Thrift: ‘supersized’ research universities hurt by student focus

The “supersizing” of the UK’s research-intensive universities means they risk becoming “the next step up in [the] school system” rather than “fundamentally different” institutions devoted to disruptive thinking, a former vice-chancellor warns.

In a provocative book being published next week, Sir Nigel Thrift says that the rapid growth of research universities means “increasingly they run to the beat of the student drum” by focusing on teaching rather than their most vital mission of research.

“Research is the most important thing about research universities,” writes Sir Nigel, who led the University of Warwick for a decade until 2016, in The Pursuit of Possibility: Redesigning Research Universities. But, he warns, the need to secure income from increasing student numbers represents “golden handcuffs” as research universities must gear their operations around students, adding: “Research and teaching are getting out of balance.”

“My sense is that somewhere above the low- to mid-20,000s [of students] – the same size as Oxford and Cambridge – students start to become the majority preoccupation of a research university,” writes Sir Nigel, who identifies as being at risk “maybe 40 universities…that effectively carry out nearly all of the high-end research in the UK and are the jewels in this country’s university crown”.

This matters because “universities are now one of the only concerted producers of genuinely disruptive knowledge and interpretations in the world as corporations and other actors withdraw from discovery research”, with research-led knowledge unlike the “grab-and-go” model of learning found in vocationally focused institutions.

Highlighting what he calls the “Australianisation” of UK higher education in which the underfunding of research forces “helter-skelter growth” upon the sector, Sir Nigel told Times Higher Education that it was “time to step back and think what we want from our universities”.

“The problem with this Australian model is that you get on to an escalator which is very difficult to get off – if we carry on with this path, it’s a very narrow and constricted one for research,” he said. “For staff and students, things have become increasingly uncomfortable as numbers increase – with a real issue being the amount of concentrated research time available for academics.”

Sir Nigel said radical ideas were now needed to reimagine research universities. “In an ideal world, we need a new Robbins report to ask what we want from universities – including research universities – and how we achieve that,” he told THE, invoking the landmark 1963 review that led to the creation of new universities and the expansion of undergraduate numbers.

Sir Nigel suggests several ideas to protect research universities, including cutting student numbers, moving research universities back under the remit of the science minister, and even nationalising private student housing to support their immersive residential teaching model.

The nomination of “national universities” that are “entirely or mainly postgraduate” and where “the very best research is carried out” is another suggestion, stating that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge could already be seen in this category given their “undergraduate operation…looks increasingly like a heritage part of the institution…off to one side of the bulk of what the university is doing”.

If smaller research-led universities are not possible, institutions could seek economies of scale by emulating the Arizona State University model of more than 100,000 students, or merge with nearby institutions to create “regional super-universities” similar to the University of California system, he says. With time for research “remorselessly chipped away” by other duties, it is even worth considering moving research out of universities to Max Planck-style institutes that researchers could head for up to five years at a time, he adds.

“Universities can still produce great things, but they seem to have been driven down a cul-de-sac where it is difficult for them to get any better,” Sir Nigel said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com