A bluffer’s guide to the Universities UK blueprint for HE policy under Labour

Let’s start by acknowledging the scale of the ambition. Last autumn, as university finances continued to worsen, and Labour’s chances of winning the forthcoming General Election continued to improve, talk turned to the prospect of a “major review” of higher education in the next Parliament.

The thinking was not just about funding; at the time the most notable aspect of the wider policy landscape for HE was about the tensions between England’s HE institutions and their regulator – hardly the kind of national vision for the future of higher education that focuses minds and inspires action.

But why, went the argument, would a higher education sector with formidable experience, resource, and expertise at its disposal hang around waiting for a novice government to commission a review when it could simply get on and do one itself? And thus the idea that became the blueprint was born.

Let’s also not forget that until late spring this year the consensus was in favour of an autumn election. So as soon as the election date was moved the horizon for the blueprint suddenly became quite a lot shorter.

Now, Opportunity, Growth and Partnership, a blueprint for change from the UK’s universities is live, and whether or not you agree with any or all of it, it does pretty much what it set out to do, which is to set out an agenda for the sector, working with government, to evolve over the course of the next Parliament. A consciousness of the Labour government’s agenda and established priorities on skills, innovation and economic growth is very much at the forefront, but the blueprint’s agenda is very much in favour of evolution, not revolution, and is also very much on universities’ terms.

Quid pro quo

Despite what has been widely trailed in the press, the key idea behind the blueprint is not only a straightforward ask for more funding for universities. The aim is to establish the terms of a new compact between universities and government, one in which universities commit to five key “big shifts” that align with the government’s policy agenda, and make the case for the funding and regulatory settlement that would underpin that work.

The “big shifts” proposed are:

• Opportunity: a new target for England of 70 per cent of the population having studied at level 4 or above by 2040
• Tertiary collaboration: improving the flexibility and responsiveness of tertiary education through collaboration between school, colleges and universities
• Local growth: through partnership between universities, business, and policymakers
• Research: strengthen research through addressing financial sustainability, international competitiveness, and effective knowledge exchange
• Global reach: a new global strategy for higher education including a compact for stable and sustainable international student recruitment

And the asks are:

• Put universities on a firm financial footing: initially through an injection of funds and subsequently through a transformation programme focused on longer term sustainability
• Better regulation: through streamlining and reduction of bureaucracy
• Improve how the impact of the university system is assessed: through a more comprehensive account of the non-economic and societal benefits as well as the economic returns

Each chapter of the blueprint has been drafted under the aegis of one or more big-name commissioners, tasked with developing a line of thinking and recommendations on one of the above themes, with the support of an advisory group. Multiple organisations played a role (including, in a small way, and for full disclosure, Wonkhe), so while the final output will probably fully satisfy no one, you can’t possibly accuse UUK of not doing its due diligence on consulting.

Opportunity and tertiary collaboration

Arguably the first two chapters tackle the question of HE participation from opposite sides of the supply/demand lens. The opportunity chapter rehearses some of the root causes of inequitable access to HE and potential dampeners of demand, including school attainment. It also runs through some of the challenges facing students when they get there, including lack of funding for maintenance, degree awarding gaps, differential employment outcomes, and limits to universities’ capacity to cope with mental health issues. The tertiary chapter examines the supply side of qualifications available, where they are offered and the pathways that may be more or less visible to students in making choices, diagnosing a generalised lack of cohesion in the tertiary skills economy.

When the government comes to draft up its promised post-16 strategy, assuming this encompasses post-18 and lifelong learning provision as well, there will need to be an active bridging of supply-side and demand-side analysis. Outreach, contextual admissions, and even better maintenance funding only does so much if the provision is wrong, too complicated to navigate, too inflexible, or in the wrong place. The right kind of provision is no good if people can’t access it. The prospect of a demographic dip in 18-19 year olds beginning in 2030 is now beginning to take shape, leading to a view that lifelong learning will become a much more significant policy priority during this parliament, an agenda that brings both supply and demand challenges.

One key blueprint recommendation is to establish a tertiary education opportunity fund to incentivise collaboration in provision that is both responsive to local needs and targeted at low-participation areas or groups. This is exactly the sort of provision that benefits from a level of government intervention in that it is focusing on bits of the market that are high cost, high risk and potentially low margin, and therefore unlikely to spring up organically. Where government can put policy measures in place to drive local analysis of how supply-side issues and demand-side issues relate to each other, that’s where real movement of the dial could be seen for expanding participation.

Left dangling somewhat in these chapters is the real and ongoing problem of inequitable student experience and outcomes – the recommendation to restore maintenance grants, and uprate maintenance loans would obviously provide some relief, and a recommendation to provide longer-term career support to graduates would be nice, but probably not game-changing.

There’s a section that sets out the features of what a student should be able to expect from their university – which includes local engagement and coordination on student accommodation – where the implication is that the sector must do more to articulate the quality and value it offers students. But in the gap between formal regulation on threshold standards, baselines and contractual rights, and the richness of the learning experience that the sector might aspire to offer, there’s a bit of a policy vacuum where some fresh thinking could be valuable.

Local growth – skills and business engagement

The chapter on local growth draws in broad strokes the well-established national picture of stalling productivity and regional inequality, low employer investment in skills, and the barriers to developing apprenticeships, a lack of public sector investment, and policy instability around university-business relationships.

The chapter proposes that one of the opportunities afforded by the devolution agenda is to establish a level of coherence and stability through local growth agendas and formal partnerships. This leads to the conclusion that what is needed is good local/national coordination with both the forthcoming industrial strategy and public sector workforce plans, particularly in the NHS, and a consistent recognition of universities as partners in skills and local growth, including in provision of apprenticeships (with some hastily added wording on the latest announcement of plans to restrict funding of apprenticeships at level 7). UUK also floats the possibility of the emergence of more university groups geared around regional collaboration.

A proposal that all universities should ensure they have a dedicated “local growth” function caught my eye, and should be catching yours too. The government has already indicated in the King’s Speech that Skills England and devolution will be in this year’s legislative calendar and while everyone is scrambling to say positive things about coherence of provision and alignment of local growth agendas and regional partnerships, actually making any of this happen is going to be a real challenge. In particular, persuading Whitehall to distribute power and allow the regions to make the decisions needed to design and move forward with growth agendas. In the early years, faced with political pressure from voters unconvinced by the value of devolution the temptation for the centre to be directive may be overwhelming.

The job right now is to put in the leg work to get fighting fit on demonstrating the capability for handling devolution of economic growth in the regions. That could mean going beyond the current basket of regional activity to assess where there is highest value and impact, what the state of the evidence base is on the health of the regional economic ecosystem, and consideration of alignment between the current portfolio and the regional skills landscape. This work also could support the case for another of the chapter’s recommendations – a long term commitment on the continuation of the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) and the creation of a long term stable solution to direct infrastructure funding strategically to where there is currently lower R&D intensity but potential for productivity growth.

Research, innovation, and global reach

International student fees subsidise quite a lot of things these days, but historically the thing they have subsidised the most is the cost of research. There is symbiosis in the other direction too; it remains the case that research drives global rankings, and so the institutions that are most research-intensive have also historically been the most high-volume recruiters of international students.

The chapter on research makes the case that for the UK’s research to remain globally competitive it must be put on a more sustainable footing, which in this analysis means narrowing, if not closing entirely, the gap between what is funded and what research costs. While some of the gap could in principle be closed by increasing QR funding and this government continuing the policy of the last by pursuing a GDP-based research-intensity target, some of it would also need to be met by universities deciding to simply do less research, focusing on achieving critical mass in areas of strength rather than spreading resources more widely. Universities would also focus to a greater degree on commercialising research, contributing to economic growth in line with the expected national industrial strategy.

A particularly tasty idea that somebody somewhere should greenlight immediately is the idea of a Missions Innovation Fund to stimulate “ambitious and trailblazing R&D projects” that mix up blue-sky research, applied research, interdisciplinary research, and research infrastructure to advance the government’s five missions and its industrial strategy. That would give the missions and industrial strategy real heft in driving forward evidence-based innovative activity, and would also lock universities in as stakeholders in the delivery of the missions and industrial strategy. If government is serious about delivering on its missions, this is exactly the sort of thing that it should be doing.

Over on the international front, a misunderstanding seems to have already crept into the public narrative about what the ask is here, with the Guardian reporting that UUK is offering to “curb” international recruitment in exchange for an increase in fees. In actuality, the chapter is pointing out, quite correctly, that “rapid growth in student numbers between 2019 and 2022 tested political and public support for international recruitment.” More widely, the chapter offers the diagnosis that the Home Office concern with international students as part of the immigration system can distort the political appetite for realising the opportunities afforded by the broad spectrum of internationalisation activities, of which student recruitment is just one part.

The chapter calls for the government to establish a global strategy for universities which would sit in the Cabinet Office, interact with the various government departments that have an international outlook, meaning it would be focused on broad goals around the UK’s prosperity, international relationships, and security. On universities’ side, there would be a commitment to sustainable recruitment and managed growth of international students, and full adoption of the agent quality framework, in return for policy stability and a commitment to review some of the current pain points, including the blunt use of annual net migration figures as a policy instrument, and the removal of visas for dependants of taught students.

For all this to work would require a lot of goodwill on both sides, married with a willingness (again, on both sides) to hustle outliers into line. It’s not clear what power UUK has to stop any given university from pursuing unsustainably rapid international student number growth, nor what the government’s appetite is for testing political tolerance for a more pro-international outlook. But a core issue here is the increasing over-dependence on international recruitment to shore up university finances, which ministers are aware of. Addressing the financial pressures would create more favourable conditions for getting to the point where university internationalisation can once again be an active policy agenda for government rather than something that is embraced only lukewarmly or tacitly tolerated, and is always at risk of being smacked down when the politics get too tricky.

Finance, regulation, and impact

The chapter on finance – which despite the wider ambitions of the blueprint to set a policy as well as a funding agenda, must have been pored-over relentlessly – begins by setting out the problems with designing around a sector on the basis of a partial market. The unsustainability of offering a high-quality model, and the lack of public investment that could enable provision for which there may be a public interest but less of a market, are corollary issues. The solutions proposed are not just about demanding an injection of cash, but setting out a two-phase plan designed to achieve a measure of longer term sustainability.

Admittedly, phase one does involve an injection of cash, with indexation of fees to inflation, restoration of the teaching grant and increases to QR, a managed solution on increasing TPS pension contributions, and a proper plan for managing financially distressed institutions. The idea is then that in phase two universities invest in developing longer term strategies for efficiency and change their operating models, through a transformation programme led by UUK, which would seek to explore the possibilities for new operating models, shared services, deployment of technology, and so on. You can’t help but reflect that if the government is minded to inject the phase one cash, it would need to think about how to hold universities’ feet to the fire on phase two.

Complexity, burden, and a lack of trust between universities and OfS’ are the themes of the chapter on regulation, as well as concerns about OfS approach to assessing quality. UUK would like to see OfS have greater regard to the public interest in the benefits of higher education, and to the international competitiveness of the sector as a whole, which would include taking a sector-wide view of financial sustainability, the geography of provision, and a greater interest in coordinating with other regulators and alignment with international standards.

The job of universities, as this chapter sets out, is to ensure good governance, and the associated recommendation is for a refresh of the HE Code of Governance. That exercise might be helpful, but let’s also just flag “HE governance” as a potentially undercooked aspect of the policy picture, both for making sure the kinds of shifts UUK is describing throughout the blueprint actually happen, and handling the risks and pitfalls associated with doing so.

Finally, there’s a chapter on improving how universities’ impact is assessed, which points out that the individual economic returns to graduates isn’t really a sufficiently meaningful way to describe the value of higher education to the country as a whole. There’s the broader economic impact of R&D, education exports, and universities as organisations that employ and spend, and there’s the wider social benefits for public services, culture and the arts, social cohesion, and the UK’s “soft power”.

While the sector might wholeheartedly endorse the principle of the sentiment, I do wonder what the case for government would be to invest in a wider set of measures for the public value of HE. The best argument is less about recognising and celebrating all that value as it is about incentivising desirable behaviours. To that end, though the blueprint doesn’t recommend this specifically, if the government agrees with the blueprint on the “big shifts” required from universities then it should look at the whole basket of measure-based incentives and how they are used. Arguably there are already a bunch of public-value based metrics in the public domain, and published in the KEF and through HE-BCI, it’s just that those metrics aren’t seen as having the same value as, say, REF scores. The measurement itself might be less the thing than the cultural beliefs and practices that produced the metrics.

And that point feeds my overall conclusion about the UUK blueprint: it does a cracking job of clearing the ground through an audit of what we already know about the English/UK HE system, and sensibly points to the areas where there is scope for developing a manageable and feasible joint policy agenda with the current government. It’s probably about the right level of ambitious for what it is in that it has to walk the line between representing the sector’s views of what universities’ needs are and recognising the constraints on government spending. It’s politically astute about what the offer to government is, and what might be achieved if its recommendations are implemented.

It’s not likely that an independent review assessing the current state of the sector and with a brief to look at opportunities for alignment between universities and the government’s policy agenda could have come up with a better set of proposals. An independent review might, however, have devoted a bit more scrutiny to those aspects of university responsibility that remain less subject to policy and regulation: learning and teaching, the student experience, the compact with staff, governance.

And while the blueprint freely admits that there are things universities need to do off their own bat, such as adopting good practice in the recruitment of international students and the use of agents, or committing to finding more efficient ways of working, an independent review might have questioned a bit more closely exactly how the sector can be encouraged to adopt these responsibilities without deploying the regulatory stick or much in the way of funding carrots. If the government was minded to adopt some of the blueprint’s proposals as part of its opportunity or growth missions, ministers might want a bit more from universities than assurances to look at these issues once the funding is safely in place.