Collaboration is already baked in to the sector, and we need to see more of it

In the increasingly acute quest for provider-level savings and efficiencies alluded to by the Secretary of State in her tuition fee announcement, one commonly cited opportunity is the ability for universities and colleges to share what are euphemistically termed “back end services.”

Opinions vary as to how attractive this plan may be. Universities hold autonomy and distinctiveness very dear, goes one common argument, and surrendering the ability to process invoices in a very particular manner is one end of a slippery slope that leads to a state owned comprehensive tertiary system.

From the other end of the political spectrum we also see concerns that such efficiencies mean the loss of jobs and a harsher, less flexible, working environment that does not appreciate the necessary distinctiveness of some areas of operation.

The scale of current collaboration

Against this backdrop, the fact that UK higher education already collaborates in purchasing and providing a huge amount of core services and capabilities tends to be lost. There are many examples – here are a few obvious ones:

• Admissions: UCAS is a sector-owned organisation that deals with the many thousands of applications to courses received by universities each year, offering a consistent experience to applicants.
• Access to online services: the venerable OpenAthens (a Jisc service) allows straightforward access to everything from your institutional computer to journal articles via a single username and password.
• Internet connectivity: Jisc’s Janet network is owned by the sector, and is specifically optimised for the needs of research and education. It includes pervasive access to wireless around the world via affiliation with the international Eduroam collaboration.
• Staff recruitment: Jobs.ac.uk (initially established by the University of Warwick) handles the majority of higher education sector job adverts.
• Procurement: The UK University Purchasing Consortia (UKUPC) have established purchasing frameworks for just about everything a university may wish to buy (from computers to toilet paper) and is able to access bulk discounts and other procurement efficiencies.
• Quality assurance: The Quality Assurance agency is a membership organisation that provides advice, support, and documentation to ensure that the sector’s teaching quality assurance meets professional and international standards.

A new report from Jisc and KPMG (in partnership with voices from around the sector) makes a compelling case for collaborations and consortia – from large examples like those above to smaller local and interest-based work – is not only desirable but very much possible. Using UCISA’s reference model to map existing collaboration (at every level from national to small partnership) across the whole gamut of what universities do the report eloquently makes the case that the sector could not exist in its current form without collaborations like this, and adding more could only be to the greater benefit.

Paths of convenience

The report’s thesis is that there are many more savings available from collaboration and shared services – and that there is value to be created by making work that universities need to do similar and more standardised. But it will not be straightforward to get to there. Above and beyond the differentiation angle, collaboration and sharing provides technical challenges. Often, a university process will be less designed than accreted – paths of convenience and workarounds contributed by decades of hardworking staff just trying to get stuff done despite the limitations of existing systems.

While to a “new broom” manager getting rid of such mess may seem attractive it is often expensive and difficult to do so. It is widely understood that it takes at least three years for a university to shift from one core IT system (say student records, timetabling, or a learning management system) or another – time to unpick the workarounds from the previous system, test, re-test, redesign, and eventually add workarounds for the deficiencies of a new system.

The trend towards commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) implementations mean that some of this “process debt” is now being addressed – but the workarounds have shifted from adding a few sly lines of code to rewiring the way things have been done for decades. Imagine doing that while having to agree every decision with one or more equally messy university partner.

One and done?

I’ve maybe used a little artistic licence above – things are actually more complicated than that pen portrait makes out. From data consistency, to licensing, systems integrations, and security change management requires a huge investment in staff and expertise (indeed, many providers already buy this in).

There is an argument to swallowing the pain and cleaning out the on-campus Augean stables (incidentally both Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University have an in-house livery service – is there scope for collaboration there?) but this is not an easy choice to make when every budget line is under pressure. It may end up being the right one, but anything like this is a gamble.

However, this is not an argument for not collaborating and not sharing: indeed it is an argument to be more radical and to think even larger. A national collaboration has the scale to power through challenges that smaller scale change management processes may founder on: it can negotiate meaningfully with large vendors, share costs at a sector level, and allow for a greater scope for adaption and adoption of practice elsewhere.

There are areas where sector contributors to the report saw potential. Local, regional, national, or UK-wide collaborations on student administration, student wellbeing support, finance, HR, and procurement were among popular areas of interest where joint work (that may extend outside the sector) would be beneficial. I would tentatively add student accommodation (a running sore of an issue with no clear owner, and some evidence of local and regional collaboration) to this list.

A consortium can meaningfully establish standard models, offer project staff resource when and where it is needed, and deal with the externalities that always threaten to derail infrastructure investments. The “ask” for this report is seed funding from government – a way to kickstart developments that could lead to significant efficiency savings. It would be one reading of Bridget Phillipson’s language on “a new approach, rooted in partnership.”