The magic of the UK higher education sector depends on its diversity. Whether old or new, city or rural, multi‑faculty or expert, the UK is blessed with an abundant series of organizations that accommodate different student requirements and aspirations.
We appropriately commemorate this variety of institutional objectives and their trainee bodies, and we often firmly insist that such plurality is a strength of the system. Yet, when it concerns policy design, funding competitors and public dispute about higher education, we revert time and again to a remarkably narrow idea of what a ‘successful’ university looks like.
The dominant model
In England, a minimum of, the higher education landscape increasingly runs as though one design fits all. That design is implicitly research‑intensive, multi‑faculty and globally competitive, with the Russell Group typically acting as the unmentioned criteria against which all others are judged.
Naturally, Russell Group universities do exceptional work– and I am personally all the richer for having attended 2 Russell Group organizations as part of my own higher education journey. However these organizations are definitely not the only game in the area. Their continued supremacy reflects not just their strengths, but a cumulative failure throughout the sector to articulate a credible alternative vision of success for institutions that look and act very in a different way.
Boxed-in by design?
In a 2025 HEPI report co‑authored with City St George’s coworker Professor André Spicer, I argued that British universities have ended up being “boxed in” by policy structures that reward merging rather than distinction. Financing systems, evaluation exercises and regulatory expectations may appear inclusive, but in practice they tend to benefit scale, research study strength and administrative capability. The outcome is that institutions already finest equipped to complete on these terms continue to retreat, leaving others to mimic their operating model instead of innovate or progress in line with their unique missions.
Success is determined through a narrow set of indicators that only
a little proportion of institutions can reasonably control This has actually created a basic paradox at the heart of our college system– one that declares to champion diversity and trainee choice, yet quietly motivates organizations to end up being more alike. Under this settlement:
- small specialist organizations are anticipated to carry out like large, multi‑faculty universities, despite doing not have both the capacity to cross‑subsidise in periods of monetary pressure and the back‑office facilities to handle growing regulatory needs;
- teaching‑focused, vocational and technical companies are nudged towards research programs that may sit annoyingly with their core function; and
- regionally rooted universities with strong civic objectives are judged against metrics that prioritise worldwide reach over local impact.
All the while, success is measured through a narrow set of indications that just a little proportion of institutions can realistically control.
Fear of distinction
Nonetheless, the idea of putting universities into various “boxes” provokes strong resistance throughout the sector. For many, differentiation conjures up unpleasant memories of the binary divide between universities and polytechnics, raising fears of established hierarchies. In this context, issues that re-categorisation may limit aspiration or lock suppliers into a lower social status are understandable.
Yet, there is likewise a risk in allowing these worries to shut down the dispute entirely since our system already sorts organizations into boxes– albeit implicitly. Existing regulatory and funding settlements likewise produce a hierarchy, whether we acknowledge it or not. And this hierarchy fails to acknowledge the full variety of contributions that different suppliers make to trainees, communities and their local economies.
Objective over mimicry
A more sincere conversation would for that reason start from the property that college is not, and need to not be, a single community with a single function. Research‑intensive universities, employment and technical institutions, small professionals and regionally anchored suppliers all play distinct roles in our sector. Anticipating each of them to prosper under a blanket policy framework is not just unrealistic, however it can be actively harming to their sustainability.
Instead, if policy were designed around institutional missions instead of suitables, we may begin to see significant modification. Financing competitors could be formed with different provider enters mind, acknowledging different forms of excellence and impact. Accountability steps might reflect what organizations are actually attempting to accomplish, rather than what we assume all universities ought to look like. And success might be specified more expansively, incorporating high‑quality teaching, abilities advancement, civic engagement and used research alongside standard academic outputs.
A plea for realism
This is not a require a stiff re-categorisation or top‑down labelling of our universities, nor is it an argument that institutions need to be avoided from developing. Rather, it is a plea for policy realism. Differentiation, if designed transparently and collaboratively, could secure institutional mission stability instead of deteriorate it. It might offer companies authorization to lean into what they do best, rather of continuously chasing another person’s definition of eminence.
Crucially, this is not a difficulty that policymakers can solve alone. Federal governments default to ‘one‑size‑fits‑all’ solutions partially since they are time‑poor, however also because the sector itself has never ever reached consensus on what a separated system ought to look like– or been willing to confront the trade‑offs such a system would entail. Frequently, calls for diversity stop brief of accepting that real variety requires different guidelines.
Difficult talk
If we want a college system that genuinely serves a wide variety of societal requirements, then we might require to be braver in our internal conversations. That means acknowledging uncomfortable truths about power and advantage, and resisting the temptation to believe that holding all institutions to similar regulatory requirements always delivers fair outcomes.
If we desire a college system that really serves a vast array of social needs, then we might require to be braver in our internal conversations
The concern, then, is not whether all universities can or must be the very same. The genuine concern is whether the sector is all set to work jointly towards a system that reflects our rich diversity and permits it to flourish.
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