The Future Framework for Scotland’s Universities has been operational for a few weeks, officially kicking off with the first steering group meeting on 30 January.
We are ambitious about both the scope of the work, given that it looks to secure the sustainability and the success of Scotland’s universities for the next 20 years, and the timescale we’ve set ourselves. We’re working to deliver options by late autumn, so that it’s one of the first things in the in-tray for the new Scottish Government and Parliament to pick up.
No surprise then, that we’ve hit the ground running with many conversations with diverse stakeholders and experts in the field. I am already struck by the level of engagement and energy from so many people, as well as a few emerging themes.
A Team Scotland approach
I am delighted by the people that have willingly stepped up to work on the Framework. We’ve sought to balance the expertise and experience inside the sector, and inside Government, with independent stakeholder and expert voices including Professor Mairi Spowage, Director of Strathclyde University’s Fraser of Allander Institute, while Dave Whitehouse of Offshore Energies UK and Sandy Begbie of Scottish Financial Enterprise both represent employers and industry. Professor Ellen Hazelkorn, Managing Partner at education consultants BH Associates, brings real breadth of international perspectives of higher education and experience of past reviews of post-16 education.
We have highly experienced trade union and student union voices contributing to the work alongside principals, from an ancient and small, specialist institutions, and a university chair in recognition of the importance of the governance role in the sector’s strategic direction and financial sustainability.
The group’s composition has been designed to invite different perspectives, encourage constructive challenge, provocations and bold thinking. That dynamic is already in play. The group’s first meeting encouraged us to lean in much deeper into the futures piece and to think genuinely radically about new ways of working and models of delivery.
Both are fair challenges. For all that different perspectives are wanted and welcomed, my strongest take-away from the first steering group meeting, was the sense of a shared endeavour, the importance of the work for Scotland’s future prosperity, health and wellbeing, and the opportunity that the cross party support offers at this time.
Solutions designed from the starting blocks?
Beyond the steering group, I have definitely picked up on a cynicism in some corners of Scotland that we are starting this process with pre-formed answers. We aren’t.
Candidly, we don’t even have a shared solid sense of the scale of the problem we’re trying to solve beyond the unsustainability of the current trajectory. That’s why the first task of pillar one is to reach agreement on a quantification of the funding gap facing universities.
Building from there, the rest of the challenge in pillar one is to build a shared and informed collective view on the changing needs and expectations of the sector over the next 20 years. That will be framed within the wider context of the scale of change facing Scotland over that period: major demographic change, significant technological advancements, and ever-changing geopolitical contexts through which the Scottish economy and the higher education sector need to navigate effectively.
Form follows function, and so we need to move through that process before we start looking for options for a new policy and funding framework to support the sector on that journey.
Tomorrow’s problems, opportunities today
The 20-year horizon for the framework is key. Thinking of past reviews of higher education, whether in Scotland, England or Wales, it is clear that there is little political appetite to fundamentally review university funding on a regular basis. Once done, it’s likely to remain in place for 10 or 20 years, however creaky the system gets.
So we are keen to make the most of the cross-party consensus that we have now, to design a future framework with as much agility and future-proofing as possible. Universities need sufficient scope within the policy and funding landscape to allow for flex and evolution, whilst at the same time have a model that de-risks change for institutions. The current landscape in is not flexible, and thus is likely to be acting as an inhibitor of innovative models of delivery, but it has also exposed many institutions to ever-growing levels of risk – the worst of both worlds.
If it’s a possibility the framework will still be in play in 2045, we are not only designing options to address the challenges we face today, as much as they are needed – whether that’s an insufficient pipeline of town planners or the capacity of Scotland’s SME sector to absorb university research and innovation – we must also do our best to be ready for the potential challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for Scotland in 2035 and 2045 using the best forecast data, trends analysis and a deep understanding of stakeholder needs.
Looking that far down the line is undoubtedly difficult, and we will likely develop scenarios that will test our thinking and framework options, we believe that if we reach only for the answers just ahead of us we will be under-delivering for Scotland.
Taking a 20-year horizon means “getting on the front foot” and supporting the distinct role that universities have in driving change as well as responding to it. Of course universities play an important role in addressing today’s skills needs – but they also support the emergence and growth of whole new industry sectors, which will create sustainable jobs for Scotland.
Scotland has industry clusters, jobs and economic opportunity right now that has emerged from, or grown significantly due to, university creativity, research, innovation and risk-taking. The emergence of the computer games industry in Dundee from Abertay’s world first degree in computer games is one example, as is the significant opportunities coming from green hydrogen technology at St Andrews. The framework needs to support the conditions that are conducive to this kind of economic development.
Skills – and more
One of the reasons I was attracted to the co-convener role was the holistic approach being taken to university sustainability and success – the scope is inclusive of teaching, skills development and research and innovation.
Frequently, reviews of university funding only look at the teaching element. Maybe that is why I am already finding something of a pull-back to the skills space in many of the conversations I have had over the last month. Perhaps it’s the area most people feel comfortable in, or a consequence of the focus on skills within Scotland’s post-16 structural reform over the last 18 months. Perhaps the establishment of Skills England has raised the agenda further or, perhaps the research and innovation work of universities is just far less visible to most people outside the sector.
Most likely it’s a combination of all of the above. Clearly, skills are hugely important for the social, cultural and economic development of our communities and future-proofing universities’ contribution to the ever-changing skills landscape is a key part of the review. However we cannot commit to delivering a framework that addresses the long-term sustainability and success of the sector if we only consider education.
Universities’ research funding has the same over-reliance on cross-subsidy from international student fee income in particular as the education of our home students. Our research capability and capacity are a fundamental aspect of our work that delivers economic, social and cultural impact in our regions, nationally and internationally.
Time for action
We have a great team assembled to work on the Framework, on our steering group and across the three work pillars – but I am also eager to harness ideas of others.
Undoubtedly there will be valuable insights and thinking that we are unaware of, and new evidence being generated as we speak, both from within the sector and beyond. My team and I are keen to hear from all who have views to contribute. You can contact us at futureframework@universities-scotland.ac.uk.
This is in danger of repeating the mistakes of the Robbins Committee in considering that universities and higher education are synonymous, rather than overlapping.
While the university sector has expanded significantly since the 1960s in terms of now including the former central institutions and some parts of the former college system (three institutions from which are not actually universities), Scotland also has a vibrant College sector – much of it at (Scottish) higher education level.
A review of higher education as a whole would be more appropriate to be done across and coordinated by BOTH sectors, with specific work strands to take in the highly specific needs of the university sector (including the UK wide contexts for Research & Knowledge Transfer and the specific focus of some universities on residential provision, the need for which seems to me to be less required in the 21st century but is still desired as a middle class ‘rite of passage’). The wider lifelong learning agenda also needs a focus – for example on adult/mature students and particularly the need for current and future workplace retraining and transitioning out of old technologies, like fossil fuels, and into new areas of economic growth, like AI and renewable energy, and societal need, like the challenge of a larger, older population.
I’m all for a new funding settlement, but I think with that should come more responsibility: for example, to develop FULL articulation between different awards at adjoining levels – far too many College HNC/HND graduates are still rejected by some universities pursuing an elite agenda that judges people on ‘school leaver’ UCAS points, rather than what they have achieved since then. If they want the extra money, the university sector needs to meet society’s (and the taxpayers) more egalitarian needs. “Ladders and Bridges” are just as important as setting high entry standards.
There’s a danger that if the scope and engagement is not widened to include the overlap with Colleges, this review could focus on a begging letter to the Scottish taxpayer from those already at the top of the pile, rather than genuine reform and improvement that works for all levels of the post-compulsory education systems.