GuildHE responded to the first part of the HE-BCI Review that is taking place during 2019/20. In particular, we argued that:

• The review offers a greater chance for HE-BCI’s use, especially when taken in the context of the KEF. At present, HE-BCI is focussed on capturing data on firm financial metrics, especially around IP. This in turn leads to commercialisation KE activity being rewarded at the expense of other valuable interventions.

• The review therefore offers the chance to address the interrelationship between economic, social and cultural KE and to view each as important as the other. Greater consideration of social and cultural KE initiatives is needed because there is significant spillover economic value (which is harder to capture than paid for services) from such activities, as well as broader non-economic value.

• We encourage greater reflection of student engagement in KE as part of the review because this is an underexplored area nationally in policy terms.This could best be done through engaging with providers working in this area: only group discussion would be able to cover the full range of activity that ought to be in scope and work through some of the details about ways of defining what data should be captured.

• HESA must consider the upfront and ongoing cost to providers in gathering and auditing data for submission. The revised survey must provide demonstrable value for institutions that exceeds cost and avoid placing undue burden on small and specialist providers that do not currently have the same capacity.

• With this point in mind, HESA should consider where it can draw on existing data that is already collected that could be used to contextualise HE-BCI from within the higher education sector and beyond so that data collection is not duplicated through HE-BCI.

You can find the full consultation response here.