It’s time for everyone to accept the financial realities of UK universities

Since 2008, UK higher education has undergone a financial revolution. Notwithstanding this, the situation is about to get a whole lot tougher, and everyone needs to accept this reality.

Many universities, including my own, were involved in Sir Ian Diamond’s 2011 Universities UK report Efficiency, Effectiveness and Value for Money. The review was set up after the financial crash and included consideration of the opportunities that universities might derive from shared/collaborative services and/or outsourcing some services to enhance the focus on core missions.

The University of London successfully established CoSector Ltd, which provides shared digital, recruitment and housing services and organises events and fairs for UoL’s member institutions and other organisations; and UoL’s Careers Group, which provides careers and employability support to students and graduates, is now considered the largest such organisation in the world.

In common with many other higher education institutions, the university also outsourced facilities and maintenance services.

But many institutions, not least ourselves, are now facing campaigns from trade unions, staff and students to simply end outsourcing.

At the same time, we face warnings of more financial challenges to come. David Sweeney, executive chair of Research England and previously research director at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, has acknowledged the concerns of university executive teams about the Augar report, staff pensions and Brexit.

As our sector enters another period of considerable financial uncertainty, potentially greater than 2008 when the global economic crisis hit, the need to steward our resources has never been greater if we are to continue to successfully deliver our core academic mission.

At UoL, we have made a commitment to bring facilities and maintenance services in-house where there is a fit with the university’s strategic priorities. Other higher education institutions have made or are making similar decisions, while yet others remain committed to outsourcing some or all of these services.

Our aim is to bring these customer relations, portering and post-room services, and the people who deliver them, in-house by early summer this year.

We are also committed to reviewing all other outsourced contracts by spring 2020. But that isn’t stopping the opponents of outsourcing. That we have incurred additional costs because of the sit-ins, boycotts and other demonstrations is entirely regrettable. As is the continuing dissemination of misinformation about the university through various media.

At the forefront of our minds is our duty of care to all those affected by the commitments we have made. Our overriding responsibility must be to ensure business continuity with a sustainable workforce for the future. And our own staff are supportive of our plans. My several meetings with those individuals working within our contracted-out services have confirmed the desire of many for continued job flexibility and of the understandable importance of take-home pay.

As Sweeney commented, universities successfully weathered the last financial crisis through a coherent, collaborative and mutually supportive approach. This necessarily applies to all our staff and their representative trade unions.

We also applaud higher education’s contribution to the wider community. For us in 2018, our three graduation ceremonies confirmed the great pride that students take in a degree from the University of London, and a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the University of the West Indies underlined the value of our continuing links with international universities, and our global impact.

Of course, we are not unique; the UK higher education sector is one of the most successful in the world, and we all need to work together to ensure that it continues to be so.

Peter Kopelman is vice-chancellor of the University of London.