The UK higher education sector is a vibrant tapestry of institutions, each with its unique strengths and contributions. Institutions, like those represented by GuildHE, play a vital role in this ecosystem. They are often vocational and technical, focusing on delivering industry-relevant skills and meeting the needs of local communities. They are vital to delivering government ambitions to increase our economic and social prosperity and key to delivering the opportunity mission.
The current higher education system, however, often overlooks the contributions of its diverse institutions. Funding models, regulatory frameworks, and policy decisions tend to favour larger, multi-faculty, traditional universities, hindering the ability of smaller-scale, specialist and non-traditional institutions to thrive.
GuildHE broadly supports the government’s five priority areas for HE reform but has emphasised in our submission to DfE the need to centre institutional diversity, student needs, sustainable funding, and collaboration in any reform efforts.
We have provided a number of recommendations which include:
- Recognise and value institutional diversity by revising the OfS’s regulatory behaviour so it is proportionate to institutional scale and supports collaboration and innovation. Protect and extend funding pots for specialist institutions and smaller-scale research, innovation and knowledge exchange projects.
- Prioritise student success by putting students at the heart of all reforms. Protecting institutional diversity ensures that students have genuine choice and can find the best fit for their needs. Student maintenance needs reform to mitigate equality issues, including reinstating maintenance grants.
- Revolutionise student success measures to better reflect the value and wider benefits of graduates to society and the economy. Doing so would support our arguments to the public on the value of investing in the HE system.
- Drive fruitful collaboration by developing a framework to bring diverse HE institutions, local authorities, and businesses together to address regional skills needs. DfE should also work more collaboratively with other government departments, the NHS and regulators to identify barriers to collaboration.
- Commit to a secure and sustainable funding system by taking short-term actions like re-evaluating TPS and SLC payment schedules and longer-term actions like increasing teaching grant funding to rebalance the financial contributions into higher education.
- Advocate for a new approach to higher education data including making improvements to student tracking across the system (via a unique learner number) and establishing a ministerial data taskforce to improve regulatory efficiency.
- Guard against re-entrenching or exacerbating existing cold spots by influencing the regional approach outlined in the government’s skills and evolution agenda.
Our submission provides myriad examples of how our members are already delivering to the government’s ambitions. They are agile to both industry and regional demand while providing excellent student experiences. They work collaboratively with other institutions to build internal capacity and to make efficiencies as a matter of course. Many operate in rural, coastal or cold spot areas where they not only offer educational opportunities, but support the general infrastructure of their place to enrich their communities and drive economic growth in their regions.
Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing specific examples from our submission and also sharing more detailed proposals on what we would like to see from HE reforms.