Higher education in the UK is facing a unique set of challenges.
There are the widely reported financial constraints with no uplift in the unit of resource for over seven years.
Research is highly clustered in a small number of institutions.
In addition, there is high variation across the UK in terms of economic output – London has circa 3 times the GDP per head of the North East, and there are clear cold spots for higher education.
Opportunities to compete
Universities are not short of opportunities for competition. There’s the unique trio of REF, TEF, and KEF – where institutions and individuals are judged on various (lagged) outputs and measures. We are all benchmarked against B3 thresholds by our regulator, with investigations for those institutions that fall short. There’s the various accreditations and accolades, numerous league tables, and rankings based on somewhat dubious methodologies (though the methodologically-sound Wonkhe car parking ranking is a clear favourite).
Given these institutional pressures, it is unsurprising that the amount of difference and variety in university strategies is limited. Even a superficial scan of university documents will lead to the rapid conclusion that we are all world class, internationally leading and have regional to global impact.
While many universities will deliver Micheal Porter’s message (present on the many “internationally leading global MBAs”) that “the essence of a good strategy is choosing what not to do”, the weighty strategic documents formed by committee give the impression that all universities are equally able to deliver on multiple initiatives and goals in an infinite transformation cycle. However, with increasing financial pressures there is a need to do something different, and there has been an increasing volume of calls to collaborate more effectively in HE. For many of us, this has an intuitive attraction, particularly if we have spent our time in research teams, developing inclusive education or in professional services seeking to find synergies and joined-up systems. But the research on collaboration has long held that collaboration is far from easy, and in fact it is a regular experience to fall into collaborative inertia.
A messy business
The theory of collaborative advantage was developed in the UK in the 1990s by Chris Huxham and her colleagues such as Siv Vangen and Paul Hibbert. “Collaborative advantage” is a synergy of joint working, achieving together that which we could not achieve separately, while “collaborative inertia” is the tendency for frustratingly slow pace and compromise-ridden outputs. At its heart, the art of collaborative advantage is based on managing tensions – sometimes between what sounds like common sense and what happens if common sense is taken too literally. For example, it is common sense that collaborating groups need shared goals in order to succeed, but in reality it is highly unlikely that fully shared goals can be achieved. To identify fully shared goals would take a long time and likely lead failure because a collaboration relies not on the similarities between the parties but on their differences.
The value for each party is typically derived from the different knowledge, resources, networks and outputs that the other can offer. Simply adding more of the same is unlikely to warrant the cost of collaboration. So, rather than having fully agreed goals for the collaboration, it can be best to make a start on “good enough” goals and work out the nuances as you go. This means that it is also important for both parties not to be locked in from the outset but to be able to step away without too high a cost and at an early stage if it emerges that the collaboration won’t produce the desired results.
Similarly, developing openness and trust, and shared understanding and language are important, but to try to achieve these in detail in advance of taking action can mean that progress is extremely slow. It can be better to get a good enough agreement and take action while continuing to review growing (or not) trust and improving (or not) shared understanding. In other words, if you start out by doing the work required to get clear and fully shared goals, deep understanding and trust and transparent language, you might end up in collaborative inertia before you get going.
An alternative is not to aim for the ideal but to acknowledge that collaboration is a messy business that has to be adapted as we go along. A good enough shared intention and an agreement to start small, experiment and learn, acknowledging that the collaboration may grow or stop, is a way to take action and build on that action. This involves trusting enough before there is good evidence to trust – just one of the tensions that interweave in collaboration, and this means that a particular leadership approach needs to be taken – one which focuses on enquiry, experimentation and learning.
And this is a cause for optimism as in HE we are all about enquiry, experimentation and learning.
Collaborative models
There are many different types of collaborative model. Here at Salford we have been working on the Greater Manchester Institute of Technology GMIoT, a partnership including four different FE colleges, and four industry partners . This is a regional network of education providers and leading industry employers, working in partnership to deliver technical education and training in STEM-based subjects. Courses are offered through education providers across Greater Manchester and specialise in the construction, engineering, computing, creative media and health sciences sectors. The GMIoT delivers training and employment opportunities that are co-created with employers for the careers of the future as well as responding to current skills and workforce needs. The GMIoT is committed to delivering an innovative technical curriculum through education institutions and the mission is to provide a pipeline of talented, work-ready individuals qualified to levels 4 or 5 (HNC/HND level) in technical sectors to meet business need.
There have been some of the collaborative challenges outlined above but through the partnership we have learnt a lot about developing a connected community through a hub and spoke model. The approach taken has helped spread knowledge and expertise beyond institutional boundaries and there are significant future benefits. It is deliberately “Greater Manchester” IoT where all partners have a say with a focus on the future impact for the wider North West region.
There are now IoTs located across England and they are a great model to further develop collaborative advantage. Professor Sasha Roseneil, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex recognises this:
IoTs have a lot of unrealised potential. At Sussex, we are part of the Sussex and Surrey Institute of Technology which is a collaboration between three FE colleges and the three Sussex universities and we are working together on programmes around sustainability, digital engineering and manufacturing, AI – all absolutely vital to the skills agenda and to the economic growth agenda.
The UK is facing a complex growth challenge, there’s a real opportunity for the sector to be part of the solution by creating new knowledge, developing advanced technologies and enabling our students to flourish and contribute to society.
Instead of university failure and financial pressure let’s look to alliances and partnerships for a stronger more resilient higher education sector. We have referenced IoTs here as examples of partnership working but there are other models and ways of working which would bring positive benefits.
There are opportunities now to build a future addressing societal challenges and government missions based on the practices of collaborative advantage and working together to create effective networks across health, industry and communities.
