The Higher Education Policy Institute has published the first holistic picture of small and special-focus universities in Size is Everything: What small, specialist and practice-based providers tell us about the higher education sector (HEPI Report 160). This makes the case for major policy, structural and regulatory changes to increase competition, innovation and sector diversity in higher education.
Small and special-focus universities now represent 40% of providers in England and 15% in Scotland, and are the key providers of practice-based education in Britain. Specialism is essential to institutional responsiveness for vital sectors, such as medicine, agriculture and the creative industries. But special-focus institutions face resource scarcity, a hostile operating environment with diseconomies of scale and barriers to stability and growth.
