2024/25 will be crunch time for many universities. It’s time to open up the closed shop.

Back in 2011, Steve Smith and David Allen, the dynamic duo who’d been driving Exeter up the league tables for years, hired me out of the private sector to head up university marketing. They were anticipating the highly competitive free for all that was about to be created the following year by the near tripling of tuition fees and the removal of the student numbers cap. My job was made relatively easy in 2012 when Exeter joined the Russell Group and by the time I left in 2016, Steve used to boast that 50% of AAA+ students shortlisted Exeter on UCAS. Brand perception had finally caught up with reality.

No-one in the higher education sector would have predicted that twelve years later in 2024, undergraduate tuition fees would still be capped at £9,250 (£6,500 in old money?) and that our universities were having to compete ferociously for diminishing numbers of foreign students in order to stay afloat. 

What is even more surprising to me however is that in October 2024, 95 out of 130 UK universities still do not have a senior commercial person (be they marketing, business development or recruitment director) on their VC’s Executive Group. These groups normally comprise senior academics (most of whom with no business background), a registrar/COO with an excessive number of direct reports, a financial director and often, a director of HR. 

Universities are now businesses whether they like it or not, operating today in highly competitive markets, many with total incomes exceeding £200,000,000. Yet most are managed by the same closed academic groups that were typical of the 1960s. The smaller so-called ‘modern’ universities are no better. In 2022/23, 40 of these reported incomes of £15-150 million, but only 14 of them had a senior commercial director on their VC group. 

It is especially ironic when you consider that every university in the country is a loud exponent of the benefits of diversity and inclusivity. Benefits which have been proven in both the public and private sectors as glass ceilings have been smashed to smithereens.

It has been said that in 2023/24, 40% of our universities were in deficit. The current 24/25 cycle will be crunch time for many with international student numbers likely to be down by a further 15-20%. Is it too much to hope that the management consultancy recently appointed by the OfS to evaluate ‘the financial health and management and governance capability of HE providers’ over the next three years will encourage our universities to diversify their management skillsets by appointing and empowering senior people with proven commercial credentials?