What We Need To Do Now
an agenda for universities in the new post-16 system
The UK Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy White Paper was published in October 2025 and is framed explicitly as a reset for the post-16 education and skills system. It signals a decisive shift in the way higher education (HE) is expected to operate and presents a moment of choice for universities. The direction is reasonably clear. The question is what happens next, and what institutions must do to prepare.
If you are fresh to this, do not worry, I will set out the main headlines. If you are a HE policy wonk you will already have consumed a great deal of policy analysis, and I intend to do something different. Rather than examining the merits and demerits of the approach that government plans to take, or making guesses about whether and how this approach will actually be implemented in practice, I simply intend to outline what universities need to do now. I will bravely attempt to steer clear of expressing my own views, at least directly.
Here are my 10 suggestions.
1. Clarify your institutional proposition
The White Paper sets out the need for structural reform in HE. It argues that the existing landscape is overly homogeneous and that institutions need to move away from being generalist towards greater specialisation. It is hard to avoid the implication that it favours a three tier system (teaching only, teaching plus applied research, research intensive institutions).
TO DO: Universities need to develop, and clearly communicate, their distinctive strategic propositions. Whilst it is possible to make the continuing case for the comprehensive liberal university, this cannot be achieved by way of anodyne strategy that aspires to excellence and references broad societal goals. For many institutions this means a renewed, much sharper, and potentially more contested, strategy process.
2. Open a dialogue on subject provision
The White Paper points to the need for less duplicative provision, particularly in high cost and low demand subjects.
TO DO: Universities need to open regional (and potentially national) dialogue on their provision and subject mix. There are some models available, but it is striking that they are few and far between. It seems unlikely, knowing the way universities are organised, that this dialogue will happen bottom up. It requires institutional leadership. Federations, alliances and regional compacts have an important role to play, but only if we can openly acknowledge that many of the existing arrangements have failed to deliver so far.
3. Align with national economic priorities
The White Paper centres on UK growth and prosperity and the national priorities principally reflected in the Industrial Strategy.
TO DO: Universities need to align more closely with the strategic directions set out by the government. This is in significant part about how we tell our story and the language we use. It is also about a shift away from a focus on global challenges and larger educational goals towards an explicit anchoring in industrial sectors and national skills and workforce requirements. This requires more disciplined prioritisation and clearer articulation of institutional strengths.
4. Prepare for continued financial constraint
The White Paper acknowledges the unsustainability of the current HE funding model. The home UG fee cap is to be increased in line with forecast inflation in 2026/27 and 2027/28 with the intention to legislate for automatic annual uplifts thereafter. Fee uplifts will be conditional on quality thresholds. Targeted maintenance grants are reintroduced for disadvantaged students, funded by an international student levy.
TO DO: In summary, assuming that the international student levy is implemented (with tighter rules on refusals, enrolments and completions), the proposals may remove more sector income than they add. In short, universities need to recognise that the existing financial challenges will persist, and may worsen for some. Presumably most universities have done their modelling work. It means that universities will need to accelerate plans for workforce and portfolio change and to secure greater efficiencies. For those who were waiting for the White Paper to resolve the situation, it is time to wake up and smell the coffee.
5. Strengthen governance and quality assurance
The White Paper indicates the intent to build a more interventionist regulatory regime. The Office for Students (OfS) becomes the primary regulator for all Level 4+ provision including HE delivered in FE. There will be expanded OfS powers and increased scrutiny of institutional governance.
TO DO: Universities can expect a yet tighter regulatory environment and, given the manifest shortcomings of OfS and its limited capacity to deliver, greater unpredictability. The need is therefore to ensure that institutional arrangements around quality assurance and governance oversight are strengthened. More risky activities in areas such as validation, franchising and associated provision will probably need to be curtailed.
6. Prepare for new degree structures
The White Paper pays significant attention to pathways, with routes between technical qualifications and academic HE. It envisages degree structure reform with break points and exit awards at Levels 4 and 5.
TO DO: These changes are more radical and will require more profound change than may at first be apparent. The approach envisages the universal adoption of a modular lifelong learning model built around stackable credit bearing modules (and multiple simultaneous enrolments). Very few institutions have student models that support this and there are substantial associated changes required in assessment, programme construction and more. Assuming that this is a reality, it is likely to be vastly disruptive. In the first instance universities will need to analyse how far off they are and start to plan the roadmap to compliance. This also entails very substantial digital change which will need to be factored in. There is a significant operational and cultural shift implied here that should not be underestimated.
7. Act now on the Lifelong Learning Entitlement
The White Paper sets out the intent for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), a four year loan entitlement for Levels 4 to 6 (modular or full degrees) that will come into effect in 2026 to 27. It envisages large scale adult upskilling and reskilling as well as substantial expansion in Level 4 to 5 provision.
TO DO: The LLE has been signposted for some time. Clearly, if this is to become an important feature of the landscape, it will be dependent on successful implementation of the structural changes described above. Hence the need to perform an urgent assessment and perhaps additionally to identify interim arrangements to support lifelong learners. Most universities have FE partnerships but they vary in quality. There is an immediate need to step up these relationships and make them more strategic. Institutions should also consider early pilots to test modular approaches and credit transfer at scale.
8. Adjust research strategy to align with UKRI priorities
The White Paper dovetails with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology’s (DSIT) strategy. The salient elements are pivoting UKRI spend to priority sectors and improving research cost recovery (including from charities).
TO DO: A pivot to priority sectors is not the same as research concentration, though that may be the end result. The implications are obvious. Universities will need to align their research strategies more strongly and clearly with the emerging UKRI priorities. Some niche research capabilities necessary to support the UK’s sovereign, national security and resilience interests will, we can assume, be supported. Improved research cost recovery is certainly a good thing, but given a fixed R&D budget, will mean more but for fewer people. Working through the immediate implications of this is not straightforward. At least one likely outcome is to prompt a change in the way that universities allocate workload, moving to a smaller cadre of better supported research oriented academics. Universities will also need to improve grant costing discipline and prepare for more stringent expectations around collaboration.
9. Embed more deeply in local labour markets
The White Paper reinforces an expectation that HE becomes more deeply embedded in local labour market systems.
TO DO: The extent of local economic engagement varies from university to university and place to place. As with FE relationships discussed above, engagement with employers and local skills needs to move to a strategic leadership concern. It calls for a more systematic approach to local partnership building and clearer accountability for regional impact.
10. Scale up innovation and commercialisation
The White Paper emphasises innovation and commercialisation with strong encouragement to expand spinouts and commercial partnerships.
TO DO: Currently the bulk of spinouts are concentrated in a small number of universities with strong tech transfer capabilities. If we assume that targeted innovation and scale up support will form a larger part of the R&D funding priorities, it will no longer be sensible for universities to treat this as something tacked onto their research offices. Universities will need to take rapid steps to deliver improved support and mainstream commercial exploitation, probably as part of wider sectoral and regional collaborations. This may require significant investment in professional capability, governance, and incentives for academic engagement.
The White Paper signals a shift in the expectations placed on HE, but principally sets out directions. It is for universities to provide the leadership needed to turn those directions into something workable. The institutions that respond early, and with clarity, can shape the next phase of the system. The rest will find the landscape reshaped around them.
Fascinating stuff and extremely useful personally - I’ve been asked to talk for a bit about the future of HE at a meeting of my school’s professoriate on Tuesday, specifically in terms of what the professoriate should do at this time. As you know, I think the Humboldtian model is unsustainable, even within the Russell Group, and the White Paper and the above make clear the need for change in various respects. But another important dimension, in my view, has to do with public profile and increasing public confidence in academics. It’s not enough to be writing esoteric journal articles to be read by a handful of people, especially in parts of the arts, humanities and social sciences where only a few will have a long-term effect on the discipline and wider policy and public life. Academics with broader expertise, on which they can draw to talk on subjects beyond their own very specialised expertise, need to become respected authorities who are regularly consulted on a range of things.
This is a very helpful summary of the direction of travel for the current government. The speed at which it may be achieved, however, may depend on the resources made available. What sorts of incentives (or penalties) might become available to insitutions under this new regime and how do these compare to the costs of change? Will the government continue see regulation as a change mechanism or it prepared to invest in capacity building pilots to demonstrate possibilities? The risk (based on past experiences) is that there will be too little carrot and, as a result, too much reliance on the stick.