When faced with challenges around student experience, engagement, digital transformation, service delivery, or institutional culture, the sector's first instinct is usually to ask: What are other universities doing? It is an understandable response. It's an incredibly collegiate sector, where people are generous with their ideas, time and expertise to solve common problems. But some of the biggest challenges facing HE are not unique to universities at all.

Taking responsibility for an academic department is a significant leadership transition. New Heads of Department must quickly build credibility, lead colleagues, manage competing priorities and navigate complex institutional relationships, often while continuing to contribute to teaching and research. Our client wanted to ensure that its leadership and people-management development reflected the different needs of its academic and professional services communities and build s

The OfS's new Financial Viability and Sustainability Risk Assessment Framework represents a more sophisticated conception of institutional risk than a purely financial assessment would allow, and in doing so offers a useful lens through which universities can reflect on their own resilience, adaptability and preparedness for an increasingly uncertain future.

Based on recent actions, the OfS appears to accept the premise that public attention can shape provider behaviour. Its own principles, therefore, should require that attention to be leveraged according to evidence, risk and student interest.

Are the 2026 NSS results too good to be true? It's a fair challenge. At a time when universities are under unprecedented financial and operational pressure, why has student satisfaction increased across every NSS theme? In our latest analysis, we tested some of the most common explanations. The evidence points to a more interesting conclusion than many might expect.

It would be easy to file the OfS Business Plan 2026-27 alongside every other regulatory publication: skim it, note the deadlines, move on. That would be a mistake. Beneath the familiar language of quality, student protection and compliance sits a much bigger signal about what the regulator expects universities to look like over the next few years.

What does it really take to lead in higher education right now? We put that question to thirteen senior leaders across the UK sector and asked them to share their experiences. The result is our third annual sector insights report - Culture, context, complexity: Understanding leadership in higher education.

Strive Higher thanks Melody Askari for co-hosting this webinar with Emma Bayne and Laura Jackson. Watch the full webinar for insight, challenge and optimism about the future of higher education in the age of AI.

The 2026 Code marks a clear shift: away from broad governance principles and towards more explicit expectations of board action, judgement and accountability. Its focus is no longer simply whether institutions can point to good governance frameworks, but whether governing bodies can demonstrate effective decisions, active judgement and sustained institutional viability in practice.

Given the Office for Students’ stated concerns regarding algorithm design and the credibility of degree outcomes, we were commissioned to provide external assurance in advance of implementation. The purpose of the work was to confirm that the revised policy operated as specified, that its impact on degree outcomes was understood in context, and that the change could be evidenced and explained if subject to regulatory scrutiny.

When universities talk about strategy, conversations often gravitate towards vision, ambition, and competitive positioning. Yet behind every successful strategy lies something quieter, more foundational. It's the ability to understand, trust, and use data with confidence.

With strategic foundations in place, UK higher education providers can turn their attention to how digital transformation is experienced in practice. This second insight builds on the principles outlined in part one of this series and focuses on redesigning end-to-end user journeys, developing organisational readiness, managing risk, and applying AI where it delivers tangible value. Together, these elements enable sustainable, phased transformation that improves both efficien

UK HE providers are operating in an environment of heightened competition, rising expectations, and increasing regulatory complexity. While AI, automation, and cloud technologies promise significant gains, their value can only be realised when institutions put the right strategic and technical foundations in place. The first of this two-part insight series focuses on the strategic prerequisites for digital transformation.

The universities making real progress are not those with the most polished strategies, but those that use strategy as a working discipline. In these institutions, strategy shows up in how money is allocated, how performance is measured, how data informs decision-making, and how leadership is held accountable.

Despite constant evolution, many institutions remain constrained by governance structures designed for circumstances that were perhaps once more predictable. This is what I call the governance paradox: structures created to ensure institutional continuity later become obstacles to necessary transformation.

Hiring freezes and voluntary severance schemes have become familiar, if uncomfortable, tools in the sector’s financial toolkit. But before resorting to measures that affect staff livelihoods and academic quality, responsible institutions are looking for other levers to pull. One of the most powerful and often overlooked of these is the non-pay (or discretionary spend) review.

Our experience of supporting multiple universities with a discretionary spend review process suggests that bringing in independent expertise is a pragmatic and strategic choice that can unlock millions in savings, strengthen institutional collaboration, and lay the groundwork for lasting cultural change.

Strive Higher’s latest sector insights report, Highlighting innovation in our sector, reveals how UK universities are creatively tackling today’s biggest challenges – from transforming services and reimagining experiences to reshaping culture and developing future talent.

Our first sector insights report examines the role of innovation within the regulatory framework for English HEIs. Using the institutional capabilities required to respond to regulatory change as a lens, we examine the relationship between regulation and innovation within this part of the sector.

With the regulatory burden increasing and institutional expectations rising, the resulting data skills gap is becoming critical for UK universities. Writing for WonkHE, Sophie Crouchman and Laura Jackson reflect on helping professional services become more data confident.