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This is research for the real world. Conversations with researchers about the paths they've taken to shape our everyday lives.

This is research for the real world. Hello. I'm doctor Elin Arfon a research fellow at the National Consortium for Languages Education here at the IOE. In this season of research for the real world, we're talking about sustainability of higher education and how rigorous research can help shape policy and improve the sector. Today, I'm delighted to have professor Huw Morris.

Huw is Honorary Professor of Tertiary Education at IOE and on secondment from the Welsh Government working on research development and policy engagement activities. Prior to this role, Huw was Director of skills, higher education, and lifelong learning for nine years at the Welsh government overseeing a range of reforms to the student finance system, governance arrangements for post compulsory education, and developments of apprenticeships. Former guest of the podcast, welcome back, Huw,

Elin. It's great to be back. Thank you.

Well, it's great to have you with us. Now, obviously, Huw, you've had an impressive career spanning policy and academia. Now let's start then with you with you telling us a bit more about, you know, what drew you to have that focus or that research focus on the sustainability of higher education?

Say I've had a long career. It's thirty eight years working in higher education and many years also studying for that. One of the things that I noticed over that period was that issues of the finance of institutions and their sustainability recurred fairly regularly. And indeed, more recently, they've come back to be a focus almost perennially. So it's been that that's kept me focused.

And then as you said, working in government is clearly something that ministers and the officials advising that have got to be concerned with.

Thank you here for that interdiction there then. Now thinking about the current context of higher education. Now, obviously, I've been looking at recent news, and we're hearing lots of reports really of the universities in financial difficulties and staff redundancies and so forth all across The UK. You know, if you had to give us a snapshot really, where would you say we are now in terms of the current financial position of universities across The UK, specifically in England as well? And should students really be worried about this current situation when planning about going to university?

Well, before I say a little bit about the current financial position, I'll just say a little bit about the history. So when I first started to study and research in higher education, probably 15% of The UK's population would go to university and the number of universities and polytechnics and colleges could be numbered in their tens. We're we're some years on from that and the proportion of young people going to higher education varies between thirty seven percent and sixty plus percent in different parts of The UK and there are literally hundreds of higher education institutions. There are slightly over a 160 universities. So the world has changed a lot.

The financial position is estimated annually by a range of bodies. The most recent of those estimates is by the office for students, the OFS, who estimated at the May that four in 10, that's 40% of higher education institutions anticipated being in financial deficit this year. However, they're keen to emphasize that no institution is in danger of imminent financial difficulty to the point where it substantially affects the experiences of their students through having to stop their studies or change what's on offer for them this coming October, this coming new academic year. However, it is possible, they suggest, in the medium to longer term that there may be institutions that do find themselves in those difficulties. Now the problem with forecasts is that they assume that all other things are equal and rarely are they all equals.

There are a range of things that institutions can do to manage those financial pressures. They can do that by altering their costs, and the two largest costs are the the cost of their staffing and the cost of their estates. So that could be managed through natural wastage, people leaving the institution for retirement or for moving on to other jobs. It can be managed by reducing the number of buildings or the the way altering the way in which the buildings operate. So there are things that institutions can do and many of them are doing that.

So that's something to be applauded. We live in very straightened financial times. You you don't have to go far to see in the news government concerns about its budget and the rising costs meeting future defense needs, future health needs, future social care needs. So there are lots of pressures on budgets universities are doing their bit to contain those.

Yeah. It's quite interesting what you were saying there then in terms of the office for students and with their work. I'm obviously providing a bit of reassurance then for the current climate, although there are financial challenges on universities that these will not directly impact students who are currently potentially in university or thinking about that from October onwards. That's quite reassuring. But as you say, it's a very complex current situation as well.

Now I wanna draw as our attention here then to your recent piece for the Higher Education Policy Institute because I just want to draw attention to variation here, I think. So your work with colleague Richard Ortemmier, where you say that there is variation between universities and the number of students recruited and in particular international students as influenced by perceptions of institutional quality and the wider incomes and cost of this provision. Can you tell us a bit more about that variation then?

Yeah. Happy to do that. Just before I launch into that, I should say that my earlier comments were about the office for students talking about England. There are separate arrangements in the other nations of The UK. So Medha looks after higher education and tertiary education in Wales, the Scottish Funding Account in Scotland, and, the Northern Ireland executive in Northern Ireland.

There are similar financial pressures there. I won't go into the detail of how they may be the same or differ. I should also say that there are similar pressures in other countries, so you may have seen reports of similar difficulties in Australia, Canada, The USA, and so forth. So this isn't a phenomenon just to The UK. In all of these countries, there are also, as you say, variations between institutions, and and a large part of that is driven by their attractiveness to students.

So some institutions are able to attract more applicants and to enroll more students and are busy expanding, and some find it easier to attract overseas students than others. Two issues are key here. One is the perceived status and prestige of the institution, and the other is the cost or the price of the programs that are on offer. Now across The UK or in the different nations, there are fairly standard prices for the undergraduate courses. They they differ between nations and the methods of funding them vary.

But there are very marked differences between institutions in the prices charged for it to international students. And that's what has made international students particularly attractive to the leaderships and the staff of many universities. What I was mapping out in the Higher Education Policy Institute piece was that some institutions can charge tens of thousands of pounds per year for a master's program for example or an undergraduate program and others are less able to do that. And it's ultimately the difference between the price and the cost of provision that determines whether an institution makes a surplus or makes a loss. So I was encouraging institutional leaders and the policymakers that advise them and the politicians who set the rules to think about these margins when setting policy for the future because there are institutions who are finding the margins difficult to manage and there are other institutions that are recording very significant surpluses.

So we shouldn't think that all institutions are the same because that's not the reality of the situation on the ground. We should also note that the costs of provision vary substantially so further education colleges typically offering higher education courses operate at substantially lower costs by and large than some of the more prestigious universities and there are similar differences between the subjects being studied. So a medical degree costs a lot more to provide than say a degree in humanities and social science programmes.

I think it's really important actually though what you've said that are on contextual differences because obviously sometimes we can generalize and assume that every university, for example, is in financial difficulties when we're reading the news, for example. But what you've said there on contextual differences is really important, I think. Now if, you know, you've just mentioned the international context there. So I just want to kind of pause on that really. And, you know, when we're looking internationally, really, where would you say does The UK higher education system, you know, how does it compare not only in terms of the financial context, but in terms of what it offers students and society in general as well?

And what does your research specifically tell us about ways forward here if we're considering the international context, but also bringing that back then to thinking about England specifically?

Well, before I map out some of the differences, I think it's important to note that universities do a number of different things. So, clearly, they're involved in the education of students, and students go to university to learn. Education and learning are not necessarily the same thing. Universities are engaged in research. They're engaged in helping organization to innovate and improve their operations, something we call innovation.

And they have a important civic role to play in terms of helping society, helping to contribute to public debate and the broader social environment. So let's take some of those things in turn. In terms of research, many people will have seen the university league tables. Some of them are global. Some of them are national.

The UK understandably and rightly has a very good reputation for the research prowess of a number of its universities. In most of those international league tables, there will be a large number UK institutions on those lists more than you might expect given the population of the country, typically second only to The USA. What is less commonly measured in those international league tables is the education and learning of students. Now there are relatively few comparisons of the education provided, those that are done are based on assessments of the reputation of institutions as perceived by university academics in other universities. Again, The UK does well there, but perhaps that's not the most objective measure.

If we look at objective measures, for example, the length of degree programs, the number of hours, the education that young people may receive or older people, then there are some marked differences but they're not that well studied. So a typical undergraduate degree program in The UK is three years in duration and in many other countries, it's four years. A typical UK degree program is delivered over semesters and those semesters typically twelve weeks in duration per year. Many other countries, the semesters will be somewhat longer, not unusual for them to be fifteen weeks or for there to be a trimester or four term system. The number of hours of tuition similarly will vary.

So we haven't looked at that, and maybe that's a future research agenda that people could pursue. On learning, there are well established league tables for pupil performance in schools, and many people will have heard of PISA and measures of skill development for adult learners. People may have heard of PIAC. What hasn't been developed effectively yet is a measure of the learning and the educational outcomes of students. There are measures in The UK called LEO, the longitudinal education outcome survey, which measures income gain, how much more graduates earn than non graduates, and that demonstrates for most young people, the earnings gains are significant and on average greater than the amount that they will have to pay for their education after they've graduated.

In terms of civic contribution and innovation, again, we don't have that many objective measures. There have been attempts to do that in the area of innovation. Thomson Reuters did until recently have a international league table. The UK did slightly less well in that than it does in research league tables. Yes.

And on civic engagement, there are, to my knowledge, not yet well developed measures for doing that. There are certification schemes run by charities which will award universities badges and accolades for their civic engagement, but there's no uniform measure for comparing the performance of institutions. So what I'm trying to demonstrate here is it's a mixed picture, excellent research. We don't know enough about education. We don't know enough about the learning outcomes, good salary and income outcomes, and we don't know enough about civic engagement.

I find that quite interesting because I wonder if that sentiment of, you know, you'll you'll get more and you've essentially put in will remain true there actually as the climate kind of the economic climate continues to change as well. That's what I want to pause on that actually because, for example, in your King's College London blog, you actually talk about the difference between public perceptions and vice chancellor's assessments of acceptable student tuition fees in England. Now here, you know, opinion surveys have revealed a mismatch between the what the public believes is an acceptable student tuition fee of between 6,500 to £7,500 and vice chancellor's assessments of desirable fee of £13,000. You know, that's a big difference, you know, between both cohorts and and beliefs and assessment. Can you tell us about those differences in in figures then?

Because I find that interesting, especially what you said in terms of student outcomes as well.

Yeah. Okay. So what I can say about that is those figures were from an article in August 2024. So doubtless they will have changed a little bit. And given inflation, they've probably gone up.

My perception is that vice chancellors are influenced by the revenue that they receive from all of their students, and many universities now have 20 to 30% of their students as international students. And that figure that's quoted in the article is not a million miles away from the average or the median fee charged to overseas students for arts and humanities courses. So the challenge for any organization, I was gonna say any business, is how do you justify different prices for different customers and how do you maintain the same service or different services. So what many universities are doing is providing the same service to international students and to home students or domestic students or local students, but the the amount that's paid can be quite different. And, therefore, there would be a desire I anticipate to want to see those numbers to come together more closely.

I may have that wrong, and it would be a good idea to talk to some vice chancellors about that. In terms of what the public's prepared to pay, then I think they're looking at things like how many weeks a year are people being taught and how many hours per week are they in a classroom, and they're focusing on those things to determine what they think is a reasonable amount to pay. They may not be considering the infrastructure that supports that education in terms of laboratories, IT equipment, libraries, the amount of money that's devoted to student services, the the money that goes to support the development of staff to to teach them to ensure that their research is at at the cutting edge and so forth. But as you say, there is a clear mismatch. And when we look at opinion surveys, the public is not convinced that the funding for universities is a political priority.

Now that may have changed, but pretty consistently, the opinion polls that have been released in the last three or four years have indicated that it is towards the bottom of the public's priorities. So that is a real challenge for university staff and students who who want more money from the public purse because politicians want to be reelected, and they don't just pay attention to the voting public during general elections. They pay attention to opinion polls on a fairly constant basis. We've seen some of that in the last couple of weeks with changes to government policy on winter fuel payments and potentially to the two child limit on on Social Security payments.

I guess thinking about that then, look, you've shared with us a bit about the historical context. We've had a look at the current context. Right? And, you know, thinking about those public perceptions as well and that higher education funding is not high on the priority list in terms of that public perception. Where do we go from here now essentially, how especially based on your research, what does it tell us?

Well, so my research tells me that the level of funding in relative terms in England is now a little bit above the lowest level that that it has been historically per capita, per person, or per student. However, we compare the level of funding in England and The UK with levels of funding per student in other countries, The UK has a very a very well resourced system on average. Now we mentioned earlier that there are poorer institutions and wealthier institutions, so that average may not be a good guide for all universities. But if we compare The UK with other countries, the per capita funding is second or third highest in the world or at least amongst developed countries. It's third only in recent years to The USA and Luxembourg.

When we look at the funding in more detail, as the organization for economic cooperation and development does annually through a publication it produces, it's available on the web, called education at a glance. You can see in table c 1.2 from page 270 that The UK institutions spend more money on some things than most of their comparators in other nations. Well, maybe there's scope for some of those things to change, not least because the world is changing in other ways. We have a world where artificial intelligence and developments in digital technologies are changing how education is delivered and how learning is undertaken, influencing how research is done. And should universities be immune from those technological developments?

Should universities be immune from the need to be more productive? In the last year, The UK economy productivity levels declined. If we want to see economic growth, the productivity levels need to increase. And it seems to me that it's worth worth asking the question as an academic, what scope is there for productivity or higher education to improve? What can we learn from those institutions that are very productive wherever they may be that could be picked up by institutions that are in financial difficulty?

Okay. So that's interesting in terms of you asking, you know, well, essentially, what needs to change and and looking at that productivity. Now what we haven't discussed so far here in terms of your own research as well and potential ways forward is this concept of tertiary education. Now before we even have a conversation about that, I think it would be really important, I I think, for our listeners to really understand what you mean here by tertiary education.

Okay. So tertiary education has, I regret to say, different definitions. I'm gonna use the Welsh definition because in Wales, the government has introduced a tertiary education and research act which seeks to bring together the oversight of universities, colleges, six forms and apprenticeship providers. So in the Welsh context, tertiary education means the education and research in training of people over the age of 16. That means qualifications above GCSE level.

That in educational speak is above level two in England. Now in some other parts of the world, territory means education to people above the age of 18, which is above a level in England or above Scottish Highers in Scotland and it it means what in England would be above level three but would be above higher levels in other countries because not everyone uses the same system. Essentially, we're talking about is the education training and research that's available to adults or people close to or at the age of maturity. Now for me that's important because I don't believe education should end at 21 for most people. In many parts of The UK, it effectively does because the funding that's available and the pressures on young people in terms of costs and the need to earn a living mean that it's difficult for them to consider doing substantial education at a high cost at a later date in life.

I think given the technological changes that we all face and social changes, we need to have a system that enables people to learn lifelong from cradle to grave and so forth. So trying to encourage people to think about it in those contexts is important. Practically what that means to me is making sure that there is education and training and research that meets the needs of local communities close to where they live throughout their lives and that means in my view that there has to be a closer link between the work of further education colleges, apprenticeship providers, universities and public sector research establishments so that we've got more of a joined up system. We've got more of a complete pattern of provision close to where people live. One of the big differences between the education system in The UK and many other countries is that typically large numbers of young people in particular will move away from home to study at university.

Now I can see the benefits of that and I can see why that is an attractive proposition But I can also see that that is incredibly expensive. We have developed what some of my colleagues would call a boarding school model of higher education that you wouldn't find in Continental Europe or North America or most other continents of the world where people would study closer to home at least for a significant proportion of their higher or further education. Now I can see the logic of moving away from home if you're going to study something that isn't available locally or that you might want to study in other countries for part of your higher education or in other parts of the country for parts but I think there needs to be a strong educational rationale for why that's happening because we are approaching a situation where many young people will leave university with debts of 50 to £60,000. Many of them particularly young women will never repay that debt. The consequence of not repaying that debt in England is that they will be paying 9% extra tax for every penny that they earn above broadly £25,000 per year for the rest of their working lives, well, at least forty years.

And for women because it is predominantly women who take time out of the workplace to have children, that debt will grow more rapidly than their earnings and will be larger later in life than it was when they graduated. I'm not sure that everybody fully understands those pressures.

That's really kind of struck a chord with me that I think as a woman as well, obviously, I'm early in my career, but obviously having gone to university and also having friends who have gone to university and some who haven't. I think in conversations we've all been having lately, it's about the idea of, you know, which skills do we actually have and some people people questioning their decision actually of having gone to university and some having not gone and kind of thinking about my personal experience there and what you say about those financial pressures as well. I'm just linking this to the kind of Skills England report published in September 2024 where they actually one of their key findings was that the pathways into skilled careers is not always sufficiently clear for learners. Now, obviously, Skills England now as well in their report, we're talking about bringing higher education and further education systems closer together. Now you've obviously said that now in terms of the concept of tertiary education.

So I guess my question here then in terms of thinking about tertiary education and skills and thinking about the future, What we do say to those at the age now, you know, post 16 thinking, right, what's next? Or for teachers advising, you know, what changes in the sector would you suggest teachers and students essentially need to be aware of in the coming years before they make those decisions?

Yeah. That's a brilliant question, Ellen. Thank you for that and giving me the opportunity to give you my views on that. So I'll tell you what I say to my children, I have four kids, they're all young adults, they're either at university or recently graduated. So I refer them to a Japanese concept called ikigai I k I g a I and that says that you need to ask yourself four questions about what you think is valuable.

The first question is what do you love doing? What do you love into a subject area or what keeps you interested. So what do you love is the first question. The second question you have to ask yourself is what are you good at? What skills have you actually got?

What have you got as natural abilities that perhaps set you apart from other people? Perhaps not, but what are your skills? The third question is what does the world need? Because these skills and and these needs are changing all the time. When I went to university, as I mentioned earlier, there were very few people going to university and I've been fortunate enough for the forty years of my career to work in a sector and an industry that's been constantly expanding.

But not all industries are constantly expanded. Some of them are in decline. So think about what the world needs and what it might need in the future. And then the last question is what can you be paid for? What's actually gonna generate an income that's gonna sustain you and the things that you wanna do in your life?

There are no easy answers to this so you have to do some research for yourself. You have to go out and learn what the answers are for you and that's perhaps as it should be because if there were easy answers, if it was all in a book in the local careers office, then everybody would be doing the same thing. And regrettably, we live in a slightly more competitive world than that So I would suggest that the answers are likely to be individual and they're likely to be gained by asking yourselves those four questions. I still do that myself. I am an old git.

It is a valuable exercise.

Well, thank you for sharing that here. I'm very aware of the concept myself and have been searching for some answers lately for sure having reflected on some of the questions around the sustainability of higher education for sure. We'll finish with two questions, I think. Firstly, going back to your concept of tertiary education, sorry, and your research around the subject. We've talked about it a bit, but what I'm interested in here is, you know, your view based on your research and some of the challenges and opportunities of enacting such a system in England, especially with what's been said in the skills England report.

And you also mentioned in your research a devolved approach to the system in England. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

Yeah. So there is a challenge with adopting a tertiary education approach because the presumption is that the system would be better if it was a system and if it was more effectively and efficiently organized. And that if you had all of the courses that people might want to study close to where they are, organized efficiently in the volume that's needed by that community and by those individuals, then the world will be a better place. And the challenge to that is that particularly in in The UK, and I would argue more so in England than the other nations, people are quite status and class conscious. So they will want to go to what they deem to be the most prestigious or the highest status institution.

And the challenge with that is that the number of places in those institutions has not grown very much. If we look at the total number of students at Oxford and Cambridge LSE, then they've not grown to the same extent that the overall number of higher education students has grown. And those institutions may have maintained their home student numbers, but they've been growing their overseas student numbers because they generate a higher income. So the ability for there to be more places is somewhat limited. So I would suggest that all of us have to become a little bit less status conscious because actually the data demonstrates that in the long run-in many occupations, not all occupations, but in many, it's what you can do and how you do it that's important not necessarily where you went.

And that's not gonna be always the case in some elements of merchant banking and corporate lawyering and management consulting. But in many other occupations, what I know is that over a lifetime, people get promoted for their ability to get on with other people and to work effectively in teams to be good communicators and other things and that there is a threshold standard of education that might be expected. But beyond that, whether you went to Hopleton University or you went to a Swindon University is not really gonna be that important. And in countries with higher education systems that I admire, like The Netherlands, like Switzerland, some of those status divisions are less and more is arguably true in parts of Germany and so forth. So I think, you know, as with many things in The UK, our class system is holding us back.

You know, that remark is actually really important there, really valuable. And to anyone listening really that, you know, in life, hopefully, that you will get promoted based on your ability work to work and to obviously work with other people rather than thinking about, you know, the higher education institution where you graduated from, for example, you know, the importance of having learned something rather than where you learnt it is really an important remark there for sure. And then can we just finish then? You know, we've talked a lot about the challenges today about the higher education system. Then we've looked at tertiary education as a concept.

What gives you hope, though, in terms of the future of the higher education sector in The UK specifically and thinking about England more so as well?

What gives me hope is that most people most of the time want to learn and they enjoy learning. They may do that for a variety of different means, But that gives me hope that there is a genuine desire and consequently a demand for this activity. It might be delivered or provided or available in different ways, but that is there. So we should be less focused on the institutions or more focused on the processes and outcomes.

Absolutely brilliant. Well, thanks. It's been absolutely, you know, fascinating and really interesting for me to know all about your research area there. I'm really thinking about the sustainability of higher education. We need understanding those can can contextual differences where The UK as well stands in terms of its international context, thinking more so about the future of England and this concept of tertiary education and really that focus on learning, isn't it?

Thank you for coming on the podcast too.

Ellen and Hoyl Var.

You've just heard from professor Huw Morris. Some of what we've covered today is also available in the episode notes. If you've enjoyed this podcast, we have an archive of 24 past seasons. Search IOE podcast to find episodes of research for the real world as well as more podcasts from the IOE. And a quick favor before you go, please.

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Research for the Real World is produced by IOE Marketing and Communications and IOE Research Development. The theme music was created by Rob Cochrane. Tatiana Souteiro Dias is a series adviser. Amie Liebowitz is a series producer. And Jason Ilagan is the executive producer of the IOE podcast.

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