Beyond ‘non-academic’: the cost of ‘us and them’ in higher education

By Tim Savage, Associate Principal Consultant / 11 August 2026

Introduction: A small change with significant implications

Last month, following extensive consultation and the first major review of the Staff record since 2012/13, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) announced plans to retire the term ‘non-academic’ from its lexicon for describing a substantial proportion of the people who work in higher education (HE). In its place, the sector is being asked to use a more nuanced and inclusive collective description of ‘Professional, Technical, and Operational’ (PTO) staff. I assisted with the development of these new definitions, contributing insights from my research with the technician community, who, as I will argue in this article, have evolved their roles, responsibilities, and identities to pose a uniquely robust challenge to the idea that there is a simplistic division between academics and everyone else working in HE.

When I began my career as a technician in 2000, the distinction between academic and non-academic roles was clear and helpful in describing the division of labour. Academics taught, conducted research, and provided service and subject stewardship, while non-academics created the conditions and environments that enabled them to do so. However, over time, while working as the director of a large university technical team, I saw how political, economic, social, and technological factors transformed the sector, creating the conditions for technician-led teaching to become increasingly prevalent and sophisticated. 

In my research, I refer to this under-recognised shift in the HE workforce as a ‘technical turn’, and I undertook a PhD to gain a deeper understanding of it. I have recently developed my thesis into a new book, titled: Technical Teaching in Higher Education: Insights from the Creative Arts. 

My interest in the boundary between non-academic and academic work has led me to engage in broader policy initiatives. For example, as a commissioner on the Research England-funded TALENT Commission, which called for HESA to provide better technical workforce data and fit-for-purpose classifications; and, through contributing to the development of new and more inclusive metrics for the Research Excellence Framework (REF 2029) via the Strategy, People, and Research Environment (SPRE) statements and weighting, to better recognise and value all who undertake, enable, or support research, engagement and impact, not just academics.

From this vantage point, I am optimistic that, as the academic/ non-academic distinction continues to blur in policy terms, sector discourses, and institutional activities, HESA’s new PTO categories and definitions will provide the language and data-collection tools to help the sector gain a better-informed understanding of who does what in HE.

It is likely that some will view these changes as bureaucratic matters of administration and nomenclature, but this risks missing their underlying meaning and potential. These terms extend beyond the Staff record; they inform institutional priorities, workforce planning, behaviours, and professional identities. 

In addition to establishing the new categories and definitions, HESA has also overturned its 2019/20 decision that allowed providers in England and Northern Ireland to opt out of reporting non-academics. More accurate descriptions and mandated reporting offer unprecedented visibility, enabling better business and budgetary planning, more effective institutional strategies and policies, with greater potential for holistic monitoring of diversity and inclusion of the workforce.

But what was so wrong with ‘non-academic’?

The most obvious problem with the term ‘non-academic’ is that it defines people in the negative - by what they are not rather than what they are. HESA describe the term as ‘dismissive of the contribution these colleagues make to higher education’, while Bruce Macfarlane described it as the most disrespectful of othering dualisms in HE.

The term also carries an implicit hierarchy. ‘Academic’ is the positive category: named, visible, and associated with the core mission and purpose of the university, while non-academics appear clustered together as a lower-status generic pool of background labour, necessary but unremarkable. This widespread disparity in status and esteem appears outdated and inconsistent within a sector that rightfully places equality, diversity and inclusion at the forefront of its values and strategies.

There is also the problem of homogeneity. ‘Non-academic’ collapses an extraordinarily diverse workforce into just one category: careers professionals, librarians, registry teams, widening participation specialists, academic developers, technicians, learning technologists, study support colleagues and many others. Some teach and some research. Some lead regulatory processes, specialist facilities, major transformation programmes or institution-wide strategies, while others supervise doctoral students. Many do several of these things simultaneously. 

It is important to acknowledge that the new PTO categories do not represent a utopian response to the non-academic problem (arguably, no three-part classification could capture the complexity of a modern university workforce), but the terminology and definitions do at least start from what people do, rather than what they do not. A further benefit is that HESA has identified restrictive language specificity as an issue, and the revised guidance recognises that not all roles fit comfortably within P, T, or O, and has committed to developing mechanisms to capture ‘boundary-spanning roles and edge-cases’. 

While it is accepted that the first year of collection is unlikely to generate a fully standardised approach, HESA notes that once the data has been collected, the new categories can be cross-tabulated by level, or standardised occupational classification (SOC) to provide clearer responses to questions about PTO roles and to improve data quality, reporting, and sector performance going forward.

The binary no longer describes the work

While the HESA announcement is very recent, the idea that the non-academic/ academic binary is an anachronism is hardly breaking news. In 1997, the Dearing Report found that for some non-academic staff, distinctions from academic colleagues were becoming increasingly blurred. In the years that followed, as the formerly clear distinctions dissolved, researchers documented continuing tensions between academic and professional groups, characterised as ‘them and us’, even as the roles and responsibilities became more interconnected and symbiotic.

Arguably, the most influential framework for mapping and understanding the changing, blending, and interrelation of academic and PTO roles is Celia Whitchurch’s concept of the ‘third space’. Whitchurch’s theories relate to colleagues working across and between academic and professional domains, where identity, expertise, and responsibilities span, intersect, and disrupt conventional job families. In a recent book review, Whitchurch described how, when her ideas were formed in the early 2000s, they focused on professional services, with technical staff largely absent from early third-space discourse, but as technical roles have been transformed, they are now firmly at its frontiers. 

While the HESA updates (and this article) concern PTO staff, it should also be acknowledged that traditional academic roles have also changed. Teaching and research responsibilities have become fragmented; regulatory and administrative expectations have grown; technological complexity has increased; and in some practice-based disciplines, academic roles have moved away from the direct teaching of specialist practice, vacating the ‘skills teaching’ space that has become educationally contested but politically important, which technicians increasingly occupy. A shift, that I argue, has been driven by local creep rather than institutional strategy.

As both academic and technical teaching roles transform in response to external conditions and to each other, the line separating them ceases to serve as a neat boundary. I found that no clear line exists between academic and technical pedagogies in creative HE; rather, there are overlaps, commonalities, differences, and shifting emphases at different times. Others have found similar patterns across the professional services and documented how recognition and development of educationally orientated PTO roles can be transformative and empowering.

Universities are increasingly acknowledging this, albeit inconsistently. My analysis of Teaching Excellence Framework submissions found that the number of providers referencing technical staff in their narratives of institutional teaching excellence increased from just under a fifth in 2017 to over a third in 2023. The enlarged contribution wasn’t just quantitative; it was also qualitative, reflecting a growing sophistication in PTO pedagogies. Activities described include gaining teaching HESA recognised teaching qualifications, delivering the curriculum, configuring VLEs, leading workshops, providing one-to-one and small-group support, and giving formative feedback. In several cases, teaching practical skills is aligned with learning outcomes and contributes to summative assessment. Some institutions described how PTO staff were conducting research, presenting at conferences, and publishing in peer-reviewed journals. 

The hidden cost of ‘us and them’

Historically, consciously or otherwise, institutions have had the capacity to support and maintain distinct ‘us and them’ workforces and cultures. However, operating in siloes is an expensive and inefficient model that is becoming increasingly unsustainable in the face of the unprecedented existential financial challenges facing the sector, with nearly half of providers facing deficits in 2025/26, and without any clear plans for institutional insolvency. Indeed, many institutions are confronting a perfect storm as income declines in real terms, as costs rise, alongside regulatory requirements, evolving skills policy, disruptive technologies, and heightened expectations from students, graduates, and government for broader participation, better value for money, and improved graduate outcomes. Accordingly, as The Times Higher Education (THE) made clear in a recent eye-catching headline, Universities must change or die.

But change how? Increase revenue, cut costs, find efficiencies? There is no single silver-bullet solution to the complexity and urgency of the funding crisis, but staffing is the highest cost for most universities, typically accounting for 50%-55% of their total income. The knee-jerk approach to reducing staff costs is to freeze vacancies, restructure, and cut staff numbers. This is already happening at scale as redundancies continue to sweep the sector and PTO staff can be particularly vulnerable. However, cutting or outsourcing the roles that enable, support, and increasingly deliver learning, teaching and research without a clear sight of what they do can prove to be a high-risk false economy, leaving PTO staff feeling undervalued and academic staff overwhelmed.

Costs and savings can appear deceptively simple to count, but for PTO and boundary-spanning roles, they are easily obscured. Technicians, for example, are not an explicit workforce group within TRAC, despite contributing across teaching and research. Their work and value can be vital, but unclear in financial information, outside the remits of role profiles, and absent from the institution's target operating model.

From relabelling to redesign: what needs to change?

HESA’s new categories, definitions, and mandatory reporting represent a significant step forward towards a more inclusive and equitable Staff record, but we should not pretend that these changes in isolation will address the well-documented challenges and inefficiencies of the academic/non-academic divide. Many on both sides are likely to view it as simply replacing the nomenclature of the previous binary with a new one: ‘academic/ PTO’. Particularly as the underlying architecture upon which differences in pay, pensions, contracts, governance, workload, development and progression remain as they were. However, any fire of change requires a spark to ignite, and for something to be identified, measured, and valued in HE, it must first be visible and understood. In my view, the proposed changes represent a significant and positive step in the right direction. 

Though there is a difference between having accurate data and acting on it. While there is likely to be significant variation in how institutions can make use of the new information, HE is notoriously change-resistant. But as the previously referenced THE article clearly sets out, change has become an existential priority for contemporary universities, and any and all information that helps improve visibility, productivity, efficiency, and quality in support of the highest-quality teaching and research is likely to be viewed as a priority for senior leaders. 

Looking to the future, as the sector gains greater awareness of the scale, diversity, complexity, and contribution of PTO roles, it will be better placed to integrate them (rather than assimilate them) more effectively with academic roles. The new metrics will help institutions understand the work as it is actually done, map capabilities, redesign workloads, align job families, integrate delivery, and link PTO work to strategy and KPIs. Over time, outdated, taken-for-granted assumptions and stereotypes will be replaced by actual data. Roles, responsibilities, and organograms will evolve in response, and presently invisible PTO work will become more visible as blurred and ambiguous boundaries come into sharper focus.

Looking ahead: A vision for 2030

As the American organisational theorist Russell Ackoff (2003) points out, ‘The performance of a system doesn’t depend on how the parts perform taken separately, it depends on how they perform together –how they interact.’ Within HE, it is clear that student experiences, world-leading research, and institutional performance are emergent properties arising from the relationships and interactions between academics and PTO colleagues. 

By 2030, it is my hope that, with the greater visibility and understanding of the PTO workforce, universities will be able to move more confidently towards a more equitable ‘one-institution’ approach, in which the contributions of all staff missions are visible, recognised, and valued. 

Work of this kind is already underway in some of our most progressive institutions, underpinned and enabled through traits such as:

• Actively seeking out inequalities and disparities among job families.

• Roles remain distinct, but are more effectively integrated.

• Invisible work being made visible.

• Expertise is valued and trusted across boundaries.

• Workforce planning and development reflect actual contributions.

• Teams built around desired outcomes rather than job titles or contract status.

• Strategies, policies, decision-making forums, quality assurance and enhancement activities are inclusive of all who enable, support, and deliver the mission and KPIs.

From a learning and teaching perspective, this can mean moving beyond models in which an academic team designs the curriculum, and everyone else subsequently supports it. A more progressive approach is for academic and educationally-orientated PTO staff to collaborate and contribute their overlapping expertise; librarians teach and develop research literacies; careers colleagues connect learning to employment; learning technologists devise progressive digital pedagogies; study support teams help identify hidden barriers and promote student success, while technical staff may be co-writing and delivering modules, providing feedback, assessing work and engaging in quality assurance activities within constructively aligned curricula; supporting, assessing and feeding back to learners side-by-side (physically and philosophically), with academic peers.

Conclusion

HESA’s retirement of ‘non-academic’ is both welcome and long overdue, but it should be viewed as a beginning rather than an endpoint. The improved categories and language will certainly support better data collection and make hidden contributions more visible. But this alone will not be sufficient to dismantle the cultures and structures built around an outdated binary. Retiring the term ‘non-academic’ from the Staff record is relatively easy, but, following Ackoff’s logic, the greatest potential lies not in optimising academic and PTO workforces separately, but in improving how they interact.

The institutions best placed to capitalise on this vision of the future will actively build and promote a single educational ecosystem in which staff from all job families are effectively integrated and brought together in support of a shared purpose, creating a more inclusive, efficient, and fit-for-purpose HE sector for staff to work and for students to study.

Strive Higher can help universities take this further by:

• Helping plan for a ‘one-institution’ operating model: Identify the current state, scale, and academic integration of PTO staffing, identify the desired future state, and help map the gap between current and future states.

• Review workforce structures, job families, workload and delivery models: To reduce duplication, clarify responsibilities, identify and make better use of PTO operational expertise.

• Developing and integrating PTO expertise into learning and teaching strategies and operations: Including learning environment planning, curriculum delivery, pedagogical development, AdvanceHE recognition, peer-supported review and quality assurance and enhancement. 

• Repositioning technical and professional services as visible contributors to institutional performance: Including NSS, TEF, REF, KEF, GOS, OfS Conditions of Registration and other measures of quality, impact and student success.

• Supporting senior teams to align PTO capability with academic, financial and strategic plans: Helping institutions move from fragmented structures towards a more integrated, efficient and inclusive workforce model.

If you'd like a conversation with us to understand how we can support your university, please get in touch.