I welcome the recent paper by Edward Venning Size is Everything: What Small, Specialist and Practice Based Providers tell us about the Higher Education Sector (HEPI Report 160). It helpfully reignites a debate about what the shape and nature of the UK’s higher education sector looks like, and – perhaps somewhat worryingly – suggests what it is at risk of becoming without some definitive steps in institutional definitions, funding and regulation.
I come at this discussion not only as Vice-Chancellor of one the UK’s leading small and specialist providers, but also having held senior roles in two internationally respected institutions: the University of Warwick and Monash University. Harper Adams is certainly the smallest at under 5,000 students, Warwick would come next at its current 28,600 (somewhat larger than the 13,750 when I started), and then Monash at approximately 86,000 students. They all award degrees up to doctoral level, they all hold university title and they are all respected. Yet, they are fundamentally different.
Venning’s paper discusses the benefits and limitations associated with different sizes and scales of institution but, importantly, discusses the benefits and limitations associated with institutions that have a different purpose, a different mission and a different contribution to make to the provision of higher education as a whole. In the end it must come down to a key question: does institutional diversity matter? Unsurprisingly, I would argue that it does.
