The problem with the word ‘service’: How language still shapes culture in Higher Education
By Claire Montgomery, Consultant / 03 November 2026
Across UK universities, professional services teams are being asked to do more with less, demonstrate value more visibly, and work in deeper partnership with academic colleagues. Yet one barrier to progress is easy to overlook - the language used to describe the work itself.
We often see this language carrying the weight of a long-standing cultural divide that can create an ‘us and them’ dynamic between academic and professional colleagues. That divide is rarely the product of one group or individual; it reflects different histories, identities, incentives and understandings of how a university creates value.
One word surfaces repeatedly when universities define, measure or redesign their work: service. For some colleagues, it provides a framework for clarity, partnership and expertise. For others, it suggests servitude, diminishing professional identity and reinforcing an unhelpful hierarchy.
This raises a broader question for universities: how much influence does language have over culture, collaboration and the success of change?
Words carry more weight than we sometimes realise
Universities are linguistic ecosystems. Words signal status, identity, legitimacy and belonging. They shape how people see themselves and how they see others. Beneath practical conversations about process, visibility and capacity, we often see a deeper theme:
What colleagues believe the word service says about the value of their work.
For many professional services staff, service is a positive, modernising concept. It offers a way to articulate expertise, define expectations, and make work that is often invisible easier to see. Used well, it creates shared language that reduces friction across organisational boundaries.
But for others, the word lands differently. Some colleagues reject the idea that they supply a service at all. This isn’t just semantics. It’s a question of identity and professional recognition.
So, what does ‘service’ mean to people?
Across our work with clients, we encounter two broad interpretations of service, each rooted in long‑standing cultural narratives in universities.
For some, it is about value
For some teams, service is a way to describe professional expertise, partnership and impact:
Colleagues may see it as a framework for articulating expertise, partnership and enabling work, rather than reducing that work to transactions.
This interpretation aligns with modern service design practice, user‑centred thinking, and the expectations of contemporary university environments. It supports clarity, transparency and shared standards and can help universities make better use of constrained capacity while improving the experience of the people who use and deliver services.
For others, it can feel like servitude
For others, service evokes something very different. A recurring theme is that the word service can de‑value work that is not transactional. Some concerns are borne from dismissive comments from particular colleagues in the past.
Here, service is associated with lower status, reduced autonomy, and a transactional model that fails to capture the complexity of professional work. For colleagues who have experienced dismissive behaviour from those in different job families, the term feels like a reinforcement of hierarchy rather than a neutral descriptor.
This tension is familiar across the sector, and it has practical consequences.
Why this matters in practice
When the meaning of service is unresolved, universities can struggle to translate strategic intentions into day-to-day expectations.
People hesitate to set out what others can expect
Teams can be reluctant to define service standards at all, often because they are unsure how standards will be interpreted. We often hear concerns that publishing measures could be perceived negatively alongside uncertainty about what service measures are actually for.
People also share an understandable worry: once measures are written down, will anything less than meeting them 100% of the time be seen as failure? For teams already working under pressure, that can feel like one more expectation to carry. But measures do not have to be imposed on people. Teams can shape them around what is realistic, be open about where flexibility is needed and revisit them when circumstances change. Used in this way, shared expectations can ease pressure rather than add to it. They reduce repeated chasing, help everyone understand priorities and give colleagues a clearer, more honest sense of what the team can deliver, and when.
Without shared language, expectations remain unclear and teams can struggle to demonstrate excellence even when they achieve it.
The ‘people lottery’ perpetuates inconsistency
Colleagues can experience unpredictable response times, unclear processes, and answers that depend on who they speak to. Much of this stems from the absence of a shared, confident service vocabulary.
Relationships can become strained
Where language is contested, trust erodes. Academic colleagues may not understand the expertise, pressures and choices behind professional services work, and professional colleagues may feel undervalued or misunderstood.
Shared language does not remove every tension. It does, however, create a better foundation for honest conversations about priorities, trade-offs, capacity and accountability.
Why universities can find this so difficult
There are a few reasons this can be especially difficult in universities and none sits neatly on its own.
There is history here
Universities have long privileged academic identity. Professional services roles have often been framed as “support” rather than expertise. The word service can feel like a continuation of that hierarchy. This is closely connected to the divide explored in an earlier article published by Tim Savage writing for Strive Higher, Beyond ‘non-academic’: the cost of ‘us and them’ in higher education.
The work has changed
Professional teams now deliver highly specialised, high‑risk, compliance‑heavy work. The term service can feel too simplistic - or worse – reductive when the reality involves judgement, partnership and institutional responsibility.
Standardisation can feel uncomfortable
Another recurring concern is that standardisation will degrade the service offered or reduce opportunities for creativity.
In reality, well-designed standards can protect creativity by removing unnecessary friction and creating clarity about where professional judgement adds most value. But without shared language, this nuance is lost.
How do we move forward?
The insights from our work with clients suggest some ways forward: The problem is not the word service itself, but the absence of shared meaning. There is no single fix. But the universities who we see making progress here tend to do three things:
Start by recognising the expertise behind the work
Service is not servitude. It is a professional discipline grounded in partnership, clarity and value. Universities must articulate this explicitly.
Find the words together
Language imposed from above will be resisted. Language shaped collaboratively can build shared ownership, make change easier to adopt and becomes cultural ‘glue’.
Make the work easier to see
Service catalogues, measures and standards are not bureaucratic artefacts. Designed around people, they can provide recognition, clarity and fairness, and make difficult choices about capacity and priorities more transparent.
A key insight captures this clearly: Making services visible, defined and measurable is the mechanism that turns constrained capacity into reliable, demonstrable value.
This is the heart of the matter because human-centred change is not a choice between institutional performance and people’s experience. Sustainable improvement depends on strengthening both.
Language is part of the infrastructure
Language is not a soft issue. It is structural, shapes culture, expectations, identity and performance. It affects whether people recognise themselves in change, understand what is being asked of them and feel able to contribute.
If universities want to modernise professional services and operating models, they need to pay attention to the language that underpins them.
The word service is not the problem. The absence of shared meaning is.
When institutions address this directly - through shared language, intentional design and genuine understanding of academic pressures - trust improves, collaboration strengthens, and operational effectiveness follows.
One last thought
Universities often invest heavily in systems, structures and processes. But successful change also depends on whether people share an understanding of the problem, the purpose and the contribution each group makes. A common language creates shared understanding. Shared understanding makes practical change possible.
How Strive Higher can help
We help universities turn shared understanding into practical change, creating clearer services, stronger collaboration and better experiences for staff and students. If you’d like a conversation about what that could look like in your university, get in touch. We'd welcome a conversation.
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