Funding crisis forces v-cs to swap competition for collaboration

The shift towards greater regional collaboration between UK universities, coming after decades of competition, will be hastened by the “burning platform” of funding pressures, according to vice-chancellors.

Amid warnings that the Westminster government’s long-awaited decision to increase English tuition fees in line with inflation next September could be “as good as it gets”, more institutions are considering leaning in further to regional groupings to cut costs, Times Higher Education’s THE Campus Live event heard.

“This is an opportunity for the university to do things differently,” Nishan Canagarajah, vice-chancellor of the University of Leicester, told the conference in Birmingham.

“When we are thinking about making a local impact, we can do more and better if we work together.”

Professor Canagarajah said universities in his region had already begun working together in certain areas, including holding events supporting entrepreneurs, which one institution would be unable to do alone.

Although institutions have always collaborated in some areas, Ebrahim Adia, vice-chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton, warned delegates of the difficulties ahead for universities used to competing with each other.

“When you come from a context of the last 30 to 40 years of hypercompetition, and the majority of leaders will have been raised in that kind of context, to think that you can pivot very quickly to collaboration is challenging,” he said.

“It’s easy to say, very difficult to do.”

While not begrudging universities being cautious in a competitive market that the government has created, Professor Adia said the next steps for working together, which could involve sharing human resources departments, for example, would involve “stepping into a very different arena”.

Highlighting that there will be trust issues – particularly around the sharing of data – he said the process will be a “journey” for some institutions.

Last year’s Campus Live event heard “surprise” at the lack of facility-sharing in the UK sector, beyond “low-lying fruit” such as shared bus services, and the financial challenges of the past year have made the debate more urgent.

Zoe Radnor, executive dean of the College of Business and Social Sciences at Aston University, agreed that there were challenges in collaborating – but argued that financial pressures would be a decisive factor.

Even some “ready-made packages” of shared services can be difficult to pull off, so regional groupings will have to have a “sense of purpose”, she said.

“I think the reality is that it is much harder than we think. But of course, the burning platform is burning bright at the moment, so maybe there will be opportunities.”

Professor Radnor urged universities to dare to transform and to “think out of the box” when considering the shape of the higher education ecosystem.

“Just carrying on as we are, thinking about different types of operating models…is no longer going to be acceptable,” she added.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com