Inlay

This blog was kindly authored by John Miles, CEO, Inkpath As Chinese universities surge in the Times Higher World University Rankings, provoking prognostications of a ‘new world order in global dominance of higher education and research’ (Phil Baty speaking to the New York Times), the global challenge for universities in the UK and beyond is clearer than ever. They face a constant competition for doctoral talent, research funding and international partnerships, in which they are asked to demonstrate both excellence and efficiency, despite significant financial pressures. Expectations around doctoral provision – employability, wellbeing, interdisciplinarity, digital capability – continue to grow, stretching staff time and resources for researcher development and other types of support. In this context, collaboration between institutions appears not merely desirable but necessary. Pooling provision, sharing infrastructure and coordinating training offers clear potential efficiencies. Yet collaboration may sit uneasily alongside competition. After all, why would you choose to share the very activities that differentiate your doctoral proposition? The usual answer, of course, is that collaboration can unlock additional funding for studentships (such as via UKRI for UK institutions) and skills training costs. From one-to-many… The doctoral training partnerships and centres arising from UKRI’s funding competitions set the template for collaborative doctoral training initiatives in the UK. They follow a one-to-many logic in which a central unit curates provision, sets priorities and distributes opportunities outward. They have proved successful enough to be renewed: several collaborations funded via UKRI have now seen their third re-incarnation. The benefits of these collaborations are meant to ‘trickle down’ to wider doctoral cohorts. But the fact remains that the reach and impact of these collaborations on doctoral skills training at a national and international level will always be limited by the resources they have available to them. A large multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Partnership might train four one-hundred-strong cohorts across its lifetime, and a single-discipline Centre for Doctoral Training might train a tenth of that number. It is difficult to imagine a truly national network for doctoral skills training emerging without a well-resourced central hub, complete with staff, infrastructure and a multi-million-pound budget. …to many-to-many While one-to-many approaches may prove impractical to scale, many-to-many collaborations have the potential to have a broader impact at much lower cost. These types of collaborations – in which partners provide training to one another on a reciprocal basis – remain relatively rare in doctoral training. Not because they lack conceptual appeal, but rather because they are difficult to operationalise. The Bloomsbury Postgraduate Skills Network (BPSN) offers one example of how such a model can function in practice. Conceived by University College London but constituted as a partnership of peers, the network enables doctoral researchers at multiple institutions to access skills training offered by partner universities. Rather than one institution acting as a provider to others, each partner contributes a selection of its provision to the wider network. In principle, this model is attractive. It allows institutions to share the more generic elements of doctoral training – professional skills, career development or research methods, for instance – while retaining responsibility for discipline-specific or locally distinctive provision. It also creates opportunities for interdisciplinary interaction and peer learning across institutional boundaries, enriching the doctoral experience in ways that single-institution programmes might struggle to replicate. In practice, however, making this work at scale is administratively demanding. Many-to-many collaborations run up against the reality that universities operate different systems, processes and data standards. Opportunity discovery, event booking and reporting are typically embedded in institution-specific platforms that are not designed for inter-institutional use. In the absence of shared infrastructure, coordination often defaults to unwieldy email chains, spreadsheet sharing and informal workarounds – none of which are ideal for the staff running the network or for the students trying to navigate its offerings. How to make a many-to-many collaboration feasible Shared digital infrastructure can shift this equation. By providing a common coordination layer across partners, platforms that are explicitly designed for multi-institutional delivery make it possible to distribute administrative effort rather than centralise it. Crucially, this does not require the creation of a powerful central hub; instead, it enables a devolved model in which partners retain autonomy over their own provision even as they contribute to a collective offer. The result is a form of collaboration that is both scalable and institutionally sensitive: generic training can be shared across the network, while distinctive strengths are amplified rather than diluted. The potential benefits extend beyond efficiency. Networks of this kind can support completion and wellbeing through broader access to support, foster interdisciplinary exchange by bringing together researchers from different institutional cultures, and enhance the overall coherence of doctoral provision across a region. Perhaps most importantly, they allow universities to collaborate without surrendering their institutional identities. Collaboration here is not a process of homogenisation, but a way to make singular strengths more visible and more impactful. This is not collaboration on the cheap. Shared infrastructure, governance and coordination require investment. But the scale of that investment is of a different order to the multi-million-pound commitment that might bring forth a national doctoral training programme. When executed well, many-to-many models point towards a future in which groups of universities can collaborate in ways that allow them to ‘punch above their weight’ internationally, combining resources to enhance doctoral training without constructing additional, centralised superstructural bureaucracies. In a competitive global environment, the ability to collaborate effectively may itself become a differentiator – not in spite of competition, but as a means of sustaining it.

Join HEPI, Kaplan and London Economics for a webinar on Thursday 9 July 2026, from 12pm to 1pm, launching new research on the economic costs and benefits of international students, including for the first time estimates broken down by parliamentary constituency using students’ actual residential locations. The session will explore the latest evidence on the gross and net economic impact of international students across the UK and what the findings mean for policymakers, institutions and local communities. Register now. This blog was kindly authored by Vincenzo Raimo, an independent international higher education consultant. The recent Higher Education Policy Institute report number 201 by Bahram Bekhradnia on demographic decline and ‘predatory recruitment’ in English higher education deserves close attention well beyond the domestic undergraduate market. At first glance, the report is primarily about home undergraduate recruitment. Its central concern is stark: after a temporary peak in the 18-year-old population around 2030, England faces a projected fall of around 18.5 per cent in that cohort by 2042. For non-higher-tariff universities – on the scenarios Bekhradnia considers most likely – that could translate into a loss of up to 29 per cent of home undergraduate income. Combined with continuing financial pressure, this threatens the viability of institutions that are, in the report’s own words, ‘doing an excellent job and adding real value to the students and regions they serve’. But there is a wider lesson here. The dynamics described in the report have striking parallels with what has already been happening in international student recruitment. In both cases, the underlying issue is not simply demographics or policy change but what happens when universities respond to a declining unit of resource by prioritising volume growth over value, margin, positioning or long-term sustainability. Bekhradnia warns that higher-tariff institutions are increasingly recruiting students who might previously have attended lower-tariff providers, creating a destabilising effect across the system. Many universities will recognise the same phenomenon in international recruitment. As financial pressure intensifies, stronger brands often move further ‘down market’, increasing competition in markets and segments that were once the preserve of less selective institutions. The result is a form of market compression. Institutions compete harder for similar pools of students, often through scholarships, discounts, expanded agent networks and higher commission incentives. Recruitment targets may still be achieved, but at the cost of lower margins, increased operational complexity and greater institutional risk. Universities have become accustomed to thinking about recruitment success primarily in terms of enrolment growth. Yet growth alone tells us surprisingly little about institutional health. A university can recruit record numbers of students while simultaneously weakening: - net revenue; - student retention; - student experience; - portfolio quality; - organisational resilience; and - long-term market position. This is not simply a financial issue; it also affects the ability of universities to serve their regions and communities effectively. In international recruitment, this tension has become increasingly visible. Many institutions now face rising costs of acquisition driven by commission inflation, expanded scholarship offers and increased reliance on intermediaries. Gross fee income can look impressive while net contribution becomes progressively weaker. The same logic increasingly applies to the home undergraduate market, albeit through a different mechanism. With domestic tuition fees effectively fixed, institutions often have limited ability to improve the margin per student. The temptation, therefore, becomes to recruit more students simply to maintain financial stability. The risk is that volume becomes the strategy rather than the outcome of a strategy. One of the more important implications of Bekhradnia’s report is that domestic and international recruitment can no longer be considered separately. The two markets are becoming increasingly interconnected. Students recruited into undergraduate programmes today are tomorrow’s postgraduate taught applicants. If demographic decline weakens domestic undergraduate recruitment, many institutions may become even more dependent on PGT recruitment, particularly international PGT recruitment. This creates a potentially dangerous cycle: - pressure in domestic UG increases dependence on international recruitment; - dependence on international recruitment intensifies competition; - competition drives discounting and commission inflation; - and margin pressure then creates further pressure for growth. The sector risks entering a position where both home and international recruitment models become simultaneously more volume-dependent and financially fragile. This is why universities need a more strategic conversation about recruitment and pricing. For many years, the sector has often behaved as though demand growth – especially international demand growth – was structurally guaranteed. In reality, universities are now operating in a far more competitive and uncertain environment shaped by demographic change; geopolitical instability; shifting migration policy; rising recruitment costs; and increasing price sensitivity among students. In that environment, the key question is not how many students can we recruit, but rather: - Which students are we trying to recruit and why? - What level of net revenue is sustainable? - What balance should exist between growth, quality and risk? - Which activities genuinely create long-term value? - What institutional size and shape are financially and educationally sustainable? These are difficult questions, particularly for institutions under acute financial pressure. But they are increasingly unavoidable. Bekhradnia’s report is therefore important not only because of what it says about demographics, but because it highlights a broader structural challenge facing English higher education. The limits of volume-led recruitment are becoming increasingly apparent across both the domestic and international markets. The danger is not simply demographic decline. It is the possibility that universities respond to that decline using strategies that further erode institutional sustainability. The sector now needs a more mature discussion about what recruitment success actually means in an era where growth can no longer be assumed.

A new HEPI Policy Note offers a fascinating insight into what today’s undergraduates think about some of the most controversial and divisive issues facing society. Drawing on polling of more than 1,000 students aged 18 to 21, A breed apart? What do young undergraduates think of controversial and divisive issues? (HEPI Policy Note 72) by Nick Hillman OBE, explores attitudes towards topics including: - abortion limits; - the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs (AI); - diversity quotas; - nuclear disarmament; - reparations for the slave trade; - the most appropriate changing facilities for transmen and transwomen; and - a wealth tax. The findings challenge some common assumptions about student opinion while revealing areas where students stand apart from the wider public. In many cases, students’ views broadly mirror those of the population as a whole. Yet the report also uncovers some striking differences. Nearly three-quarters of students support unilateral nuclear disarmament; around half favour reparations for the slave trade; and more than a quarter believe Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel were defensible - positions that differ markedly from broader public opinion. The polling also sheds light on students’ political preferences, with the Green Party holding a substantial lead in voting intentions among undergraduates. At a time when debates about free speech, campus culture and generational divides continue to dominate public discussion, the report provides valuable evidence on what students actually think rather than what others assume they think. To read the press release, find a download of the full report and access the supporting data, click here.