always goes well and everyone is enjoying themselves. The danger, of course, is that strategy documents like that will make everyone pissed off even if they hadn’t been before. I once got into trouble with the VC of a post-92 university by asking, quite innocently (no, really), about the basis of a claim in a staff recruitment ad that they were a top-ten research university (something like that, anyway: as my then-colleague David Watson drily remarked, “Another fine mess you’ve got us into”.). This was a perfectly good university, doing a fine job in supporting regional development goals, doing next-to-no research (as measured by research income), but feeling it necessary to buy into the apex research university model. They were assuming that they had to live in LinkedIn World, rather than the world they were actually in. (I’m glad to say that the VC and I eventually parted on good terms – he even bought me a beer.)

Anyway, once the IPO for PissedOff goes through, do join me for a cocktail on the deck of my yacht in Monte Carlo. But leave any whingeing about your job back in the office – I don’t want the real world intruding on my Riviera idyll, thank you very much.

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


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Private international foundation courses, and what they say about university leadership

by Morten Hansen

My research on the history of private international pathway providers and their public alternatives shows how some universities have stopped believing in themselves. Reversing this trend requires investment in their capabilities and leadership.

The idea that universities have stopped believing in themselves as institutions that can take on the challenges of the day and find solutions that are better than those developed by private rivals echoes a point recently revived by Mariana Mazzucato. Mazzucato explains how private firms often are portrayed like lions. Bold animals that make things happen. The public sector and third-sector organisations, on the contrary, are too often seen as gerbils. Timid animals that are no good at developing new and innovative solutions.

Skilled salesmen convinced some universities that private companies are better than universities at teaching and recruiting for university preparatory programmes. The inbuilt premise of this pitch is that universities are gerbils and private providers are lions. One university staff member explained what it felt like meeting such salesmen:

“The thing that sticks most in my mind is the dress. And how these people sat differently, looked differently, spoke differently, and we felt parochial. We felt like a bunch of country bumpkins against some big suits.” (University staff)

The lion-gerbil pitch worked in institutions across England because universities were stifled by three interlocking practices of inaction: outsourcing capability development; taking ambiguous stands on international tuition fees; and refusing to cooperate with other universities.

Outsourcing capability

Universities are increasingly outsourcing core aspects of their operations, such as recruiting international students. While university leadership is often characterised as conservative, my research suggest that this trope misses something critical about contemporary university leadership in English higher education. The problem with the term ‘conservative’ is that it implies that leadership is risk-averse, and comfortable projecting past power structures, practices and norms into the future. This does not correspond to historical developments and practices in the sector for international pathways.

The University of Exeter, for example, submitted incorporation documents for their limited liability partnership with INTO University Partnerships only six years after the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000 was passed, which marked the first time in England’s history that this legal setup was possible. They took a big leap of faith in the private sector’s ability to recruit students for them, and after doing so invested time and resources helping INTO to further develop its capability. They even invited them onto their campuses. It is hard to overstate how much these actions diverged from historical practice and thus ‘conservative’ leadership.

What was once a highly unusual thing to do, has over the last two decades thoroughly normalised—to the extent that partnering with pathways now seems unavoidable. One respondent from the private sector explained this change in the following way:

“In 2006, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09, ‘10, the pathway providers were, if you like, the unwelcome tenants in the stately home of the university. We had to be suffered because we did something for them. Now, the relationship has totally moved. It’s almost as if they roll out the red carpet for the pathway providers” (C-suite)

The far more conservative strategy would have been to lean into the university’s core capabilities – teaching and admissions – and scale this up over time. Yet that is precisely what my respondents said ‘conservative’ university leaders were unwilling to do: they did not believe the university could manage overseas recruitment by themselves. As argued by former Warwick VC Nigel Thrift, this timidity is not unique to the recruitment of international students, but also extends to their engagement with government agencies. University management by and large “has done as it has been told. It hasn’t exactly rolled over and played dead, but sometimes it can feel as though it is dangerously close to Stockholm Syndrome” (Thrift, 2025, p3).

Ambiguous stands on international fees have deepened the current crises

There is no law in England that compels universities to charge high international students fees. By setting them as high as possible and rapidly increasing the intake of international students, universities de facto offset and thus obfuscated the havoc that changing funding regimes wreaked on university finances. This has contributed to what Kings’ Vice Chancellor Shitij Kapur calls the ‘triangle of sadness’ between domestic students, universities, and the government.

Had universities chosen to stand in solidarity with their international students by aligning their fees more closely to the fees of home students, then the subsequent crises in funding would have forced universities to either spend less money, or make it clearer to the wider public that more funding was needed, before building up the dependencies and subsequent vulnerabilities to intake fluctuations that are currently on full display. These vulnerabilities were exacerbated by overoptimistic growth plans, and university leadership not always fully understanding the added costs that came with such growth. In an example of this delayed realisation, one Pro-Vice-Chancellor explained to me what it felt like to partner with a private foundation pathway:

“At the time you are signing up for these things, there is euphoria around because they are going to deliver against this business plan, which is showing hundreds of students coming in. International student is very buoyant, you sign up for a 35-year deal. So, everything is rosy. If you then just take a step back and think ‘so what am I exposing the university to?’  …  because in year seven, eight, ten, fifteen whatever, it can all go pear-shaped, and you are left then with the legacy building.” (Pro-Vice-Chancellor)

By seeing fee setting as a practice, that is, something universities do to their own students rather than something that is inflicted by external (market or government) powers, we make visible its ideological nature and implications. The longer history of international fees in Brittan was thus an important site of ideological co-option; it was a critical juncture at which universities could have related in a more solidaric manner towards their students.

Unwillingness to cooperate on increased student acquisition costs

You might, at this stage, be wondering: what was the alternative? The answer is in recognising the structure of the market for what it is: efficiently recruiting and training a large number of international students requires some degree of cooperation between universities. My research, however, suggests that universities have often been unwilling to cooperate because they see each other chiefly as competitors. This competition is highly unequal given the advantage conferred to prestigious universities located in internationally well-known cities.

The irony is that many universities nevertheless end up – perhaps unwittingly – cooperating by partnering with one of the few private companies that offer international foundation programmes. These private providers can only reach economies of scale because they partner with multiple universities at the same time. One executive explains how carrying a portfolio of universities for agents to offer their clients is precisely what gives them a competitive advantage:

“The importance of the pathways to the agents is that they carry a portfolio of universities, and the ambition is that you have some which are very well-ranked and academically quite difficult to get into. And, you try and have a bottom-feeder or two, which is relatively easy to get into academically. The agent is then able to talk to its clients and say, look, I can get offers into these universities. Some of them are at the very top. If you are not good enough there, then you might get one in the middle and I’ve always got my insurance offer for you. […] what the pathways do is that they provide a portfolio that makes that easier.” (Private Executive)

A public consortium with pooled resources and that isn’t shy about strategically coordinating student flows would have functioned just as well, and the Northern Consortium is living proof of this. The consortium in fact inspired Study Group to get into the pathway business themselves. The limited growth of the Consortium, relative to its private rivals, is equally proof of missed chances and wasted opportunities.

Could the gerbil eat the lion?

Private providers can use and have used these practices of inaction to pit universities against each other, over time resulting in lower entry requirements and higher recruitment costs. In this climate, public alternatives such as in-house programmes struggle to survive. Once invited in, pathway companies are also well positioned to expand their business with their partner universities in other ways, deepening their dependence. As one senior executive told me:

“Our aspiration is to say that the heart of what we are is a good partner to universities. They trust us. […] for some of our core partners, we bring in a lot of revenue. And, that then puts us in a really good position to think about the other services that we can add of value.” (Private Executive)

The economic downside of relying on these ‘good’ partners is the expensive and volatile market dynamics that follow. As long as universities are trapped by the notion that they are chiefly competitors best served by outsourcing capabilities to sales-oriented firms and leaving international students to pick up the bill, there is limited hope for any genuine inter-university collaboration and innovation. This limits the public potential for scaling an economically viable and resilient market in the long-run.  As a sector, HE has the know-how, experience, capital, and repute to do this. It’s just about getting on with it!

Morten Hansen is a Lecturer in Digital Economy and Innovation Education at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.


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Do we really empower sabbatical officers to be the voice of students?

by Rebecca Turner, Jennie Winter & Nadine Schaefer

Student voice is firmly embedded within the architecture of universities, with multiple mechanisms existing through which we (as educators) can ‘hear’, and students can ‘leverage’ their voice.  The notion of student voice is widely debated (and critiqued – see Mendes & Hammett, 2023), and whilst relevant to this blog post, it is not what we seek to focus on here. Rather we focus on one of the primary figureheads of student voice within universities – the sabbatical officer – and consider how they are empowered to represent the ‘voice’ of their peers to their university.

Sabbatical officers are elected by the student body to represent their interests to the wider university community. They are leaders and trustees of their student union – semi autonomous organisations that operate alongside universities to advocate for the student body (Brooks, Byford & Sela 2016).  As elected student representatives, sabbatical officers sit on high-level university committees where student voice is ‘required,’ making the rapid transition from a student in a lecture hall, to a voice for all. Though this is an anticipated move, it is potentially challenging. Becoming a sabbatical officer is the accumulation of a hard-fought election campaign, which commonly builds on several years of working with their students’ union alongside their undergraduate studies (Turner & Winter, 2023).

In collaboration with the NUS, and with the support of a small grant from the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA), we undertook a national survey to develop contemporary insights into the work of elected sabbatical officers. Sabbatical officers were clearly keen to share their experiences as we achieved responses from 59% of student unions affiliated to the NUS. We also undertook interviews with a sample of sabbatical officers (n=4) and permanent student union staff (n=6) who supported them during their time in office. Here we reflect on headlines emerging from this study, to place a brief spotlight on the work of sabbatical officers. 

What a busy year (or two!)

Sabbatical officers were often negotiating multiple, potentially competing, demands – as this survey respondent reflected when invited to comment on the main challenges they faced:

‘Getting up to speed with the fast-moving world of [being] a sabbatical officer and the many roles I had (sabb, trustee, leader, admin and campaigner)’.

Sabbatical officers had a long list of responsibilities, including jobs inherited from their predecessor, union and university commitments, as well as the commitments they made through their own manifestos.  Attending university committees to give the student voice took considerable time, with many questioning the value of the time spent in meetings:

‘It’s very much the case that you are in a room for two hours where you will be speaking for, I don’t know, two minutes. So sometimes it seems very boring to get involved with those random conversations which have very little to do directly with student experience.’ SO1

It was a common theme that sabbatical officers were silent during these meetings, waiting for the brief interlude when they were invited to speak. Leading us to question both where their agency as student representatives lay in these committees, and how they could effect change in this space, when their engagement was limited. A concern shared across survey respondents, for example:

‘I’m in a huge number of meetings which significantly reduces the amount of time I have to work on manifesto objectives.’

With a jobs list (and a diary) that echoed that of many Vice Chancellors (though with considerably less experience in HE), sabbatical officers reported engaging in trade-offs for who they worked with, whose voice was heard and opinions sought, to balance the demands of their role.  As this sabbatical officer reflected, this could leave the wider student body questioning their actions:

‘[Students] want to see the battle happening.  What they don’t want to see, is me sit for three hours and hash out the middle ground with some members of staff who probably aren’t going to change their mind.’ SO2

Finding their voice

Though given a seat at high level tables, respondents did not always feel at ease speaking up, the sentiments of this respondent were repeated many times in our data:

‘I think the hardest part is, we are sitting on committees with individuals who have worked here for years.  We’re never going to have that same knowledge, so that makes it quite a challenge um to be able to understand the ins and outs of the university and the institution, and the politics.’ SO3

We did question whether the expectation to engage in these spaces may further reinforce the inequalities in student leadership highlighted by Brooks et al (2015).  However, sabbatical officers were not working alone. Permanent officers played an important role, helping them, for example, to decode paperwork and plan their contributions. Leadership allies, who may, for example, provide early access to meeting paperwork to aide preparation, or coach sabbatical officers in advance of meetings, assisted sabbatical officers to find their voice:

‘I think the university has been really accommodating giving me the heads up on things that I could then have a bit more time to read up on things and to improve my knowledge.’ SO4

Developing effective support networks was essential; through these networks they gained the knowledge needed to contribute confidently in ‘university’ spaces. However, this took considerable time and resulted in many reprioritising their work. They focused on activities deemed essential (which were many!) with other areas of the work being streamlined to ensure promised commitments could be fulfilled (Turner & Winter, 2023). 

The time taken for sabbatical officers to get up to speed was discussed at length by those serving a second term, which as this respondent noted, was ‘when the real work got done.’   They had learnt the ropes, and as another Sabbatical Officer (SO) reflected:

‘There’s a lot of stuff [to learn] when you come into this role.  I think sabbatical officers do well if they are re-elected because they’ve had to learn a lot.’ SO2

‘Knowing the route to achieve my goals’

Our data captured the committed and driven nature of this (overlooked and overworked) constituent of the HE community. Though working in challenging circumstances, they embraced opportunities to influence policy and practice. Successes were based on the support they received and the strategies they developed to undertake their work. The value of an effective handover from their predecessor cannot be overlooked and permanent student union staff provided much needed continuity and support. Sabbatical officers drew on their student representatives to provide the eyes on the ground and engaged with senior leaders to develop their understanding of how universities work and through these individuals they grew in confidence to speak in front of diverse audiences.  As individuals, many respondents performed their roles with tenacity, approaching their work both pragmatically and innovatively. Yet the time limited nature of this role added pressure and delineated what could be achieved:

‘Knowing the route to achieve my goals was difficult because it requires knowing what exactly you want before you’ve even started the job [so that you can] achieve what you want in year.’

This prompted us to question the sustainability of the sabbatical officer role; realistically who can manage, at this early stage in their career, the breadth of demands placed on them for more than a short period of time?

Promoting the voice of sabbatical officers?

As pedagogic researchers, we have a final, curious observation to make regarding the dearth of systematic research into this field of HE. Student unions have a long history; reference is still made to the activism and uprise of the 1960s (Klemenčič 2014). As a community we lament how student voice activities have become the realm of quality assurance, and question whether students have become politically apathetic (Raaper, 2020). The re-positioning of student unions has increased accountability and encouraged partnership working with their affiliated university (Brooks et al, 2016; Squire 2020). This leads us to question how relevant it is to continue to look backwards and talk of how students’ unions used to operate in the past. As the sector becomes increasingly diverse and how students engage with HE becomes more fragmented, we need to play closer attention to students’ unions to ensure they are supported to function effectively and represent the interest of students. 

Dr Rebecca Turner is an Associate Professor in Educational Development at the University of Plymouth, UK.  Alongside her interest in student voice and representation, Rebecca’s research addresses themes relating to inclusivity, student success and widening participation. 

Professor Jennie Winter is Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Academic Development at Plymouth Marjon University, a National Teaching Fellow, and a Principal Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. She holds numerous external roles, contributes to international pedagogic research, and her work has been utilised by the European Commission and presented globally.

Dr Nadine Schaefer is an Educational Developer at the University of Plymouth. Her research interests include student voice, student engagement and wider quality assurance issues in HE. Nadine is a Senior Advance HE Fellow (SFHEA).


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Leading in complexity: Are higher education leaders ready for the age of austerity?

by Robert Perich, Ladina Rageth, Danya He and Maryna Lakhno

Higher education is at a crossroads. Across Europe and beyond, higher education institutions (HEIs) face increasing financial constraints, shifting political landscapes, and the growing challenge of digital transformation. In this turbulent environment, leadership is not just about managing institutions – it is about navigating uncertainty and ensuring that HEIs remain resilient, innovative, and globally competitive.

Yet, are higher education leaders equipped for this challenge? A recent Swiss national study of senior leaders (detailed findings are available here) provides a reality check. Our study, the first of its kind in Switzerland, examined the career trajectories, competency sets, and strategic concerns of 312 leaders from 38 institutions. What it uncovered was both revealing and troubling: senior leaders felt largely unprepared for the mounting financial and structural pressures facing higher education.

HEIs are no longer just institutions of knowledge – they are complex organisations requiring financial stewardship, strategic foresight, and the ability to manage significant institutional change. And yet, many senior leaders step into their roles with little to no formal management training. In a period where every budget decision can mean the difference between institutional sustainability and decline, this skills gap is more than an inconvenience – it is a challenge.

Who runs Swiss HEIs today?

The study reveals a leadership demographic that is surprisingly homogeneous. Despite years of diversity initiatives, Swiss HEI leadership remains overwhelmingly male (68%) and Swiss (80%). The average senior leader is in their mid-50s, has spent nearly 14 years at their institution, and was more likely than not promoted from within. Internal hires outnumber external appointments (55% vs 45%), and critically, almost 40% of senior leaders entered their positions without prior general management experience.

This reliance on internal promotion, while preserving institutional knowledge, raises an uncomfortable question: Are HEIs prioritising academic credentials and institutional loyalty over strategic and managerial competence? As budget cuts tighten and HEIs are forced to make hard choices, is it enough for leaders to understand academic culture, or must they also master the art of institutional strategy and financial sustainability?

The gap: what competencies do leaders need – and what are they lacking?

Swiss HEIs, like their counterparts worldwide, are complex ecosystems requiring a balance of academic credibility and managerial acumen. Yet, when surveyed, senior leaders overwhelmingly ranked leadership and strategic design capabilities as the most essential competencies, both of which require years of cultivation. They also emphasised managing organisational change, a competency that will become even more critical as institutions face increasing financial pressures and demands for efficiency.

The study highlights a concerning discrepancy between the skills leaders find most important and those in which they feel prepared. Many respondents wished they had received more targeted training in financial management, change leadership, and navigating the political landscape of higher education. Given that nearly half of respondents had never participated in formal leadership training before assuming their roles, it is clear that HEIs have largely relied on a ‘learn on the job’ approach to leadership development.

The perils of academic self-governance

One of the study’s most compelling findings is the tension between traditional academic self-governance and the need for growing professionalisation of higher education leadership. Research universities, in particular, still operate on a model where deans and department heads rotate through leadership roles while maintaining their academic careers. While this system ensures academic legitimacy, it creates discontinuity and limits long-term strategic vision.

By contrast, universities of applied sciences, where leadership positions are more commonly filled through open application processes, exhibit a different pattern: leaders tend to have more professional experience and stronger management backgrounds. This divergence begs an essential question: Is the tradition of academic self-governance still fit for purpose in an era that demands more decisive, financially savvy and agile leadership?

Budget cuts and the leadership challenge ahead

Financial sustainability is now the defining challenge of higher education leadership. The study underscores that senior leaders see budget constraints as the most pressing issue their institutions face, followed closely by digital transformation and the rising demand for research excellence and collaboration. While leaders anticipate increasing demands in these areas over the next decade, many institutions lack systematic training programmes to equip their leaders for these challenges. The findings suggest that without structured leadership development – particularly in financial strategy, political negotiation, and crisis management – HEIs risk falling into reactive rather than proactive decision-making.

Rethinking leadership development in higher education

The data from Swiss HEIs mirror trends seen globally: while the challenges facing HEIs have evolved dramatically, leadership preparation has remained largely static. The fact that nearly 40% of leaders entered their roles with no formal management experience is a stark indicator that institutions must do more to develop leadership talent early in academic careers.

Structured executive education programmes, mentorship initiatives, and cross-institutional leadership networks are critical. The study also raises the question of whether Switzerland – and other countries – should consider national leadership training programmes, similar to those in the Netherlands and Sweden, to systematically equip future leaders with the skills they need.

Indeed, other countries have already taken significant steps in this direction. For instance, the UK has developed a comprehensive suite of leadership development programmes through Advance HE, targeting leaders at various career stages across the higher education sector. Such initiatives provide a valuable model for how leadership can be systematically cultivated, and they underscore the importance of moving beyond ad hoc, institution-specific training efforts.

The future of higher education leadership: a critical juncture

HEIs are facing a defining moment. Financial constraints, political pressures, and the complexities of global education demand leaders who are not just respected scholars but also strategic visionaries. The findings from our study highlight the urgent need for HEIs to rethink how they identify, train, and support their leaders. Will higher education rise to this challenge? Or will institutions continue to rely on traditional models of leadership selection, hoping that academic merits alone will make their leaders fit for the complexities ahead?

Prof Dr Robert Perich is Academic Director, Swiss School of Public Governance SSPG, D-MTEC, ETH Zurich. He was CFO of ETH Zurich for 20 years and, as Vice President for Finance and Controlling, was responsible for financial strategy, budget management, asset management, risk management and the digitalisation of central processes. After completing his studies and doctorate at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), he gained 12 years of experience in various management roles at a major Swiss bank. In addition to earlier teaching activities at the University of St. Gallen, he currently lectures at D-MTEC and the University of Zurich (CHESS). He is also Deputy Chairman of the University Council of the University of Cologne.

Dr Ladina Rageth is Executive Director, Swiss School of Public Governance SSPG, D-MTEC, ETH Zurich. She is a social scientist with extensive experience in research and project management in the academic, public and private sectors. She completed her Master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Zurich and her PhD at ETH Zurich at the Chair of Educational Systems. Her research focuses on the sociology of education, labour market outcomes and the institutionalisation of education systems, with a current emphasis on the functioning and management of HEIs.

Danya He is Research Assistant, Swiss School of Public Governance SSPG, D-MTEC, ETH Zurich. She completed her Masters in Media and Communication Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and worked as a research and teaching associate at the University of Zurich specialising in media and internet governance before joining the SSPG. She brings a wealth of experience in public institutions, media relations and legal affairs and has been recognised for her achievements in educational simulations such as the National Model United Nations.

Dr Maryna Lakhno is the Programme Coordinator at the ETH Swiss School of Public Governance (SSPG), where she manages the school’s continuing education portfolio and oversees its communication. Maryna also contributes to the design of the curriculum and programme activities and is actively involved in research projects within the school. Her doctorate in Public Policy under the Yehuda Elkana Doctoral Fellowship at Central European University in Vienna focused on integrating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals within higher education. She was awarded the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship for Foreign Scholars in 2022/23. She co-authored a comprehensive report for the Global Observatory on Academic Freedom.


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Surviving and thriving in HE professional services

by GR Evans

This blog was first published in the Oxford Magazine No 475 (Eighth Week, Hilary term, 2025) and is reproduced here with permission of the author and the editor.

Rachel Reeds’ short but comprehensive book, Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services: a guide to success (Routledge, 2025), is both an instruction manual for the ‘professionals’ it was written for and an illuminating account of what they do for the academics and students who benefit. However, Reeds is frank about what is sometimes described as ‘trench warfare’, a ‘tension’ between academics and ‘everyone else’, including differences of ‘perceived status’ among the staff of  ‘higher education providers’.

Her chapters begin with a survey of the organisation of ‘UK higher education today’. Then comes a description of  ‘job or career’ in ‘professional services’ followed by a chapter on how to get such a post. Chapter 4 advises the new recruit about ‘making a visible impact’ and Chapter 5 considers ‘managing people and teams’. The widespread enthusiasm of providers for ‘change’ and ‘innovation’ prompts the discussion in Chapter 6.

Reeds defines ‘Professional Services’ as replacing and embracing ‘terms such as administrators, non-academic staff or support staff’. In some providers there are not two but three categories, with ‘professional services’ sometimes described as ‘academic-related’ and other non-academics as ‘assistant’ staff. Some academics are responsible for both teaching and research but there may also be research-only staff, usually on fixed-term externally-funded contracts, which may be classified on the sameside of the ‘trench’ as academics. The ‘umbrella carriers’ of ‘middle management’ and ‘dealing with difficult things’ provide matter for Chapter 7. In Chapter 8 and the conclusion there is encouragement to see the task in broader terms and to share ‘knowledge’ gained. Each chapter ends with suggestions for further reading under the heading ‘digging deeper’.

The scope of the needs to be met is now very wide. Government-defined ‘Levels’ of higher education include Levels 4 and 5, placing degrees at Level 6, with postgraduate Masters at 7 and doctorates at 8. The Higher Education and Research Act of 2017 therefore includes what is now a considerable range of ‘higher education providers’ in England, traditional Universities among them, but also hundreds of ‘alternative providers’. Some of these deliver higher education in partnership with other providers which have their own degree-awarding powers, relying on them to provide their students with degrees. These all need ‘professional services’ to support them in their primary tasks of teaching and, in many cases, also research.

Providers of higher education need two kinds of staff: to deliver education and research and others to provide support for them. That was noticed in the original drafting of the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992 s.65, 2 (b) which approved the use of (the then significant) ‘block grant’ public funding for:

the provision of any facilities, and the carrying on of any other activities, by higher education institutions in their area which the governing bodies of those institutions consider it necessary or desirable to provide or carry on for the purpose of or in connection with education or research.

In what sense do those offering such ‘services’ constitute a Profession? The Professional Qualifications Act of 2022, awaiting consideration of amendments and royal approval, is primarily concerned with licence to practise and the arrangements for the acceptance of international qualifications. It is designed to set out a framework ‘whereby professional statutory regulatory bodies (PSRBs) can determine the necessary knowledge and experience requirements to work in a regulated profession (for example nursing or architecture)’. It will permit ’different approaches to undertaking’ any ‘regulatory activity’ so as ‘to ensure professional standards’This is not stated to include any body recognising members of the Professional Services of higher education.  Nor does the Government’s own approved list of regulated professions.

The modern Professional Services came into existence in a recognisable form only in the last few decades.The need for support for the work of the ‘scholars’ got limited recognition in the early universities. When Oxford and Cambridge formed themselves as corporations at the beginning of the thirteenth century they provided themselves with Chancellors, who had a judicial function, and Proctors (Procuratores) to ensure that the corporation stayed on the right side of the law. The office of Registrar (Oxford) and Registrary (Cambridge) was added from the fifteenth sixteenth century to keep the records of the University such as its lists and accounts.

The needs to be met expanded towards the end of the nineteenth century. Oxford’s Registrar had a staff of five in 1914. The Oxford and Cambridge Universities Commission which framed the Act of 1923 recommended that the Registrar’s role be developed. The staff of Oxford’s Registrar numbered eight in 1930 and forty in 1958. By 2016 the Registrar was manager to half the University’s staff.

The multiplication of universities from the 1890s continued with a new cluster in the 1960s,  each with its own body of staff supporting the academics. A body of University Academic Administrative Staff created in 1961 became the Conference of University Administrators in 1993. The  resulting Association of University Administrators (AUA) became the  Association of Higher Education Professionals (AHEP) in 2023. CUA traced its history back to the Meeting of University Academic Administrative Staff, founded in 1961. Its golden jubilees was celebrated in 2011 in response to the changing UK higher education sector. It adopted the current name in 2023.

This reflects the development of categories of such support staff not all of whom are classified as ‘Professional’.  A distinction is now common between ‘assistant staff’ and the ‘professionals’, often described as ’academic-related’ and enjoying a comparable status with the ‘academic’.

The question of status was sharpened by the creation of a Leadership Foundation in Higher Education (LFHE) in 2004, merged with AdvanceHE in 2018.  This promises those in  Professional Services ‘a vital career trajectory equal to research, teaching and supporting learning’ and, notably, to ‘empower leaders at all levels: from early-career professionals to senior executives’ That implies that executive leadership in a provider will not necessarily lie with its academics. It may also be described as managerial.

Reading University identifies ‘role profiles’ of four kinds: ‘academic and research’; ‘professional and managerial’; support roles which are ‘clerical and technical; ‘ancillary and operational support’. The ‘professional and managerial’ roles are at Grades 6-8. It invites potential recruits into its ‘Professional Services’ as offering career progression at the University. The routes are listed under Leadership and Management Development; ‘coaching and mentoring’ and ‘apprenticeships’. This may open a ‘visible career pathway for professional services staff’ and ‘also form part of succession planning within a team, department or Directorate or School where team members showing potential can be nurtured and developed’.

Traditional universities tend to adopt the terminology of ‘Professional Services’. Durham University, one of the oldest, details its ‘Professional Services’ in information for its students, telling them that they will ‘have access to an extensive, helpful support network’. It lists eleven categories, with ‘health and safety’ specifically stated to provide ‘professional’ advice. York University, one of the group of universities founded during the 1960s, also lists Professional Services. These are ‘overseen by the Chief Financial and Operating Officer’ and variously serving Technology; Estates and Facilities; Human Resources; Research and Enterprise; Planning and Risk; External Relations; student needs etc. The post-1992 Oxford Brookes University also has its Professional Services divided into a number of sections of the University’s work such as ‘academic, research and estates’. Of the alternative providers which have gained ‘university title’ Edge Hill (2006) lists seven ‘administrative staff’, two ‘part-time’, one described as administration ‘co-ordinator’, one as a ‘manager’ and one as a ‘leader’.

Reeds’ study draws on the experience of those working in a wide range of providers, but it does not include an account of the provision developed by  Oxford or Cambridge. Yet the two ancient English Universities have their own centuries-long histories of creating and multiplying administrative roles. The Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge similarly distinguish their ‘academic’ from their other staff. For example St John’s College, Oxford and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge list more than a dozen ‘departments’, each with its own  body of non-academic staff.

In Oxford the distinction between academics and ‘professional’ administrators is somewhat blurred by grading administrators alongside academics at the same levels. Oxford’s Registrar now acts ‘as principal adviser on strategic policy to the Vice-Chancellor and to Council’, and to ‘ensure effective co-ordination of advice from other officers to the Vice-Chancellor, Council, and other university bodies’ (Statute IX, 30-32). Cambridge’s Registrary is ‘to act as the principal administrative officer of the University, and as the head of the University’s administrative staff’ and ‘keep a record of the proceedings of the University, and to attend for that purpose’ all ‘public proceedings of the University’, acting ‘as Secretary to the Council.’

The record-keeping responsibility continues, including ‘maintaining a register of members of the University’, and ‘keeping records of matriculations and class-lists, and of degrees, diplomas, and other qualifications’. The Registrary must also edit the Statutes and Ordinances and the Cambridge University Reporter (Statute C, VI). The multiplication of the Registrary’s tasks now requires a body offering ‘professional’ services. ‘There shall be under the direction of the Council administrative officers in categories determined by Special Ordinance’ (Statute c, VI).

Oxford and Cambridge each created a ‘UAS’ in the 1990s. Both are now engaged in ‘Reimagining Professional Services’. Oxford’s UAS (‘University Administration and Services’, also known as ‘Professional Services and University Administration’) is divided into sections, most of them headed by the Registrar. These are variously called ‘departments’, ‘directorates’, ‘divisions’, ‘services’ and ‘offices’ and may have sub-sections of their own. For example ‘People’  includes Childcare; Equality and Diversity; Occupational Health; Safety; ‘Organisational Development’; ‘Wellbeing’ and ‘international Development’, each with its own group of postholders. This means that between the academic and ‘the traditional student support-based professional services’ now fall a variety of other tasks some leading to other professional qualifications, for example from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Chartered Management Institute or in librarianship and technology.

Cambridge’s UAS (Unified Administrative Service), headed by its Registrary and now similarly extensive and wide-ranging, had a controversial beginning. Its UAS was set up in 1996 bringing together the Financial Board, the General Board, and the Registry. Its intended status and that of its proposed members proved controversial. Although it was described as ‘professional’, the remarks made when it was proposed in a Report included the expression of concerns that this threatened the certainty that the University was ‘academic led’. This prompted a stock-taking Notice published on 20 June 2001 to provide assurance that ‘the management of the University’s activities, which is already largely in the hands of academic staff, must also continue to be academic-led’ and that the ‘role of the administration is to support, not to manage, the delivery of high-quality teaching and research’.  But it was urged that the UAS needed ‘further development both in terms of resourcing and of organization’. The opportunity was taken to emphasise the ‘professionalism’ of the service.

With the expansion of Professional Services has gone a shift from an assumption that this forms a ‘Civil Service’ role to its definition as ‘administrative’ or ‘managerial’. ‘Serving’ of the academic community may now allow a degree of control. Reeds suggests that ‘management’ is a ‘role’ while ‘leadership’ is a ‘concept’, leaving for further consideration whether those in Professional Services should exercise the institutional leadership which is now offered for approval.

In Cambridge the Council has been discussing ways in which, and with whom, this might be taken forward. On 3 June 2024 its Minutes show that it ‘discussed the idea of an academic leaders’ programme to help with succession planning by building a strong pool of candidates for leadership positions within the University’. It continued the discussion at its July meeting and agreed a plan which was published in a Notice in the Reporter on 31 July:

to create up to six new paid part-time fellowships each year for emerging academic leaders at the University, sponsored by the Vice-Chancellor. Each fellow would be supported by a PVC or Head of School (as appropriate) and would be responsible for delivering agreed objectives, which could be in the form of project(s).

‘In addition to financial remuneration’, the Fellows would each receive professional coaching, including attendance on the Senior Leadership Programme Level 3. Unresolved challenge has delayed the implementation of this plan so far.

The well-documented evolution and current review of Professional Services in Oxford and Cambridge is not included, but the story of Professional Services told in this well-written and useful book is illustrated with quotations from individuals working in professional services.

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


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Follow my leader? I don’t think so.

by Paul Temple

The team that ran the MBA in Higher Education Management at the Institute of Education in London would meet each July for a year-end review and to think about what improvements we might make to the programme in the coming year. In most years, someone would suggest re-naming the programme as “the MBA in Higher Education Leadership”, or perhaps “Leadership and Management”. I always objected to the change, on the grounds that while I could say what I thought “management” was and had some ideas about how it might be taught, I had no idea what “leadership” actually was and even less of an idea about how we might teach it. Of course, everyone has examples of great leadership being enacted: my own favourite is Ernest Shackleton addressing his crew standing around on the Antarctic pack-ice in October 1915: “The ship and stores have gone – so now we’ll go home”. But telling us what outstanding leaders say and do isn’t the same as telling us what leadership is.

Actually, though, the real reason for my objection was the thought of having to present the case for a change of course title at Institute committee meetings at which, I foresaw with perfect clarity, those present, having no special knowledge of the subject and no responsibility for the decision’s outcome, would obey Watson’s First Law of Higher Education: that an academic’s degree of certainty on any given topic is directly proportional to its distance from their actual field of expertise.

I was reminded of all this by a review of the “managers vs leaders” debate in a recent issue of The Economist (28 October 2023). One distinction noted there from Kotter in 1977 was that management is a problem-solving discipline aiming to create predictability, whereas leadership is about change and the unknown. This is close to the aphorism which we sometimes used when asked about the distinction: management is about doing things right, whereas leadership is about doing the right things. (Shackleton was certainly leading his crew into the unknown, but he had people with him who were excellent problem-solvers.) The Economist review quotes research by Bandiera et al at the LSE that suggests that CEOs “who displayed the behaviour of leaders were associated with better company performance overall”, although some firms, the researchers concluded, would be better off with “manager” CEOs. Helpful, eh? What the review notes, though, is that the success of the leadership-oriented CEOs’ companies may depend on top-class managers sitting with them round the boardroom table. In other words, as you might have guessed, successful organisations need both good leaders and good managers in their top jobs.

Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, Helen MacNamara, his deputy, and Martin Reynolds, the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary, are civil servants working at the very pinnacle of British public service. It is, I think, a safe bet that their annual appraisals consistently identified their outstanding leadership qualities: if they had been seen merely as excellent managers they would be working at somewhere like DVLA in Swansea, not in the Cabinet Office or 10 Downing Street.

And yet, as the Covid inquiry has revealed in awful detail, in the worst British peacetime crisis in modern times this group of supposedly brilliant leaders were collectively unable to ensure that the centre of government operated with even an ordinary level of effectiveness. Yes, they had to deal with a catastrophically useless Prime Minister and the – how shall I put it? – difficult Dominic Cummings (I blogged about him here in February 2020), but – look, guys – sorting out problems like these are what you’re there for. Leaders, as opposed to poor old plodding managers, are there to deal with impossible situations (OK, so I do have a definition of “leadership” after all): Shackleton didn’t say to his crew, “Well, sorry, but I’ve no idea about what to do now.” This is actually more or less what Case – just to remind you, the head of the Civil Service – says: “Am not sure I can cope with today. Might just go home.” Well, you and I have probably felt the same sometimes, but we weren’t supposed to be running the country during a crisis.

Other failings of this group of supposed top leaders? A notable one was when the rest of us were wondering if it would be OK to meet a friend in the park, MacNamara was taking a karaoke machine into work to ensure the party went with a swing. And of course there was “Party-Marty” Reynolds, sending an email inviting staff to a bring-your-own-booze party at Number Ten. Meanwhile, my next-door neighbour was dying alone in hospital, his family and friends unable to say goodbye to him. Perhaps it’s time for a bit of a rethink about leadership.

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


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Leadership in a changing landscape: the role of heads of department

by Jane Creaton and Claire Gordon

This blog post draws on research conducted as part of an ongoing study of the role of heads of department (HoDs) in universities in the UK. In particular, we are interested in the key factors influencing how the role of HoD is experienced and enacted, including disciplinary contexts, institutional structures and type of university. The project is concerned with the extent to which current leadership and management programmes provide adequate preparation and support for the role, which may be particularly vulnerable to work-related stress. It is also concerned with the creative and critical leadership responses that HoDs are adopting in response to the present changing and uncertain higher education environment. Our findings are based on a sector-wide survey and 18 in-depth interviews conducted in 2019, but are also informed by two earlier research projects that explored the role of HoD in teaching-focussed and research-intensive universities (Creaton and Heard-Laureote, 2019).

Uncertainty, change and lack of preparation: becoming a HoD

It is a particularly challenging time to become a HoD in UK higher education. In the external environment, HoDs have to grapple with growing sectoral-level demands and new forms of accountability – while the REF has been in place in one form or another since 1986, TEF, APP and KEF have brought new demands and targets. These are compounded by huge financial uncertainty given the possibility of a change to fee structures following the Augar review and continuing uncertainty over Brexit. The latter is likely to have consequences in future for: the presence of European staff and students at UK universities; the possibilities for student  mobility under Erasmus+; and European research funding. Within institutions, HoDs spoke of experiencing continuous restructuring and centralising, an exponential rise in demands from above and below, limited institutional power and authority compared to the past, and tensions between their academic and managerial identities. It is also worth noting that markers of esteem (Kandiko-Howson and Coate, 2015) – prior to taking on the headship – had been based on academic success indicators which do not translate easily into necessary skill-sets and areas of expertise required for the role. Some HoDs had received no preparation or training for the role and there was considerable variation in what had been received. One HoD took part in an innovative co-created developmental programme with other new HoDs, some participated in generic leadership programmes (which were generally considered to be ill-suited to the specific HE context), and others in formal or informal coaching and mentoring arrangements.

Wellbeing and work-related stress: the lived experience of being a HoD

The importance of staff and student mental health and wellbeing has been a high profile issue in the HE sector over the past few years. Reports from Universities UK, Healthy Universities, Wellcome Trust, and HEPI have indicated high levels of depression, stress and anxiety in universities and recommended institution-wide approaches to tackle support the mental health of their students and staff. In response, many institutions have developed mental health and wellbeing strategies. However, for many HoDs, this has simply added another layer of responsibility for staff and students within their department without addressing the issues which may affect their own mental health and wellbeing. Our interviewees identified the sheer quantity and breadth of daily demands on today’s HoDs. At the micro-level, HoDs were booking rooms, arranging chairs and chasing up Estates and at the macro-level, HoDs were contributing to high-level management committees and strategy development. And for many the most time-consuming and stressful elements of their role related to managing challenging colleagues, which took up inordinate amounts of time and energy.

The HoD job specification often seemed to include responsibility for everything that happened within the department. An expectation that the HoD is also responsible for the mental health and wellbeing of all their students and staff may locate the deficit with the HoD rather than with some of the wider structural and societal factors. While some were able to thrive in this environment, others could not help but be affected by the huge pressures they were operating under.

“There’s an emoticon on Skype for Business which is banging my head against a brick wall. … But it’s not always like that” (Interview with HoD, 2019)

Some HoDs had clearly developed effective coping strategies and support networks inside and outside their university, others spoke of loneliness and isolation including wakeful periods in the night and the constant flow of emails at every hour of the day and night.

‘The sense of shouldering the burden in the sense that it’s all consuming never goes away. You occasionally get called up in the middle of the night …’ (Interview with HoD, 2019)

What might we mean by creative and critical leadership in challenging times?

A quick Google search yields a range of approaches under the ill-defined notion of creative leadership. The fluidity of the term clearly allows rather liberal interpretation. At one end of the spectrum, we see evidence of the notion of creative leadership being co-opted as part of the discourse of the neoliberal university, providing a smokescreen for ever increasing demands on HoDs in face of the increasing metrification of higher education. A different approach to creative and critical leadership also came through in our research, where creativity lay in finding effective ways to subvert institutional expectations and norms. Some HoDs spoke of gate-keeping and others translating up and down the messages that were coming from the senior leadership as well as their departments, others made choices as to what to do and what to ignore.

‘There’s a translational bit, where I speak two languages, and then on either side they only speak one.” (Interview with HoD, 2019)

One of our HoDs highlighted their commitment to emphasising the intrinsic values of higher education and community as a counter to the ever-greater focus on metrics and accountability, with another purposefully prioritising relationship-building over emails. And finally, perhaps the most radical of all were the HoDs who insisted on prioritising self-care, modelling good work-life balance and ensuring informal support networks for themselves to enable them to flourish in their roles.

Jane Creaton is Associate Dean (Academic) for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and a Reader in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth. She has been a member of the SRHE Governing Council since January 2019. Claire Gordon is Director of the LSE Eden Centre for Education Enhancement at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

References

Creaton, J and Heard-Laureote, K (2019) ‘Rhetoric and reality in middle management: the role of heads of academic departments in UK universities’, Higher Education Policy https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-018-00128-8

Kandiko-Howson, C and Coate, K (2015) The Prestige Economy and Mid-career Academic Women: Strategies, Choices and Motivation, Paper presented at the Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Research Conference, Newport, UK. 

This is the second in a ‘virtual symposium’ series which began on with Jane Creaton’s blog on 28 February 2020: Leadership in a Changing Landscape.


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Leadership in a Changing Landscape

by Jane Creaton

This introductory post is part of a series linked to a Symposium on Leadership in a Changing Landscape, which was held at the SRHE Annual Research Conference in December 2019. This symposium aimed to examine different dimensions of, and perspectives on, leadership in the changing landscape of higher education. Each of the contributions, and the reflections on the discussions that followed, will be summarised here on the SRHE blog over the next four weeks.  Drawing on a range of research projects and practice initiatives, the contributors will explore the career trajectories, motivations, challenges and identities of senior leaders in both research-intensive and teaching focussed universities.

The various projects sought to understand why people aspire to or take up senior leadership roles, how they manage different aspects of the work and the different approaches that are taken to the role. Aligning with the theme of the 2019 conference, the contributions also considered the potential for critical and creative leadership within the academy. In the increasingly measured and managed higher education sector, is it possible for leaders to develop distinctive approaches to leadership and/or to challenge the ideological underpinning of managerialism?

There are a number of key themes running through this diverse set of contributions, including what constitutes good leadership, how leaders can be supported and developed, and the affective dimensions of leadership. Some of the specific questions that we discussed in the symposium, which drew together findings from the projects and our own reflections on leadership from our perspective within higher education institutions, included:

1. What might ‘creative leadership’ or ‘critical leadership’ look like in higher education?

2. How can we challenge dominant discourses of leadership based on predominantly managerially based models and explore new, more flexible, human-focused and compassionate approaches to academic leadership?

3. How might aspiring professors be better prepared for professoriate leadership challenges?

Claire Gordon and Jane Creaton: The role of heads of departments

In our blog post, we will discuss an ongoing project that explores the working practices of heads of academic departments and the institutional policies and practices required to support them. Through interviews with HoDs across the sector, we analyse the key factors impacting on how the role is experienced and enacted, including disciplinary context, institutional structure and type of university. The project is also concerned with the extent to which current leadership and management programmes provide adequate preparation and support for a role which may be particularly vulnerable to work-related stress (Floyd and Dimmock, 2011; Creaton and Heard-Laureote, 2019). The initial analysis of interviews has produced a rich mix of metaphors and analogies to describe the role that have the potential for a more creative approach to leadership development.

Alan Floyd: Exploring notions of ‘good’ academic leadership in challenging times

Due to the nature of academic work, it is accepted that leaders cannot be effective without the support of their departmental colleagues (Floyd and Fung, 2017). Consequently, academic leadership is seen more as ‘the property of the collective rather than the individual’ (Bolden, Petrov, and Gosling, 2009: 259). Arguably, ‘distributing’ and sharing leadership is even more important in universities than in other organisations as academics are well educated, largely autonomous and trained to be highly critical. This means they are more likely to oppose and challenge more traditional leadership models and behaviours and may need a subtler form of leadership than other occupational groups (Bryman, 2007). In my blog post, I will draw on data from projects that have explored more flexible ‘distributed’ and ‘collaborative’ models of leadership, crucially focusing on data from both leaders and the led, to explore academics’ expressed notions of ‘good’ academic leadership in times of change and challenge.

Julie Hulme and Deborah Lock: Professors in preparation: supporting 21st century professorial leaders

Becoming a professor is not easy but for some reason becoming a professor in teaching and learning appears to be harder than most. Part of this is because there is no consensus about what a pedagogic professor looks like, and part of this is linked to uncertainty about appropriate selection criteria, and the type of evidence required to demonstrate professorial behaviours and activities (Evans, 2015). There is a lack of guidance and role (and real) models that aspiring professors (education, scholarship and/or professional practice) can turn to for advice about teaching and learning career pathways (Evans, 2017). The Professors in Preparation network is aimed at providing aspiring professors with a supportive community through which the pooling of knowledge through the sharing of ‘lived’ experiences, and identity stories aids successful applications (Waddington, 2016; Macfarlane and Burg, 2019). The network is based on the premise of a virtuous circle in which members that achieve professorship continue to contribute feedback and provide support to the next generation of professors. In our blog post, we will explore what we should expect from the 21st Century professoriate and how we could we reposition the status of educational and scholarship professors and help them become leaders of Trojan Mice instead of Cinderella followers.

Fiona Denney: What I wish I’d known” – academic leadership in the UK, lessons for the next generation

This blog post will discuss the results from a research project funded by the UK’s Leadership Foundation for Higher Education’s Innovation and Transformation Fund in 2015. 18 academics in leadership positions were interviewed about their leadership experiences and what they wished they had known before taking up their leadership posts. Eight themes and information about the context within which they lead were identified and are presented with a discussion of how this contributes to our understanding of the development of those who aspire to leadership positions in higher education. Literature has focused on the importance of prestige for promotion which can leave academic leaders unprepared for the other challenges of their role (Blackmore, 2015; Kandiko-Howson and Coate, 2015). I will also identify challenges and themes which can be used to better prepare the next generation of academic leaders.

Jane Creaton is Associate Dean (Academic) for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and a Reader in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth. She has been a member of the SRHE Governing Council since January 2019.

References

Blackmore, P (2015) Prestige in universities: in tension with the efficiency and effectiveness agenda? Paper presented at the Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Research Conference, Newport, UK

Bolden, R, Petrov, G and Gosling, J (2009) ‘Distributed leadership in higher education: rhetoric and reality’, Educational Management Administration and Leadership https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143208100301

Bryman, A (2007) ‘Effective leadership in higher education: a literature review’, Studies in Higher Education, 32(6): 693-710, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070701685114?journalCode=cshe20  

Creaton, J and Heard-Laureote, K (2019) ‘Rhetoric and reality in middle management: the role of heads of academic departments in UK universities’, Higher Education Policy https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-018-00128-8

Floyd, A and Fung, D (2017) ‘Focusing the kaleidoscope: exploring distributed leadership in an English university’, Studies in Higher Education https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1110692

Evans, L (2015) The purpose of professors: professionalism, pressures and performance Stimulus paper commissioned by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, Leadership Foundation for Higher Education

Evans, L (2017) ‘University professors as academic leaders: professorial leadership development needs and provision’, Educational Management Administration and Leadership 45(1): 123–140

Floyd, A and Dimmock, C (2011) ‘‘Jugglers’, ‘copers’ and ‘strugglers’: academics’ perceptions of being a head of department in a post-1992 UK university and how it influences their future careers’, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2011.585738

Kandiko-Howson, C and Coate, K (2015) The Prestige Economy and Mid-career Academic Women: Strategies, Choices and Motivation, Paper presented at the Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Research Conference, Newport, UK

Macfarlane, B and Burg, D (2019) ‘Women professors and the academic housework trap’, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 41(3): 262–274

Waddington, K (2016) ‘The compassion gap in UK universities’, International Practice Development Journal 6(1): 10


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University Governance

by Phil Pilkington

There has been widespread discussion and outrage about the pay and reward of Vice Chancellors and their accountability to their governing bodies. In addition, there is discussion about the need to provide greater support for the lay members who govern universities, and the related need for the reform of institutional management to be less dependent upon an individual’s abilities as manager-leaders in a complex environment (‘less analogue and more digital’, Mark Leach, WonkHE).

A recent concern was whether ex-VCs should be encouraged to join the governing boards to provide some empathetic support for the management, and perhaps an independent but expert view of management in HE for the benefit of lay governors.

Another complaint has been the lack of gender balance and BAME representation on Boards of Governance, with women comprising 32% of board members (Sherer and Zakaria, 2018). There are other critical matters: civic engagement and the relationship with the local community; disproportionate pay increases for VCs and the consequent demoralisation of staff; the worsening conditions of all employees in pay and ‘contracting out’ to global corporations; calls for the democratisation of universities; and strategic engagement with political change. Issues such as freedom of speech, Prevent, institutional autonomy, public understanding of science to international partnerships and more are all directly or indirectly connected to the nature of governance. The governance of US universities is said to involve the triple duty of fiduciary, academic and moral responsibilities; there may be no limit to the responsibilities of governors.

A recent colloquium on governance focussed on the need for creativity in the global market of higher education and the needs for science innovation and pedagogic development (University Governance and Creativity, European Review, Cambridge, 2018). Whatever the limited pool of talent available for the lay governance of universities the UK stands strong in the league table for sectoral autonomy, scoring top at 100% in the European University Association (EUA) review in 2017. This is nonsense. Or rather, the concept of autonomy is nonsense for universities. It is an enlightenment concept out of Kant as a condition for moral agency and the categorical imperative. ‘Independence’ may be a better term to be used for organisations, but independence from what or whom? No organisation (or person) is context free or without history.

Explanations of university autonomy often appeal to von Humboldt and/or Newman; both had contextual arguments for independence from. In the first case, independence from crazed minor princes in the Holy Roman Empire or a Prussian king seeking fame as an enlightened autocrat making whimsical appointments; in the second, independence from the strictures of a bone-headed clergy in Dublin. (Interestingly, public state universities in the USA have senior appointments made by the state governor, boneheaded creationist or not.) Given the constraints and historical conditions for universities the question arises: is the governance what is needed? A related question then is what are universities dependent upon?

The EUA review of degrees of autonomy is flawed in assessing governance as either unitary or binary. In a unitary model the board of governors receives a strong or determining input from a senate or academic board. In the binary model the academic receives instruction from the governance/ management. The UK is assumed by the EUA to be a unitary model, but any academic input is strongly mediated by the management/executive, which to a large degree determines the agenda for the boards of governance and also sets the conditions for academic performance and structures. How can autonomy be graded? In the same way we might ask: how can uniqueness be conditional?

The end of the public sector higher education (PSHE) sector ended not just the polytechnics (and the soon to be promoted colleges of HE), it ended an accountability regime linked to local democracy. The Education Reform Act 1988 not only abolished that mechanism for local accountability (and, for good measure, the architecture of accountability with the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority and regional advisory councils), it put in place a system for the self-replication of governing bodies once Secretary of State Kenneth Baker had approved the initial tranche of governors. 30 years later we have a uniform system of accountability dominated by a specific professional outlook and culture. 

A sample of the experiences of governors, if we ignore the small minorities of academic and student governors, is salutary*.

There are minor differences in board membership between Russell Group and post-92 institutions, but the similarities seem more important. The striking feature of governing bodies is the preponderance of accountants, or rather senior executives of the major accounting firm. In my sample one Russell board has four members with current or recent professional experience with the big four accountancy firms. This is not unusual; another Russell has three members similarly engaged. ‘High powered’ accountancy skills are of course useful in overseeing a £multi-million business such as a university.

However, the political and social values that go with the high-level accountancy skills are now intricately connected to external political discourse and practice: the governor who advised on the privatisation of the railways, or the advisor on the HBOS-Lloyds merger; the advisor to the government on deregulation in HR, the directors (regional or national) of the CBI. There are others: financiers, bankers, corporate lawyers, big pharma directors, entrepreneurs in a range of consultancies, a smattering of retired senior civil servants and even a lead figure in the Student Loans Company. Any concern about the impact of the REF and TEF on academic staff would be overridden by a priority to ensure that targets are delivered.

The values and ethos of the individuals who comprise the governance of universities are not left outside the boardrooms. Why would they enter governance if they did not bring with them the normative values of their competences? And such competencies, if they can be described as such, carry with them a world view of how others should be and do.

Post-92 governors are less elevated; not as many MBEs, OBEs or knighthoods as the Russell Group. And there are more public sector roles such as youth justice, charities, health service executives, housing associations, media executives and senior local government or police service officers. There are some interesting outliers in the post-92 sector with senior women executives in industry, but – albeit to a lesser extent – the bankers and senior accounting partners are still there.

The concern for diversity – there is some ethnic and gender diversity in the post-92 group, less so in the Russell Group – is diminished by the uniformity of seniority and positions of power that all board members have in the private or public sectors as CEOs, partners, and chairs of boards, with what is likely  to be a uniform ideological outlook on the world. It has been suggested that remuneration (£20K pa has been mooted by the Committee of University Chairs (CUC)) would encourage more to volunteer their time and expertise on boards of governors, but the current incumbents are similar to those great and good who always seem to have volunteered in the past; they can afford to volunteer, others will be providing the work/value while they sit on the boards.

Remuneration would be appropriate if the board members needed the money to enable them to attend board meetings. The suggested amount from the CUC is more than annual wages for many.

Halting the self-replicating nomenklatura of these boards would be difficult, requiring an external intervention to put forward board members of a different character and set of values; perhaps those who are antithetical to the interests of the Student Loans Company, to privatisation of public services and the burdens taxpayers suffered with the banking crisis of 2008. But there have been interventions on board membership before – in the 1988 Act which ended  ‘donnish dominion’, thanks to the groundwork in the Jarratt Report. Some may protest that this would be an attack on institutional autonomy, but autonomy is not an unqualified condition of the success of universities in the UK, notwithstanding the glowing report from the EUA.

The CUC code of conduct requires governors to have the interests of the HEI at heart, but governors’ perceptions, values and interests will determine assessments of current and future positions. Given the monoculture and common discipline background, there may not be enough disagreement. Such uniformity calls for more creativity in governance. The focus will be on the operational imperatives of performing well within the current context, a context of ‘academic capitalism’, with a well-known critique which may not be accessible in governance or top down management. The lineaments of such a regime are: funding via student enrolments; quality assurance regulatory systems; marketisation; the OfS regulatory framework; financial viability standards; league tables; branding and consumerisation of education.

The freedom of the market is an ideological position: the market is externally created and freedom for action and conscience is limited by the external impositions. These conditions are not only handed down by the OfS but from ‘advisory’ instructions from government on an annual basis to consider participation rates, schools links, the green agenda, grade inflation, freedom of speech (yet again), consumer rights for students, et al. The fiduciary responsibilities of governance leave little room for manoeuvre and no prospect of supererogatory action. The advisory, regulatory and the bigger socio-economic conditions, from mobility and debt aversion to the international market for students, predetermine the scope of governance.

In contrast to the UK’s HE market superstructure there is a telling edict in the EU Lisbon Treaty, which has lofty expressions of modernisation and the knowledge economy but also asks universities to contribute to the advancement of democracy. We will not have to worry about that anymore. Given the experience of many lay board members in being directly engaged in engineering the market conditions which prevail for universities it would be surprising if boards did not find a normalcy, a correctness in the prevailing conditions. The other responsibilities of governance for academic and moral matters as expected in the USA seem simply preposterous.

Beyond the need to broaden the experiential background of governors, we can also question the constitution of boards. Current expertise can be useful for audit, financial oversight and stress testing business planning (although the big four accountancy firms have had some remarkable involvement in corporate failures in the recent past), but to duplicate this at full board means a loss of opportunities for the more discursive. The current uniformity also explains why, notwithstanding the managerial links of performance to executive leadership, high levels of pay for VCs are not considered exceptional by remuneration committees – they share the same atmosphere.

Reform of governance  structures means that some of the axioms in mission statements should be considered as governance issues. If universities are ‘communities of scholars’ then why is the governance of that community in the hands of corporate accountants, financiers and directors of privatised public assets? If universities are to play a role in partnership with the local community in the civic mission then what of the governance implications with that community?

Finally, how can the academic/senate discourse connect with corporate governance? This is not simply about which will take priority: first we must ask, can they talk to each other? The simple hierarchical format of governance ‘works’ in terms of financial viability (more or less) and international status and delivery (more or less) but that should not be confused with overall efficacy. Other historical conditions contribute to the success of the HE sector – or rather, parts of the sector, as some struggle to survive in the market, or exit.

There is talk of the need to devolve managerial leadership, not always a happy experience if distant and indirect corporate performance targets give way to local bullying. Weakening governance by having the not so great and the good might not alter the dynamic of executive leadership; management might become even more powerful and autocratic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, too often, challenging and questioning the executive is rare.

The deeper problem is to disperse governance from the hierarchical to a more clustered and broader stakeholder approach. Beware the unanalysed ideological values that we all bring to bear on decision making. Let’s ditch the concept of autonomy which is a historical accident in semantic terms and begin some creative discussions on what creative governance should look like.

Reference

Sherer, M and Zakaria, I (2018) ‘Mind that gap! An investigation of gender imbalance on the governing bodies of UK universities’ Studies in Higher Education 43(4): 719-736

*I looked at 12 universities, six  Russell Group and six post-92 universities. Some governing bodies are known as Council, some have changed their title to Board of Trustees, but all have the same legal responsibilities for the institution. The Committee of Universities Chairs (CUC) has produced 3 advisory reports on remuneration of senior staff, one advisory report on Prevent, and on student’s (sic) unions.

Phil Pilkington is Chair of Middlesex University Students’ Union Board of Trustees, a former CEO of Coventry University Students’ Union, an Honorary Teaching Fellow of Coventry University and a contributor to WonkHE.