SUs can sometimes feel “caught out” by changes and developments that others have sometimes seen coming – so SU strategy and boards have an opportunity (if not a duty) to try to look ahead.
Futurecasting is a strategic planning methodology that combines data analysis, trend identification, and scenario modeling to anticipate potential future developments and their implications.
Unlike traditional forecasting which often extrapolates from historical data, futurecasting takes a more holistic approach by examining emerging technologies, social shifts, environmental changes, and other dynamic factors to envision multiple possible futures.
Organisations and researchers use futurecasting to identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and make more informed decisions in uncertain environments. The process typically involves gathering signals from diverse sources, analyzing patterns and interconnections, and developing plausible scenarios that help stakeholders prepare for various contingencies.
Rather than predicting a single definitive future, futurecasting acknowledges uncertainty and complexity by exploring a range of possibilities, making it particularly valuable for strategic planning, innovation development, and policy-making in rapidly changing contexts.
Session 2 at Celtic Connections, hosted by Mike Day (international student experience consultant) and Geoff Combs, Director, Armstrong Student Centre, Ohio State University (slides) engaged delegates in a short and sharp futurecasting exercise.
Bringing together SU staff from multiple countries earlier in the year, Mike and Geoff started by revealing the big six themes that that wider group had previously come up with.
Challenge 1: Changing nature of higher education and shifting perceptions
There’s growing hostility and disdain towards higher education, with politicians and the public increasingly questioning the value of university degrees. This shift is exemplified by statements like wanting “plumbers, not LGBTQ majors,” reflecting a broader cultural backlash against academic study. Students are increasingly deciding that traditional four-year degree programmes aren’t worth the time and financial investment when they can pursue trades, apprenticeships, or micro-credentials that lead to employment in a year or less.
Companies are also offering their own training programmes, bypassing universities entirely. This fundamental shift threatens the relevance of traditional institutions, raises serious concerns about recruitment and retention of both students and qualified staff, and could lead to widespread university closures or mergers, particularly in cities with multiple institutions competing for a shrinking student population.
Challenge 2: Financial constraints
Universities face mounting financial pressures from multiple directions, including ever-increasing tuition and fees that are pricing out potential students. There are anticipated declines in government support for both institutions and SUs, alongside reduced block grant funding that has traditionally supported operations. The most significant threat comes from the demographic reality of fewer 18-year-olds due to lower birth rates 18 years ago – known as the “enrolment cliff.”
Over the next five to six years, there simply won’t be enough students to maintain current enrolment levels, leading to dramatically shrinking budgets. This demographic challenge will force institutions to make difficult decisions about staffing, programmes, and services, with student engagement and support services particularly vulnerable to cuts as universities prioritise core academic functions to survive.
Challenge 3: Student and campus demographic shifts
Campus populations are undergoing fundamental changes with increased numbers of part-time students and those pursuing work-study combinations, moving away from the traditional full-time residential model. There’s a particularly complex relationship with international students – whilst institutions desperately need their financial contributions and higher fee payments, there’s growing cultural resistance and political barriers to their enrolment.
The ambiguity stems from wanting their money whilst simultaneously viewing them as culturally different or problematic. Brain drain is accelerating as other countries, notably China, actively recruit academics globally by offering to relocate entire laboratories anywhere in the world. Traditional student engagement patterns are declining significantly, with students less willing to participate in conventional university activities. This requires developing entirely new approaches to engagement that accommodate students’ work commitments, family responsibilities, and increasingly busy lifestyles whilst making clear expectations about time commitment levels.
Challenge 4: Political and social shifts
Far-right government policies are increasing across multiple countries represented in the planning sessions, fundamentally altering the higher education landscape. There’s systematic decreased funding for Arts and Social Sciences, with governments prioritising programmes they view as economically productive. Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are being rolled back, with activities that were standard practice just a year ago now becoming impermissible.
This creates an environment of rising harassment and discrimination against underrepresented student populations, particularly when combined with anti-DEI policies. Universities are implementing stronger institutional policies that restrict student protests, with freedom of speech – once considered a fundamental right – now conditional on the subject matter. There’s increased national government control over education, with some governments threatening to withdraw funding from programmes they deem underperforming, essentially dictating what universities can teach based on political priorities rather than academic merit.
Challenge 5: AI and technological disruptions
Artificial intelligence presents both threats and opportunities that institutions are struggling to navigate. There are legitimate concerns that AI could replace traditional student support roles, counsellors, and professional staff, fundamentally changing how student services operate. Privacy concerns about data collection and usage add another layer of complexity.
However, the document suggests that if institutions proactively embrace and control AI implementation rather than fearing it, technology could become a valuable tool for planning, student services, and educational delivery. The immediate challenge lies in developing consistent, coherent policies across departments and faculties. Currently, different academic areas have wildly varying approaches to AI use in coursework and essays, with some departments having six or seven different policies within the same faculty. This inconsistency creates confusion for students and staff whilst raising questions about academic integrity and fairness across the institution.
Challenge 6: SU autonomy and institutional control
SUs face unprecedented scrutiny over their finances, independence, and overall operations, with institutions demanding detailed justification for their existence. There’s growing pressure to demonstrate measurable value through key performance indicators (KPIs) – a concept that wasn’t part of the conversation just five to seven years ago. Universities are increasingly asking unions to prove their impact and value or face budget cuts and reduced support. Some institutions are seeking to centralise or diminish student voice entirely, viewing independent student representation as unnecessary or problematic.
There’s a real risk that services traditionally provided by autonomous student unions will be absorbed directly into institutional structures, with universities arguing they can deliver the same programmes more efficiently and cost-effectively. The ultimate threat is complete absorption of student unions into university administration, eliminating independent student advocacy and representation whilst potentially causing the disappearance of services that don’t align with institutional priorities or budget constraints.
The discussion
The first group cut straight to the heart of “credential creep”. “There was a feeling in the UK, you need a master’s and a doctorate to move on, whereas 20 years ago, we just needed an undergraduate degree,” one participant observed. “So it’s all open to the wealthy.”
This isn’t just about access – it’s about the fundamental compact between higher education and social mobility that’s been quietly shredding for a generation. When entry-level positions demand postgraduate qualifications that cost tens of thousands, we’re not just pricing out working-class students. We’re systematically reconstructing class barriers that universal higher education was supposed to dismantle.
The solution offered was pragmatic – expand vocational degrees, create more doctors to drive down medical salaries, teach students to work with AI tools rather than compete against them. But embedded in this response was a more radical suggestion – that universities might need to fundamentally rethink what they’re for.
Group two addressed what every students’ union officer knows – the funding model is broken, and it’s getting worse. “Generally, expectation of more services for less money,” they noted. “SUs to do more for less, basically.”
The diversification strategies they discussed – membership fees, commercial ventures, partnership working – reveal just how precarious the current settlement has become. When one facilitator mentioned their previous workplace with “10 floors of fun” and “eight bars” that “sold more individual shots of bulk of chips,” they weren’t just reminiscing. They were describing what happens when educational institutions become entertainment complexes because the core funding doesn’t cover the core mission.
Group three tackled the elephant in every university planning meeting – international student recruitment. Their discussion of “responsible, sustainable recruitment policy” and the risks of placing “all units in one basket” was diplomatic code for a sector-wide crisis.
Universities have become addicted to international student fees – particularly from China and India – to subsidise domestic provision. But this model creates exactly the vulnerability these students identified: “projected into the future, the market collapses. Big, huge gaps. Everyone suffers.”
The demographic shifts they discussed – increasing part-time students, changing subject preferences – aren’t just operational challenges. They’re symptoms of a higher education system that’s lost touch with the communities it’s supposed to serve. When students’ unions have to reorganise constantly to accommodate “volatile” demographics, something fundamental has gone wrong with institutional planning.
Group four’s discussion of student representation revealed the peculiar bind of contemporary student politics. Despite having “ultimately really a lot of policies,” there’s “not potentially a lot of scope for SU nations to make particular changes.”
This captures something essential about the current moment in higher education governance. Student voice has been procedurally embedded – through quality assurance frameworks, student surveys, representation structures – while being systematically drained of substantive power. Students can influence how policies are implemented but rarely whether they should exist at all.
Their discussion of referendums, the National Union of Students, and cross-sector collaboration suggested a hunger for more meaningful democratic engagement. But it also revealed how fragmented student representation has become, split between college and university sectors, different jurisdictions, and competing priorities.
Group five’s exploration of artificial intelligence in student services was the most sophisticated in the room. They distinguished between “immediately predictable” applications – chatbots, triage systems, attendance monitoring – and “profoundly science fiction” scenarios where human advisors might be largely replaced.
Their insight about AI potentially creating “a higher premium on human interaction” is crucial. If AI handles routine queries, human support becomes more specialised – and potentially more expensive. This could create a two-tier system where quality pastoral care becomes a luxury good, available only to those who can afford it or those with the most complex needs.
But their discussion also revealed how quickly we’re normalising surveillance technologies. The casual acceptance that attendance monitoring “will become easier and more accurate” glossed over fundamental questions about student autonomy and institutional control. When did we decide that universities should track students’ movements with the precision of a probation service?
The final group addressed what might be the most existential challenge facing students’ unions – maintaining independence while proving their value to increasingly controlling institutions. Their strategy of “strategic alignment” while preserving “distinct functions” sounds sensible – until you realise it’s essentially a negotiation over the terms of institutional capture.
The phrase “mutually agreed level of scrutiny” is doing heavy lifting here. What constitutes reasonable oversight of autonomous organisations? How do you demonstrate impact without compromising the very independence that makes you effective? These aren’t just technical questions – they’re about the future of critical voice within higher education.
What next?
The discussion captured in that lecture theatre exemplifies what governance scholars call “generative thinking” – the messy, essential work of making sense before making decisions.
While most boards obsess over strategic KPIs and compliance checklists, they’re missing the fundamental question that precedes all others – what does our experience actually mean?
When those staff threw around ideas about AI replacing advisors, degree inflation pricing out working-class students, and institutional autonomy under threat, they weren’t just brainstorming solutions. They were engaged in what Chait, Ryan and Taylor identify as the crucial work of “framing problems, surfacing assumptions, and making new sense of organisational purpose and possibility.”
The value isn’t in reaching neat conclusions – it is in collectively grappling with questions like “what does declining election turnout reveal about student relationships with democratic structures?” rather than simply asking “how do we increase turnout?”
This is precisely why such discussions matter more than another strategic planning session. Generative governance recognises that organisations are “non-rational entities where meaning matters as much as metrics” – and in that room, participants were doing the essential work of making meaning from the fragments of a sector in transition. Without this sense-making foundation, even the most sophisticated strategic plans risk being perfectly executed responses to obsolete assumptions about what higher education and SUs are actually for.
