Paul Clark was until recently the Vice-President (Strategy) at University College London, and before that the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Statistics Agency. He is currently working as a consultant and strategy adviser.
That the operating environment for UK universities is more uncertain than ever is now an accepted truth. The reasons for this are also well-known: domestically, universities face the ongoing erosion of their funding base, a challenging policy environment, and political inaction in the face of competing public sector priorities (as just exemplified in this month’s budget). Globally, the international student market for UK higher education is proving more volatile, with conflicting Government policies, anticipated drops of 40 per cent or more in applicant numbers from some overseas markets, global competitors stepping up their activity, and geopolitical uncertainty driving inflation in the cost base.
It would be tempting in such an environment for university leaders and strategists to become defensive, focusing only on the immediate term. This would be a mistake. With the right approaches and adaptations, universities can pivot their strategic planning processes to navigate effectively through this uncertainty and identify the opportunities that will drive growth in the future, as also evidenced by the approaches to change management set out in the recent HEPI report by Paul Woodgates: Change by design.
To achieve such a switch, universities will need to move away from the traditional, cyclical, highly structured approaches to strategic planning, to processes that more closely resemble an ongoing data-driven dialogue with academic and business units throughout the year. This requires organisation-wide commitment, led from the top.
