Change is coming

Mergers are nothing new in English higher education. Successful examples include UCL and the Institute of Education in 2014 and, , City University and St George¡¯²õ, University of London. But the deep financial challenges currently facing universities have triggered thinking about new entities such as the multi-university groups mooted in July¡¯²õ paper on ¡°¡± by consultants KPMG and solicitors Mills & Reeve.

There are arguments both ways on whether the alliance between the universities of Kent and Greenwich is the first of a wave. The case for reshaping is compelling: England has more than 130 universities, and most are remarkably homogeneous. They offer a broadly similar, costly, full-time delivery model, with intense competition in a handful of high-volume fields, including computing, law, psychology, business, health and engineering. As one sector leader said to me recently, ¡°We don¡¯t have too many students but we may have too many institutions.¡±

With income from tuition fees constrained and private providers making rapid inroads into some parts of the market, the financial pressures are intense. As a result, almost every university is looking to reform its business, operating or delivery models ¨C and in some cases all three.

On the other hand, institutional autonomy is tightly protected, and every university will claim that, despite the homogeneity, it occupies a vital niche in the higher education landscape. And there is some evidence that the repeated cycles of reshaping and restructuring within the current structure are?having an impact on financial sustainability.

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Moreover, mergers are difficult. Some things have given the Greenwich/Kent relationship impetus: the underlying financial strength of one of the partners, the complementary missions of the two institutions and their relatively close physical locations, giving the merger regional impact. Nor should we underestimate the significance of the interim leadership in place at one of the institutions, meaning that leaders¡¯ egos ¨C which bedevil private-sector mergers ¨C were not in play.

Even with these propitious circumstances, however, the sheer complexity of the merger is yet to be worked through: Advance HE¡¯²õ recently published account of the suggested a non-exhaustive list of 150 technical questions that needed to be resolved. Mergers are not for the faint-hearted.

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Other rumoured discussions between universities seem to have fallen foul of some combination of finances, geography, mission, leadership and complexity. Yet the realities of higher education finance necessitate change. Although some institutions are thriving and generating surpluses, others may be reaching the limit of what restructuring current models can achieve. One vice-chancellor said to me last week, ¡°There¡¯²õ not much salami left to slice.¡±?

The prime minister¡¯²õ announcement at the Labour conference of a target for two-thirds of young people to progress either to higher education or an apprenticeship might have shifted policy decisively towards the whole post-18 system, not least because the heavy lifting on meeting the target will need to be done by increasing take-up of sub-degree qualifications. Cross-tertiary arrangements are as difficult as mergers, but they may now look attractive.

For instance, London South Bank University has made progress on building a group structure including a university, a further education college and an academy. In business theory, this leans towards ¡°vertical¡± integration rather than the ¡°horizontal¡± arrangements at ¡°Kentwich¡±. With , a former senior civil servant with expertise in skills policy, as its new vice-chancellor, LSBU now looks strongly positioned.

It is currently an outlier. But there are too many headwinds ¨C financial, demographic, technological ¨C for the sector to continue as it is. Change is coming, whether through university mergers, FE-HE arrangements or private-sector acquisitions.

The examples of Kentwich, LSBU and some radical efficiency programmes over the past two years suggest there is appetite for that change, but the persistent homogeneity of higher education¡¯²õ core offer suggests that reform will be difficult.

As it finalises its forthcoming White Paper on the future of further and higher education, government must decide whether it thinks higher education has the will and determination to reshape itself ¨C or whether stronger incentives or even interventions are needed.

Chris Husbands is a founding partner of Higher Futures. He was vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University from 2016 to 2023.

Repent at leisure

It is, of course, far too early to tell whether Greenwich and Kent¡¯²õ ¡°superuniversity¡± presents a workable solution to the woes of a higher education sector facing well-documented financial challenges. The two institutions are yet to formally ¡°get engaged¡±, let alone embark on married life together. But I do applaud their vision and brave leadership ¨C it is needed given the tricky circumstances the sector finds itself in.?

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As the vice-chancellor who led St George¡¯²õ, University of London, to a successful merger to form?City St George¡¯²õ, University of London in 2024, I would definitely advocate being bold and doing what you think is the best thing for the future success of your institution.?And mergers undoubtedly offer benefits from greater scale, broader disciplinary mix and wider academic opportunities.

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However, my advice when (frequently) asked is to only embark on the merger journey with your?eyes?wide open. As in our personal lives, the most important factor is to select your partner with care. Even then, there will be inevitable periods of self-doubt in the intense months after you embark upon such an exciting but also disruptive path ¨C but if you are partnering with the wrong university or doing it for the wrong reasons, these issues will only get magnified. And I guarantee that your students, staff and other partners will ¨C rightly ¨C point out any concerns they have with your plans.?

A merger is certainly no quick fix. It will be more onerous, expensive and time-consuming (years, not months) than you imagined, and it will take substantial further time to realise financial benefit and leverage the academic synergies. Nor should you underestimate the extra burdens of running a merger process alongside ¡°business as usual¡± during the phase leading up to completion.

Keen sensitivity is needed towards staff working hard on ¡°the brave new world¡± while simultaneously worrying that they may be made redundant after success is achieved. And such a strategically important decision will, by its nature, require intense governing board involvement, bringing the executive and non-executive members into much closer, more frequent and demanding interaction than previously. The decision to merge or not is a weighty responsibility for those on the governing bodies of each of the institutions involved.

In addition, open dialogue directly board to board ¨C while carefully remaining independent decision-making bodies until formally combined ¨C can help navigate what can be a bumpy phase of intense mutual scrutiny and exhaustive due diligence. There will be no shortage of expensive offers of external professional advice and one can mull every eventuality but, in the end, each governing body needs to be brave, take the plunge and commit.

City St George¡¯²õ is not my only experience of a merger. Forming Imperial College London¡¯²õ Faculty of Medicine ¨C where I was previously vice-dean for institutional affairs ¨C from several medical schools has also proved hugely successful.

Mergers?are not, however, a panacea for the higher education funding crisis. They are certainly?not appropriate in all circumstances, and they are not on my current agenda. I have now moved to the University of Suffolk, a regional civic university very much focused on bringing?significant?benefits to local businesses (the vast majority of which are SMEs) and the surrounding community. Being the only university in a county where educational achievement and aspiration is lower feels very different to being one of a network of higher education establishments in a major city, not least because of the lack of regular and reliable public transport.

When Suffolk¡¯²õ university status was confirmed nine years ago, it was enthusiastically embraced by the community, not least for its potential for economic regeneration ¨C a role?that has been realised. The university has become a major contributor to the region¡¯²õ health and public service workforce, while its research is also typically regionally embedded.

Moreover, if the focus on university mergers is to save significant sums of money, the inevitable course rationalisations would disproportionately affect non-traditional students, who are less likely or able to travel further afield. For a university founded to widen participation, risking denying opportunities to those who stand to benefit most would be a difficult pill to swallow.

If the real-terms value of UK tuition fees continues to fall and the financial pressures continue to escalate, mergers, in many forms, will have their place: at least they could ensure partial higher education provision in a region where the alternative is none. But all parts of the country need the successes, innovations and transformations generated by universities working with their communities to meet their specific needs. This is something we cannot afford to lose.

Jenny Higham is vice-chancellor and chief executive of the University of Suffolk. She was previously vice-chancellor of St George¡¯²õ, University of London.

Further, higher, greater

For many years, further education has been UK tertiary education¡¯²õ Cinderella sector, starved of funds and prestige as the policy emphasis has been to get ever more students into university.

But as the economics of the latter have started to come unstuck, and as the skills and place-based agendas have risen to political prominence, FE colleges find themselves well placed to finally put on their glass slippers and come to the party.

The Greenwich-Kent ¡°superuniversity¡± has provided some pointers. Kent is one of the established plate-glass universities, strong in humanities and social sciences research. Greenwich is a former polytechnic formed of mergers between a number of local colleges and emphasising vocational studies. And while it¡¯²õ a fairly basic way of looking at the situation, institutional income figures are an indication of why the merger is happening: recent accounts show Kent has seen income decline, to about? in 2023-24, while Greenwich¡¯²õ has . In other words, vocational study is on the up.

Until now, mergers in UK tertiary education were all about universities absorbing FE colleges with financial problems. The late 1990s, in particular, saw a burst of them (Harrogate and Leeds Met, High Peak and Derby, Brackenhurst and Nottingham Trent). London South Bank University¡¯²õ merger with the troubled Lambeth College in 2019 is a more recent example, as is the University of West London¡¯²õ absorption of Oxford¡¯²õ Ruskin College in 2021.

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But perhaps the tables are about to turn. Colleges have already been through the now facing universities, with reduced funding and student numbers amid increasing operating costs and inflation. The government¡¯²õ ¡°¡° of English FE, carried out between 2015 and 2019, have done their job of ensuring there are now a smaller number of providers, but all of them are full.

Hence, FE institutions offer universities a smaller but solid and resilient core for operations, used to working at the margins of their financial envelope, with a lean approach to staffing, programme development, facilities and resource use.

Mergers with FE also make good sense in structural terms. Colleges offer a straightforward pipeline of undergraduate recruits, reducing the costs of marketing and outreach into sixth-forms and making it easier to meet widening access goals. Equally, FE colleges would have a ready-made destination for their students and access to the prestige of university branding.

The result would be a joined-up package of offerings for a local area or region, more openness of access and clarity of pathways, fewer barriers and silos. It could also boost retention of graduates in the area: an essential factor in economic development and growth. I recall having exactly these conversations when I was chair of the Bradford District Council Economic Recovery Board.

Of course, merged institutions will need to manage the integration of different cultures and staff bodies, both in terms of roles ¨C the teaching focus of FE versus the many hats of HE academics ¨C and pay and benefits scales. It will be vital to avoid the sense of two-tier organisations.

Care will also be required in combining student bodies in the early years, especially when college students are studying at degree level alongside those of the university. But the different bodies regulating FE and HE are less of an issue now, with Ofsted already going into HE to assess apprenticeship delivery and the OfS in colleges to look at higher-level qualifications.

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Some in HE will instinctively turn their noses up at mergers with FE. But most of the snobbery about vocational education has been eroded over the past 20 years as universities ¨C especially modern ones ¨C have embraced ¡°business-facing¡± offerings. And FE has often, though not always, become established as a stepping stone into degree study as well as the trades. In Scotland, for example, ?that more than one in four new undergraduates came from an FE college.?

If we were setting up an education system from scratch, wouldn¡¯t we be thinking in terms of large, efficient hubs that addressed regional skills needs? That¡¯²õ just the kind of integration that HE-FE mergers would help bring about.

All post-18 providers need to be thinking not only about financial sustainability but about their social role. That means considering the breadth of possible collaborations, including groups, federations and multi-university trusts ¨C with FE colleges a fundamental part of the mix.?

Zahir Irani is the former deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Bradford. The opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily express the views of current or former employers.

Chartering new(ish) territory

When the news of ¡°the UK¡¯²õ first superuniversity¡± broke last month, it was presented as a landmark moment in UK higher education.

The University of Greenwich, a post-1992?institution with a historic campus on the banks of the Thames, is to share a governing body, academic board and executive team with the University of Kent, a 1960s research-intensive institution some two hours away by public transport.

However, each institution will retain its separate identity when the new operating model begins in 2026-27, and students will continue to apply to, study at and graduate from only one of them.

So what does the ¡°superuniversity¡± tag actually mean? Certainly it is not a merger akin to Manchester¡¯²õ consolidation of its two main universities (Victoria and UMIST) in 2004 or the 1980s Welsh amalgamations that led to today¡¯²õ Cardiff University. That would always have been an unlikely scenario for both institutions given their respective financial liabilities ¨C including pension commitments.

Instead, we have a potential new model of a formalised structure for regional collaboration, building on the existing ?joint campus in Chatham. Put simply, it is a multi-university group, and that is how the merged entity will be known: the London and South East University Group. Will that group also gobble up further education provision to create credible, joined-up tertiary education? That might be the hope. And might Canterbury Christ Church University ¨C the third partner in the Medway campus ¨C join the mix at some point? Quite possibly.

For many connected with Kent, the most sensible move would have been a superuniversity in Canterbury, merging Kent, Canterbury Christ Church and the University for the Creative Arts (which also has a Canterbury campus). But that probably would not have been worthwhile financially, even if central Canterbury buildings were sold off.

Of course, the great hope is for the economies of scale that might come from institutional consolidation. But there are potentially very complex governance questions to resolve. For instance, since both Greenwich and Kent will presumably be subject to the overall strategy of the London and South East University Group, governors and trustees of each university risk running up against Charity Commission rules if ¡°orders¡± from the new entity are not ¡°in the best interests¡± of their individual institution as they see it.

There are further legal complexities. For instance, Kent was established in 1965 by Royal Charter and its makes no specific provision for collaboration with another institution. Legally, the university has all the powers of a natural person, so it can enter into any lawful contract subject to the charter provisions. However, the charter does not recognise any mechanism by which Kent¡¯²õ own council could cease to be its governing body.

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Because there is to be a new governing body, presumably the charter will have to be amended to provide for that ¨C as well as for the abolition of Kent¡¯²õ , visitor and . All of this will require approval of the Privy Council.

In contrast, the more recent articles of association of the University of Greenwich ¨C a company limited by guarantee ¨C cover collaboration and clearly allow the university to enter into a form of collaboration or merger. The governors are in charge and are charity trustees. Yet it seems the articles would have to be modified to allow for there being one governing body for the superuniversity. Furthermore, the academic board is subject to the approval of the governors, so changes to the articles may require approval of the Charity Commission.

The quasi-merger has been described by some as a ¡°takeover¡± given Kent¡¯²õ parlous finances. But it is worth noting that the only takeover of a chartered institution by a non-chartered one was the merger of the chartered New University of Ulster (NUU) and Ulster Polytechnic in 1985 to form what is now Ulster University. And this only happened when NUU was threatened with having its charter revoked if it did not agree. A new charter was issued to Ulster University, revoking the NUU charter, and the same will probably be necessary for Kent/Greenwich ¨C which will require an Act of Parliament.?

We do not yet know whether the new superuniversity will have a new charter or will be a company. Whatever happens, the Office for Students will have to be clear where the degree-awarding powers lie in an institutional coalition that, while familiar in some respects, is certainly more than just history repeating itself.

Other distressed universities, chartered or otherwise, may not have the luxury of waiting to see how Kent and Greenwich get on before deciding whether to follow them into some form of merged or group arrangement. But they should perhaps be reassured that while there are no guarantees, no merged university has yet failed.

David Palfreyman is a fellow of New College, Oxford, and Dennis Farrington is a former professor in the Faculty of Law at South East European University, North Macedonia. They are co-authors of The Law of ÌÇÐÄVlog, whose third edition was published in 2021.

Shrinking maps

UK universities are quietly but undeniably at a crossroads.

They still rank highly in global league tables but their engine is spluttering as their funding is squeezed, while institutions in other parts of the world, notably China, are accelerating rapidly, powered by demographic scale, strategic coordination and colossal levels of state investment. Without intervention, I believe it is entirely plausible that by 2050 UK universities could be overtaken to such an extent that fewer than five remain in the global top 100.

But who has their hand on the tiller with that long-term view in mind? We have in essence deregulated higher education in England, with the introduction of fees and the removal of caps.

In all other deregulated sectors, such as rail, energy or telecoms, market forces have resulted in mergers and acquisitions, and the Greenwich-Kent quasi-merger seems likely to be the first of many ¡°rationalisations¡± in higher education, too. Given the financial pressures, it¡¯²õ not surprising that more universities are beginning to consider such difficult options.

But with no overarching regulatory framework guiding patterns of consolidation, each institution is left to make decisions in isolation, shaped by local conditions. As things stand, it¡¯²õ plausible, maybe even likely, that the UK is drifting toward a system with 10 to 12 superuniversities, surrounded by regional hollowed-out satellites but with no map or plan for how to optimise.

A set of unregulated superuniversities might make economic sense in a global race for institutional prestige, but it risks destabilising the essential geography of knowledge, innovation and civic resilience.

Take the University of Hull, where I worked for more than?10 years. That institution was , in part to provide a pipeline of chemistry graduates to local industry. And that is what its chemistry department has done, through deep links with firms such as Reckitts, Smith & Nephew and the Humber refineries. In that sense, chemistry wasn¡¯t just an academic discipline, it was an enabler of regional industrial strategy, a skills pipeline and a civic anchor. Yet the department has recently been closed.

Universities are often the largest employers in their localities, providing high-value jobs and opportunities far beyond their campuses. They drive regional innovation through research and development, diffusion and adoption of technology, and support for small and medium-sized enterprises. They are also the front door through which many global investors engage with place. If university teaching and research are hollowed out in the regions, we risk exacerbating economic imbalances rather than levelling them up.

We also risk undermining national capacity and industrial strategy. A university might need to close a programme to stay solvent this year, even if that programme underpins key skills for a green energy transition or strategic government priorities or specialisation. In short, institutional logic and national interest are at risk of drifting apart.

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If we¡¯re headed toward a future of fewer, larger institutions, we need to consolidate with purpose, protecting regional research, innovation and teaching capacity. National leadership is required to establish a regulatory and funding framework balancing excellence with equity and to develop a system-wide strategy for subject provision and regional capacity linked to needs identified by devolved powers in regions. It could also mean measuring institutional performance not just by graduate outcomes or research income but by a more holistic valuation of the contribution to place.

There are examples we can build on. One is ¨C an ambitious patient capital investment company co-founded by the eight research-intensive universities in the Midlands. Another is the ?innovation ecosystem award led by me at Loughborough University and Midlands Innovation. Funded with a ?10 million grant from Research England, this aims to foster a renewed entrepreneurial culture and accelerating research translation and commercialisation across the whole of the Midlands. Aligned with our hosting of the government-funded , we are positioning the Midlands as a global destination for inward investment in high-growth research and innovation opportunities.

Universities across the UK ¨C whether independent, merged, federated or in some other configuration ¨C can become ever better engines of inclusive prosperity in their places with strategic coordination, supportive policy and bold thinking. They can anchor resilient local economies, lead the transition to net zero and nurture the future green skilled workforce our country so urgently needs.

The question is no longer whether change is coming. It¡¯²õ whether we will shape it intentionally, with fairness and purpose ¨C or allow market forces to push us blindly towards potential disaster.

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is pro vice-chancellor for research and innovation at Loughborough University.