Report calls for end to ‘world-class university’ model

A radical report calls on higher education in the United Kingdom to ditch the ‘world-class university’ model in favour of group or federal approaches and urges greater collaboration rather than competition between providers.

The paper, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) under the provocative title of “Down with the World-class University: How our business models damage universal higher education”, says that British universities have much to learn from countries such as the United States, France, Germany and China, which encourage a more diverse system of higher education – but still produce centres of excellence.

Written by Edward Venning, founding partner at Six Ravens Consulting LLP, the paper is sponsored by Goldsmiths, University of London, which is facing large-scale staff redundancies and course closures as part of a structuring process to try to safeguard its long-term future.

The report says the “onrushing insolvency” of UK higher education “is not, as many would wish, merely a fixable fault in our funding model, caused by government backsliding on tuition fees” – but instead “a system design problem”.

It blames current business models for fuelling the sector’s financial crisis and limiting its reach, thanks to over-reliance on the ‘world-class university’ model.

Negative systemic effects

With the UK lagging behind other advanced economies in tertiary enrolment rates, the paper says the sector can learn from others, including emerging non-university competitors, how to offer higher education at scale, in partnership and at lower cost.

“Our fascination with the ‘world-class university’ model has had negative systemic effects, draining resources from the wider sector. And we must question our default setting, our cherished high-quality, high-touch and high-cost model,” states the executive summary.

The paper asks: “Can our system really be fit for purpose, if it is unworkable for large minorities of students and providers, and unaffordable for the state?”

Venning told University World News: “UK universities have stalled in an era of surging demand for advanced education skills due to their reliance on an immersive, high-cost model which works for a few universities but drains resources elsewhere.

“As other countries head rapidly towards universal education, this report recommends a broader set of business models, while safeguarding the unique characteristics of the sector.”

Structural reform

Professor Frances Corner, warden of Goldsmiths College, which is based in south-east London and has a historic reputation as a forward-thinking arts institution, says: “In the age of technology, we need more, not fewer, graduates equipped with advanced skills to solve complex problems.

“Structural reform of our sector is essential. We must innovate within the spirit of our rich educational heritage, equipping more people with the conceptual and practical tools required for growth, progress and social innovation.”

In the report’s foreword, Corner writes: “We know the current financial model is unsustainable, but this is not just about resolving the current financial shortfall.

“Universities are being scrutinised – for their purpose, access and performance evaluation as well as funding.”

He believes learning flourishes best “through collaboration and discourse – both within and beyond our institutions. Looking beyond the walls of our institutions, partnering with other sectors and sharing ideas with wider communities”.

He says that focusing solely on skills paints an incomplete picture and so, beyond employability, Corner wants to prioritise continuous professional development, lifelong learning opportunities and robust partnerships across public and private sectors.

“These cannot be achieved by a single institution…. [or] by simply stretching existing models. The world is changing, and structural reform is essential,” he writes.

New credentials and value propositions

Venning suggests that an independent commission should help redesign the higher education system and “go beyond funding considerations to differentiate types of providers and introduce new business models”.

These should include “new credentials and value propositions” designed by providers working with the Office for Students (OfS) and Skills England.

To enable this the report calls for a major transition fund to offer loans to providers to develop new business models, including group or federal collaborative structures.

Among the key messages, the report says the UK needs “whole populations to be educated, and not just the young”, but this doesn’t mean more three-year bachelor degrees or one-year masters degrees.

Venning suggests that universities should learn from new players in the education market who are “not encumbered with the costs and assumptions of the existing model” and deploy “micro-credits with proprietary credit ladders and stackable qualifications” to achieve large scale at the cutting-edge of higher education.

They are stripping back our core business to its basics “unencumbered by our sunk costs” of lecture theatres, seminars or staff, he says.

“This is education, rather than teaching. It responds to professional needs and popular interests. It is the future we did not like the sound of, and were too slow to build. But we can still join in,” he notes.

Lessons from abroad

Venning recommends that the UK look abroad for different approaches when re-modelling its higher education system, including at experience since the “California Master Plan for Higher Education”, which set the global template for “a differentiated public higher education system to cater to research excellence as well as to access and massification”.

He points out that America’s world-class universities co-exist with two-year community colleges and liberal arts colleges. France has its grandes ecoles; Germany its Fachhochschulen.

“These are often high-status, applied-science alternatives to the ‘world-class’ academic (or research) universities,” he says.

“By contrast, the UK splits its scope across further, higher and lifelong education. Public interest would be best served if each of these were treated as high status.

“Instead, there has been enduring snobbery within the UK sector. Snobbery that does not simply favour universities as a whole, but particular types of university. Not just higher education in general, but particular pedagogies – academic rather than practice-based,” he explains.

He also recommends that the UK learn from the experience in France over the past 15 years with closer relationships between its higher education institutions through the IDEX programme which rewarded co-operation between the profession-focused grandes ecoles, comprehensive research universities and the private sector.

“In a parallel initiative, Paris-Saclay University was established in 2015, bringing together grandes ecoles with public universities on a single campus,” he says.

There are also lessons from the Bologna Declaration of 1999, the supra-national actions to bring European national higher education systems into closer alignment; and from China, where “world-class status is the result of a deliberate strategy to concentrate talent on a few elite universities, rather than across regions and institutions”.

At the same time, Venning says, China swiftly expanded gross tertiary enrolment through a separate set of policies, rising from bottom of the table to challenger status in 20 years.

New road system

In contrast, the UK relies on what Venning describes as the “current superhighway to graduate destinations” and needs a new road system “for a much larger group of travellers”, as the UK moves towards universal higher education, with “A and B roads” and “a new business model, based on new value propositions, not our immersive high-cost, three-year resdential proposition for younger travellers”.

Brooke Storer-Church, chief executive of GuildHE, a representative body for 60 higher education providers of all sizes specialising in vocational and technical education, said she expected her members would have mixed views about the report’s findings.

She told University World News: “I think there is merit in challenging what could be called a dedicated focus on “world-leading education” because it may inadvertently cause us to focus narrowly on a small number of performance criteria, set by an even smaller set of institutions that were first deemed world-leading.”

However, while the US higher education has its strengths, including ‘hub and spoke’ models, such as Penn State University with its 16 branch campuses around the state of Pennsylvania, which keeps tuition fees and other costs down by catering to students who live at home, she was not sure it would work in the UK.

She noted that the UK has “entrenched views about institutional identity and autonomy, which have only been reified by the drive towards competitiveness” and although branch campuses have been introduced by regional universities, Storer-Church says these are mostly in London and can be seen as an attempt to maximise income streams.

New barriers?

Dr Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher and a former government political adviser on higher education policy, has mixed views about the new report from HEPI.

She told University World News: “While it contains some sensible recommendations to improve the provision and regulation of higher education in England – not least the need to understand adult learners better and look out for the overall health of providers – its overarching desire to do ‘down with world-class universities’ risks undermining our sector’s greatest asset, namely that genuinely world-leading excellence already prevails in the full diversity of our institutions.”

Beech explained: “Grouping institutions together according to the role they play in society or the kinds of students they serve sits uncomfortably with the ethos of a sector that itself exists to bring down barriers in society.

“Rather than putting up barriers to institutions about which funding they can receive and what functions they can perform, we would be better finding ways for innovation to flourish across the sector and enable institutions of all types to continue with transformative research and civic outreach in all forms.

“The prospect of more devolution in England and local skills plans designed around regional skills needs may well prove to be an effective way to shine a light on individual institutional contributions to society, which extend way beyond skills into research, business support and more.”

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com