This workshop will identify research paths toward critiquing and then replacing the current public understanding of UK university financing. We will also discuss desired intellectual and social effects of universities a new financial model must support.

The dominant narrative about post-2012 funding changes is that the coalition government’s new model was fine but the sector mismanaged it to create the bad university finances of 2025. Although the situation seems like an emergency at many if not most universities, with continuous programme closures and layoffs of staff, the Labour government expects the sector to sort itself out with no additional net funding. Their assumption seems to be that each university will make the necessary adjustments to their current resource levels in the local context, and must support themselves regardless of the impacts on higher education.

ISRF’s 2024-25 research, led by James Brackley, found among other things: (1) a majority of British universities are in a fragile financial state that is generally getting worse; and (2) universities did indeed receive large increases in gross revenues from about 2012-18 that props up the standard storyline that the Browne Report and Willetts Restructuring of 15 years ago are not to blame for (1).

We don’t accept (2), that the post-2012 model works pretty well. We also recognize the need for an integrative narrative that specifies the key problems with this dominant view while also providing an alternative. We also think that the UK problems must be seen in an international context, and are inviting several scholars who work on other national university systems.

Our main goal for 2025-26 is to bring together the internal problems of the post-2012 funding model into a coherent and understandable narrative about what has really happened to universities. This is a financial story, but needs to include educational and structural issues as well as an understanding of institutional relations among academic staff, management, the main academic union, and related organizations like Universities UK.

A second phase, scheduled for 2026-27, will design a funding system for our preferred university, focusing on desired teaching, research, and social outcomes.

We are planning sessions at the November workshop on the following topics:

• Anglophone Higher Education: A Global Crisis

• State of the UK University: Reviewing our research on the current financial model

• Role of academic staff : helping or hurting?

• Current public Narratives about universities: elements and issues

• Fixing the Current Model: Is it Really as Hard as they Say?

• Looking ahead: features of a new narrative about British universities (aims and means)

We’ll identify next steps in the research and the people who might undertake them.

Participants to include: