Higher education’s obsession with rankings is damaging the majority of British universities

The recent debacle over A-level grades presided over by Frank Spencer’s doppelgänger has led to thousands of students being able to enrol into a ‘better’ university. ‘Better’ being traditionally defined as higher ranked. The corollary of this has been that many ‘worse’ universities, ie lower ranked institutions, have suffered a further drop in applications in 2020, exacerbating their already precarious financial situations. The gap between winners and losers in British HE is fast becoming a chasm.

Students, their teachers and parents, have all been suckered by the sector, with THE’s commercially-driven connivance, into buying the idea that rank is the only critical criterion, and that therefore a higher ranked university will axiomatically be better for them. The weird thing is that the entire sector goes along with this, with lower ranked universities all claiming that they’re Number One for this or Number 5 for that. 

The truth is that in a sector which currently numbers around 130 universities, there can only be 20 to 30 winners in the rankings game. The other 100+ will all be losers. In a sector where universities all talk about their strategies, it doesn’t seem to have struck them that it is strategically bonkers to compete on the same ground as the top end of the Russell Group.  You not only lose but you’ll also strengthen your opponent’s hand by publicly accepting that the only thing that matters is ranking. When it really isn’t.

The root of the problem is that despite the fact that the £9,000 tuition fee was introduced way back in 2012, most British universities still haven’t learned how to compete with one another. Check out the websites of a random number of universities and you’ll find very little evidence of differentiation. Most cling to generic claims, generic language, and generic mission statements, making little or no attempt to define what makes them different to others. And every single one is apparently ranked high for something or other. 

In a market which my old boss, Sir Steve Smith, recently described as ‘red in tooth and claw’, you have to be distinctive. You have to understand your student customers, your sector, your regional raison d’etre. Then you have to work to differentiate your university from others in the same sector & region in a way that persuades students that you’ll be a better choice than others. Universities such as Coventry and Portsmouth have shown the way with great success, but few have followed their excellent example. Far easier to blame the demographic dip than to drive change through your institution. 

Frontier Economics published an article this Summer entitled ‘UK higher education and Covid-19: implications for social mobility’. In it they argued that 21 British universities were ‘financially vulnerable’. They were vulnerable before the pandemic, largely because as public sector institutions, their culture was fundamentally cooperative rather than competitive. They pretend to be Russell Group manqués despite the more vocational needs of their local students and their modest research incomes. They aspire to be what they’re not, and never can be. But in 2020 they  can’t continue to rely on Government to protect them, as the recent imposition then subsequent lifting of the 5% cap on numbers illustrated. 

With most universities now largely dependent on student tuition fee income, it will be those who tailor their offer most effectively to their local student market who will be the winners. The losers will those still banging on about their rankings when the bailiffs are banging at the vice-chancellor’s door.

Last week Apple became the world’s first two $trillion company. One of their early guiding mantras was ‘Think Different’. 

A core idea that our universities would do well to embrace.