I returned to the House of Commons for a breakfast seminar hosted by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Advance HE. Sitting in the Pavillion Terrace, I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of professional camaraderie. Until last September, I served as the Partnerships Director at (HEPI), and several years prior, I had the privilege of relaunching the Pro Vice Chancellor network for Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy). Now, in my role as Director of Sector Engagement at UPP, being back among these colleagues felt like being in very good company indeed.
The discussion, framed around the government’s recent white paper, posed a fundamentally simple question for the sector: Is specialization or collaboration the key to the future of higher education?
The consensus? It’s complicated.
The Power of Place: Beyond the “Sunny Quad”
Professor Deborah Prentice (Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge) set out a clear and pragmatic vision: collaboration must be anchored in role clarity and place.
Rather than pursuing collaboration as an abstract ideal, Cambridge is defining its role within a broader ecosystem – geographically, economically and institutionally.
A standout example is the Cambridge-Manchester partnership. This isn’t just academic; it’s a “city-to-city” collaboration that links combined authorities, football clubs, and industry giants like AstraZeneca. It is a model of place-based growth, linking a globally influential city with a major civic centre to drive innovation across life sciences, technology and defence.
Equally instructive is the collaboration between Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin (ARU) -Cambridge health collaboration which demonstrates how specialisation and collaboration can be mutually reinforcing:
ARU focuses on high-volume skills provision and regional employability.
Cambridge complements this by delivering advanced research, high-level PhDs and research innovation.
Alongside this, the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor represents a broader regional growth strategy, spanning areas such as Stevenage and Milton Keynes, where expansion is now matching that of Oxford. This corridor brings together universities, industry, and local authorities to support innovation clusters and long-term economic development.
Taken together, these examples illustrate a consistent model: not collaboration for its own sake, but deliberate alignment of institutional strengths within a defined geography.
Critically, the success of such models is contingent on factors often overlooked in policy decisions, including infrastructure and affordable housing – both essential to sustaining regional growth.
The Reality Check: “For the Birds”?
While the vision of the “OxCam Corridor” (boasting 3,000 knowledge-intensive companies) paints a rosy picture, Professor David Sweeney, Professor of Research Policy at the University of Birmingham and formerly the founding Executive Chair of Research England, provided a necessary, if sobering, counter-perspective. He challenged the idea that a “blueprint” for collaboration is the sector’s panacea, calling it “for the birds” given the current friction between universities and the government.
Sweeney highlighted several systemic “cracks”:
- Broken Relations: A perceived gulf between government and universities.
- Financial Strain: A “collapsed” funding model that is increasingly unsustainable.
- Outdated Delivery Model: A “maxed out” three-year full-time degree system that no longer reflects student behaviour.
- Governance Challenges: A blunt assessment that university governance often lags behind the private sector in understanding true economic drivers.
As he noted, there is no universal blueprint – and the idea that one can be imposed is, in his words, “for the birds.”
More fundamentally, the sector faces a mismatch between resources and demand: fewer students, but broadly the same academic infrastructure. This raises difficult questions about efficiency, institutional design, and long-term viability. There is a need for broader, more diverse perspectives and a more outward-looking approach to decision-making.
The Missing Middle: Part-Time and Flexibility
Alex Proudfoot, CEO of Independent Higher Education (IHE) brought the conversation back to the student, reminding us that the majority of students aren’t “reading Chaucer in a sunny quad.” Today’s students are more diverse, often balancing study with work and other commitments. They are adults with “messy lives” who need flexibility.
Yet the system remains structurally geared towards a full-time, three year model.
Proudfoot highlighted several critical issues, with the sector’s “credit card limit” on the traditional model being reached:
- Barriers to entry for specialist and alternative providers
- Limited progress on modular and flexible learning
- A lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) that risks falling short without meaningful incentives
He also raised an important challenge around postgraduate and professional education, particularly in the growing demand for micro-credentials from employers and SMEs – an area not yet adequately addressed.
Proudfoot shared a frustrating anecdote of a motorsports college barred from the apprenticeship register by red tape – a clear sign that while the government calls for collaboration, the system remains stubbornly inflexible.
At the heart of this is a broader question: Who pays – and how?
Whether through loans, graduate contributions, or alternative funding models, the current system is under increasing strain. Without reform, it risks constraining both access and innovation.
Competition vs. Collective Action – and the Limits of Both
An interesting tension emerged throughout the discussion regarding the role of competition. While collaboration is widely championed, competition remains a critical driver of quality and performance. As Professor Prentice argued, it is often the “grit in the oyster”.
However, hyper-specialisation carries its own risks. Without collective support mechanisms, niche subject provision can become fragile – as evidenced by recent institutional closures such as the College of Osteopaths.
The challenge, therefore, is not choosing between collaboration and competition, but managing the balance between them.
Key Takeaways for the Sector:
- Specialisation requires partnership: Institutions cannot operate in isolation. Effective specialisation depends on complementary relationships to address the “cold spots” and gaps across the system (like the ARU/Cambridge model)
- Place matters: The most successful models are rooted in geography, aligning universities with regional economic strategies and infrastructure
- Resource is reality: Collaboration isn’t free. To make the “OxCam Arc” or similar hubs work, national government support and dedicated resources are non-negotiable.
- The LLE Challenge: The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) won’t work without the right incentives. We cannot simply tell students what to do; we must build the infrastructure that makes flexible study viable.
- Governance must evolve: Institutions need broader, more commercially and externally informed perspectives to navigate future challenges.
As we look toward a potential future of constrained funding and shifting demographics, the “Insights from Westminster” are clear: we must stop viewing specialisation and collaboration as opposites. They are the two tracks the sector must run on if we are to remain a global higher education powerhouse.
