Tackling strategic issues facing higher education institutions

Many higher education leaders have said to me that they now see change as a constant dynamic. To thrive, higher education institutions must continually adapt, enhance and transform to meet contemporary challenges – often at ‘pace’.

Given the financial pressures, efficiency is important. However, a focus on transformation should not simply be about saving money. It should be about driving changes that respond to the changing needs of students and society. It should be about seizing opportunities to be more effective, to do some things better, to enhance our impact. And in terms of positive change, there are four strategic issues that I think we should test:

• critically examining the student experience
• exploring new forms of collaboration
• consider what leadership capabilities are needed
• and evolving governance.
  

In each of these four areas, I think that all higher education institutions should be considering whether there is action they need to take to enhance and adapt further.

Student experience

My perspective draws on what we are hearing from students in our major student survey – the Student Academic Experience Survey published with HEPI; also what we are seeing through our consultancy and our fellowships in terms of the most innovative practice; and it draws on the political and regulatory context. In financially constrained times and with evolving student needs, I think that universities should be critically and honestly examining their current offer to students. Here are some ‘starter’ questions:

• Is the blend of our academic model and student support structures fit for current needs?
• Are our structures and processes optimised to best support student success?
• Is our resource allocation deployed in a way that best supports retention, progression, and graduate outcomes?
• Have we benchmarked our student support services with best practice offered by competitors – looking comparatively at cost, delivery models, and impact on student outcomes?
• Are we seizing the opportunities of digital platforms for scalable student engagement? For example, for academic advising, wellbeing check-ins, and financial guidance to both enhance reach and accessibility – and reduce operational overhead.
• Have we explored regional or national partnerships or collaboration hubs? For example, for mental health, wellbeing, and careers advice to reduce duplication and improve access.

Although there is lots of great practice, I suggest that we should all be constructively questioning our student experience and support models and looking at whether further service improvement is needed to address financial pressures and meet contemporary student needs.

Collaboration

The Post-16 Education White Paper challenges all English providers to specialise in areas of strength within a more collaborative system, with clearer roles for teaching and research-intensive institutions with areas of specialist advantage, and stronger access and participation.

There is very little on how government may support, incentivise – or indeed regulate – to drive greater collaboration. However, the political steer is clear – and I think higher education institutions should be looking to get ahead on this issue. Of course, this is good politics, to show a positive response to a government’s challenges, however, more than this, I think that there are potential efficiencies and potential benefit from collaboration in terms of positive impact for students and for local communities.

At one end of the spectrum, we are beginning to see some significant mergers – City, University of London and St George’s last year – then most recently Greenwich and Kent. There are also many interesting models of HE/FE collaboration and group structures – such as the London South Bank group and the Coventry group.

I suggest that now is the time to be open-minded, consider new partners and explore new forms of collaboration. Taking up this baton, we’re investing time in our Merger Insights and Roadmap to try and help with navigating institutional collaboration, partnerships and mergers through early option-testing and due diligence, through to culture integration and regulatory engagement. The roadmap offers leadership teams and governing councils support to consider major strategic decisions.

Leadership capabilities

The current challenges require universities to enhance capabilities at all levels to lead and manage transformation and change – academics, professionals services and leadership teams.

Given that managing change is now the norm, we need to develop our people to have the capabilities to lead this; and to ensure that our organisations have the culture to be able to respond positively to uncertainty, to be agile, to be problem-solvers and drivers of positive transformation.

The operating environment demands adaptive leadership to manage financial pressure; to respond positively to shifting public expectations; to embrace digital transformation and recognise the importance of inclusion and sustainability.  

“Securing educational excellence in higher education at a time of change,”, a report we recently published with Wonkhe, draws on discussions with university leaders, principal fellows of Advance HE and student representatives to explore institutional responses to change, and it asks what measures should be taken to secure educational excellence.

Securing educational excellence in a changing external landscape for higher education requires leaders to navigate complex and often competing pressures. The report maps four critical tensions that leaders are navigating across the political, economic, social and technological domains: public trust versus sector autonomy; public good versus private return on investment; traditional academic community versus new student models; pace of technological change versus institutional capacity.

A fifth tension emerges from this complex environment: a need for distributed leadership that allows for a deep knowledge of the issues versus clear lines of accountability for decisions.

Change appetite is another critical issue – with leaders expressing a degree of scepticism of the degree to which their institution is really authentically committed to mapping out a change agenda and following it through with the time and resources required to make the change stick.

An agile and adaptive approach to leadership is necessary to transform institutions in uncertain times. And this agile approach needs also to extend to universities’ governing bodies.

Governance

The sector is changing; challenges for institutions are evolving – so the governance of institutions needs to evolve and change too. We need to adapt governance for modern challenges, ensuring that it is optimised to support management of financial pressures, digital developments, regulatory compliance, strategic partnerships and an uncertain international environment. Traditional approaches need updating for today’s complex environment.

There are examples of excellent practice, however, it is necessary and important for institutions to regularly review, evolve and improve their governance arrangements. As the context and issues change, higher education governance also needs to adapt to meet new challenges. There are also weaknesses which should be the focus for improvement.

In our experience through extensive work on governance effectiveness, I would highlight that the biggest factor in determining the difference between a highly effective and a less effective board is through its culture. This can be hard to measure. Living and breathing a positive culture it hard work. It takes time to get right and is a constant ‘work in progress’. For example, the culture of getting the right balance of challenge and support: where the right level of information is supplied to governors, but equally governors themselves have a sufficient degree of expertise and curiosity to ask the right questions and know when to probe and challenge.

Summary

The challenges facing higher education are significant, but they also present opportunities for positive transformation. By critically examining student experience, embracing collaboration, developing adaptive leadership capabilities, and evolving governance structures, institutions can navigate uncertainty while staying true to their core mission of educational excellence.

The question is not whether change will happen, but whether we will lead it proactively or simply respond to it. Now is the time for higher education leaders to be bold, reflective, and strategic in shaping the future of their institutions. We must share knowledge and insight, and to help to enhance capabilities at all levels, in governance, academia and professional services, so that they can lead and manage transformation and change effectively and sustainably.  

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