How Labour can harness the power of HE in its first 100 days

Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt first coined the phrase after assuming office in 1933, it is common to hear a lot about the importance of a new administration’s first 100 days.

While Sir Keir Starmer’s government does not have an economic backdrop quite as dire as the Great Depression, his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has cautioned that the UK’s public finances are in their worst shape since the Second World War.

When you have committed to deliver growth, boost skills and train the nurses and teachers (among others) that the country’s stretched public services desperately need, that represents a serious roadblock. The modern universities that we in MillionPlus represent can and must be a key piece of the solution.

To hear the new education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, speak so early in her tenure about the need to stabilise higher education is hugely encouraging. Like the country at large, universities face real challenges, but there are actions that could be undertaken at pace – perhaps even in those first 100 days – that would better enable them to help deliver the new administration’s priorities and boost opportunity for all.

First, and most simply: change the narrative. UK higher education institutions are held in high global esteem for good reason. They are not the enemy. Dialogue between the government and the sector should be robust, of course, but not adversarial.

Similarly, rhetoric and policy that make international students think twice about studying in the UK are short-sighted and self-defeating. The government should make it explicit that the UK welcomes international students and reaffirm its commitment to the graduate route visa in its current form.

To deliver growth, skills and regional equality, talent should be harnessed wherever it is found, so we hope the government will consider recommitting to widening participation. Maintenance grants should be reinstated and appropriately adjusted for inflation, and the government should consider University of Wolverhampton vice-chancellor Ebrahim Adia’s call for a social mobility premium to institutions that create opportunities for communities that do not traditionally enter higher education, many of whose members require substantial additional support.

Work on reforming the funding system must also begin. Universities face an incredibly challenging financial environment, with funding per student in England having fallen year-on-year over the past decade. Achieving a sustainable funding model is imperative and the government should urgently initiate a review of the system.

Efforts should also be taken to ease pressure in the short term. To cite just one example, the timing and profile of payments to English universities by Student Finance England (part of the Student Loans Company) should be tweaked by moving the May payment forward to April and reprofiling each payment to deliver a third of the total amount, rather than the current 25-25-50 per cent split. These changes would support university cash-flow management, particularly at smaller institutions less able to cross-subsidise.

Another relatively easy win would be to better balance the regulatory regime. MillionPlus supports robust, risk-based regulation that safeguards both quality and confidence in the system. But in recent years the burden on the regulated has become too heavy as the Office for Students’ (OfS) remit has broadened, forcing universities into expensive (in terms of both finance and staff time) exercises in compliance.

Condition B4, which requires assessed work to be retained for five years after courses finish, is one example. It places a disproportionate burden on smaller, less resourceful institutions and assumes that all work is written, as opposed to a performance or a work of art, for example. We urge the government to commit to working with the OfS and the sector to ensure that actions taken are targeted, effective and efficient, focused on regulating universities’ core missions.

In addition, the government should hold the line on BTECs. Plans initiated by the previous government to defund them – along with other applied general qualifications – in favour of T levels risk damaging participation in higher education, hurting the life chances of many prospective students from non-traditional backgrounds. Despite clamour from some quarters to continue down this path, the government should urgently commit to preserving these qualifications, at least until a full review is completed.

Finally, we need joined-up thinking across Whitehall. Modern universities educate the majority of the public sector workforce, including 63 per cent of teachers and 70 per cent of nurses. MillionPlus universities are ready to help meet the new government’s teacher recruitment targets and fulfil the NHS workforce plan, but this will require both close coordination and a whole-of-government approach. Hence, we are calling for prime ministerial responsibility for greater departmental join-up, alongside active secretaries of state across the education and health and social care departments.

Similarly, the Department for Education should work closely with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the newly renamed Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that universities can produce impactful research and innovation with a greater regional focus by tapping into the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the £2.6 billion domestic replacement for European Structural and Investment funds.

Many of these initiatives are low or no cost, but they would provide universities and students with some breathing space to focus their energy and resources on delivering in support of the aspirations for growth and development. To the prime minister and secretaries of state across education, science, health and others, we simply say this: give us the ball.

Rachel Hewitt is chief executive of MillionPlus.