Universities often have evidence of impact, yet the public still doesn’t recognise it as theirs.
The problem isn’t that outcomes go undocumented. It’s that the dominant model of public value runs in one direction — research happens, knowledge is produced, benefits eventually flow outward — and then an institution tries to explain why it mattered. However, often the most significant value universities create is constituted by the relationship itself: a community that shapes a research agenda and sees their priorities reflected back; young people who encounter higher education through a partnership that shifts what they believe is possible for them; residents who co-design a neighbourhood health intervention and feel that a local institution is working
The answer to making a greater impact with research isn’t about messaging it more effectively. It’s a different kind of relationship altogether — one built on trust and mutual benefit, where the public are partners in creating value, not audiences for it. The goal isn’t a university sector that is better at communicating. It is a differently organised one — where public value is not a byproduct of what universities do, but the reason they do it.
A familiar crisis, a useful precedent
Institutions that the public don’t feel belong to them are institutions whose claim on public money is always contestable. Twenty years ago, the BBC learned this the hard way. Heading into Charter Renewal, institutional excellence alone wasn’t enough. The response was a Public Value framework: a way of articulating what the BBC was for, how it created value beyond ratings or revenue, and how the public could hold it to account.
It wasn’t perfect. But it gave the BBC a legitimacy argument that spoke to audiences as citizens, not consumers — and it recognised that public value had to be demonstrated and co-created, not simply asserted.
Higher education is at a similar inflection point. Research from UUK and CaSE tells a sobering story: only 29 per cent of people feel connected to research and development, and just 18 per cent can name any local or personal benefit from a nearby university. UKRI’s own Public Attitudes to Science survey, published in 2026, shows 12 per cent of the public feel sufficiently involved in decisions about science and technology — a historic low. And while 65 per cent believe science has benefited society, only 43 per cent feel it has increased their own personal prosperity. The problem isn’t hostility. It’s distance: research and innovation doesn’t feel like theirs. Confidence in universities as institutions that serve everyone — rather than a privileged few — is low
Where the system currently falls short.
The accountability architecture universities operate within was never designed to capture felt value. REF, TEF, KEF, KEIF, HEIF, Access and Participation — produces parallel streams of assurance, but almost no synthesis. The things that generate the most meaningful public value often happen in the joins: where research meets teaching meets long-term community partnership. Yet those joins are almost invisible in governance. The relational infrastructure that makes the best work possible — the engagement professionals, the conveners, the platforms for collaboration, the sustained relationships with communities — barely register as ‘infrastructure’ at all. This work is funded piecemeal and maintained largely through goodwill.
The result is that universities are accountable for what they do, but not for how it lands: they cannot easily show what those things feel like, why they matter, or how they connect to the lives of the people they serve.
Yet, despite this, the HE sector is delivering significant value, both in terms of economic and social value. This social value generation thrives when universities commit long term; where partnerships are cultivated and co-created; where the much-needed infrastructure of brokers and intermediaries is valued; where learning is shared and acted on.
Tools for a different kind of conversation
At its heart, Engaged Futures, NCCPE’s collaborative development programme, asks what it would look like if higher education was genuinely built around the values of belonging, collaboration and reciprocal relationship, especially with the public.
Our challenge is to create clear chains from activity to output to short, medium and long-term outcomes, and to surface the cross-domain combinations — health and culture and place, for instance — where felt change accumulates. Not another reporting burden. An interpretive architecture: a way of telling the story of public value in language that people can recognise and connect to.
One solution is the Engaged Future’s civic outcomes framework, a way of translating the civic work of universities into domains that the public actually recognise: social cohesion, cultural vibrancy, health and wellbeing, place-making, green transition, inclusive economic opportunity.
Alongside this, we are exploring what a broader Public Value framework for HE might look like — drawing on the BBC precedent, and grounded in four dimensions: competence (what universities are good at), fairness (who actually benefits), contribution (what they create with communities, not just for them), and stewardship (how they take responsibility for the long-term health of the system they inhabit). Not a new reporting regime. A coherent story.
Join the conversation
The programme has developed a set of values contrasts that name what actually needs to change: who holds power, whose culture is centred, whether relationships are transactional or built on trust, whether success is shared or competed for, whether knowledge is open or siloed, and whether institutions can adapt or are too large to turn.
None of this work is finished. The shift from assurance to stewardship, from visibility to genuine felt presence, is not something any single organisation can engineer alone.
That is why we are convening the Engage Summit at the end of April — bringing together people across the sector, and beyond it. We will be sharing work in progress on the civic outcomes framework and the public value approach, and we want to hear from people who are already doing this differently: building universities that the public can actually feel the benefit of.
Find out more about Engaged Futures and the Engage Summit here.
Couldn’t agree more with this. I’ve worked with NCCPE on the civic outcomes framework and Engaged Futures and both represent a shift in thinking, direction, narrative and purpose for HE. A much needed shift.
I’m interested in seeing how these narratives represent the reality. Institutions are brilliant at making bold claims but often not at sharing the lived experiences of our students, colleagues and communities. Or actually feeling and reacting to those experiences.
And the examples that are shared often lag behind the here and now- this is especially true as the sector restructures, projects are paused, key champions move on and institutional memory is lost. Do KEF narrative statements on public engagement still hold true in the current context?
It would be great to see more institutions join the conversation at the Engage Summit.