The top line

Britain is likely soon to have a Prime Minister whose governing philosophy – Manchesterism – suggests that policy on skills, education, and economic development should have a much stronger local dimension. But no part of Whitehall is currently configured to deliver this. The post-18 education system, the principal mechanism through which skills, research, and productivity growth are developed, is fragmented across three departments in a configuration no other comparable democracy has adopted. A Prime Minister committed to Manchesterism will need to build the tools he requires, because they do not yet exist.

The context

Manchesterism is more than devolution by another name. It operates on three layers: a pragmatic programme of public investment and local control; an institutional theory that devolution is the structural precondition for functional governance; and a moral claim about where legitimate political authority comes from. Andy Burnham’s direct experience of the frustrations of the current system – particularly the resistance of the Department for Education to sharing powers over skills – makes the post-18 education system central to any Manchesterist programme.

What the paper finds

The English post-18 system is fractured across the Department for Education, the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, and the Department for Work and Pensions. It has two junior ministers, both peers, both answering to two different secretaries of state, but with no formal relation to each other. No other G7 country or EU member state, including the other UK nations, runs things this way.

The current arrangement has never been adequately theorised or explained by any Westminster government. It is not so much a model as a mistake.

Bringing those functions back together is an essential starting point for a department to deliver Manchesterism but both DWP and DfE have broad portfolios and centralising tendencies. Neither is a suitable base for such a department.

What the paper proposes

A new Department for Skills, Research, and Prosperity, built on the DSIT base, should reunite all post-18 education functions – higher education teaching and research, further education, adult skills and apprenticeships – and absorb the industrial strategy from the Department for Business and Trade. Unlike its predecessors in BIS and BEIS, which became bloated by the addition of company law, business regulation, and consumer affairs, DSRP would be built from its first day with a presumption in favour of local decision-making: local where possible, national where necessary.

The paper also distinguishes DSRP’s role from that of MHCLG, which should retain responsibility for the legislative framework of devolution, and from the Treasury, which DSRP should complement rather than rival.

The bottom line

Manchesterism has a genuine diagnosis of what ails Britain, seeks to build broad-based prosperity to treat that illness, and  is clear enhancing agency in local communities is a key requirement for that. 

But a philosophy is not a programme until it has institutional form. Without a department built for the purpose, the structural incoherence that has frustrated a decade of skills reform and a decade of devolution will simply continue – and the next government will inherit the same problems as every government before it.

How this paper connects to other work from The Post-18 Project

This paper draws on The Post-18 Project’s longer-term work to reform and improve the whole post-18 education system in England, including:

• Blood, Debt, Toil, and Arrears diagnosed the dysfunction of the whole post-18 system, arguing that none of the fourteen factors necessary for a coherent education system are being properly managed – the proposals in this paper would begin to address that structural failure. 
• Tooling Up examined the attempts by Keir Starmer’s government to tackle the problem of weak skills development, and its analysis of why those attempts fell short is directly relevant to the case made here for a differently configured department. 
• Marking The Course dealt specifically with the recommendations in the post-16 White Paper, many of which remain relevant to the issues discussed here, and, as yet, have not been operationalised by any government department, either through legislation or direct executive action. 
• A forthcoming paper will address the student loan accounting framework, which presents a further structural obstacle to the reform likely to be pursued by the department proposed here.

 

Every government in the past decade has explicitly set out to expand non-degree aspects of post-18 education. The aim has been consistent: better match students’ qualifications to the needs of the labour market, and through a more highly skilled workforce, drive increased economic growth.

Across that same decade, every government has also experimented with devolution, creating new local and regional administrative units expected to build more efficient and effective policy, precisely because it is designed and implemented closer to the people it serves.

Neither of these approaches has been fully successful, and Britain is likely soon to have a Prime Minister with direct experience of the frustrations of both.

Andy Burnham has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester, perhaps the most mature of all the English devolution projects, throughout this period. He is now set to take control of the country, guided by “Manchesterism”, a term which describes not so much an ideology as a disposition towards governing, in which both the post-18 educational challenge and the hyper-centralising yet intervention-averse tendencies of the British state play central roles.

Right now, Burnham will find no government department properly set up to deliver Manchesterism. The tools for supporting and enhancing the skills-driven growth he seeks, through direct government action in which local and regional power are prioritised, are dispersed across Whitehall, and there is little reason to believe that any of the major ministries are ready and able to make genuine place-based policy their driving principle.

Burnham will need to build the tools he requires to make Manchesterism a mover of government priorities, and this paper suggests how he might do that.

Two brute facts provide both the context for Manchesterism and its greatest challenges:

1. Britain has experienced a lost decade in living standards growth 
2. Britain is the most centralised large democracy in the world.

Labour won in 2024 on a prospectus of driving improved living standards and declared economic growth its “defining mission”. Instead, it has delivered anaemic growth, indistinguishable from the trend it inherited, and significantly adrift of comparator nations.

There are many plausible explanations for why Britain is such an outlier amongst G7 countries in its per capita growth, but one obvious distinction is that the British state is tightly run from the centre. Formal devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland is inconsistent – none of those three countries has the same set of powers in relation to Westminster. Within England, while some areas of the country have received greater local authority, this has been very diffuse by geography and level of power. The current Labour government has moved money and authority to regional mayors, but as Burnham himself has complained, this has been at the discretion of Whitehall, not by right.

Burnham says that Manchesterism is “not a slogan, but a system”: a practical not theoretical framing, which considers relative economic weakness a consequence of an over-mighty central state. But Burnham’s approach is more than pragmatic municipalism, or “just” devolution by another name – it carries a specific account of what devolved power should be used for. 

Although he resists significant theorisation, Burnham’s public statements suggest that manifesting political power in localities is not only better at achieving social progress, but also essential for ensuring people feel empowered. He has explicitly argued that when national policies dismantled industries, the knock-on destruction of communities without adequate support or reinvestment was not merely problematic, because its effects were undesirable, but unjust, because as well as inflicting bad outcomes on people, this mode of doing policy denied agency to localities to determine their own futures. 

Local politicians, Manchesterism suggests, are closer to both the specifics of the challenges in their regions and better placed to convene the relevant stakeholders and drive the change required. When Burnham says “place first,” he means something more than an organising principle for departmental responsibilities – it is a claim about where legitimate political authority comes from.

In essence, then, Manchesterism has three layers. The surface is a pragmatic programme – buses, skills, clusters. The middle layer is institutional theory – devolution as the structural precondition for functional governance. The deepest layer is a moral claim about the proper relationship between economic power, political authority, and place. In some ways, Manchesterism might be better defined by the term “prosperity” than by the concept of “economic growth” – the second may be a pre-condition for the first, but the improvement of human dignity and welfare is the objective, economic growth the tool, and that tool far more managed than prevailing policy instruments have attempted.

That moral commitment matters for what follows: no department in Whitehall currently can serve Manchesterism properly. Devolution is not alien to England’s central government, else Burnham would never have had the chance to be Manchester Mayor at all. Yet because the centralising logic of the Whitehall machine is so strong, no current government department has the presumption to release power to the regions built into its DNA, not even the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government – in its various guises under both Labour and Tory, it has overseen more powers passing to regional mayors, yes, but has also driven through significant consolidation of local government units across the country.

And precisely because the British government is so centralised, a Prime Minister committed to Manchesterism will need to build Whitehall tools capable of making a reality of his aspirations.

The post-18 education system is central to these challenges. Higher and further education have always been seen as crucial to any growth mission, and under Labour, Coalition, and Conservative governments, these policy areas were bound to local and regional economic planning from 2009 to 2016. Burnham himself has explicitly named the Department for Education as the source of his greatest frustrations as Greater Manchester Mayor, resisting sharing powers over the skills system when Burnham felt it was both essential and proper that those decisions be made locally.

Burnham’s direct experience of these frustrations is weighted toward skills and further education – the policy areas where he had, or sought, devolved levers. He has been notably quieter on higher education, although this is clearly not from a lack of interest – that Greater Manchester should be the most mature tertiary system is no accident, and Burnham’s direct and personal engagement with, and convening of, leaders of both universities and FE colleges in Manchester has been a significant driver of, for example, the Atom Valley project or the establishment of Greater Manchester’s Institute for Technology. Bringing universities and research fully into the Manchesterist framework – recognising them as place-based institutions with a role in regional prosperity, not just national prestige – is the work this paper seeks to advance.

Creating both a more level and more local playing-field for institutions engaged in post-18 education does not pre-suppose that all such institutions are necessarily only, or even mainly, focussed on the locality. The University of Manchester, for example, has not lost its international outlook by virtue of the creation of the GMCA, nor its place as a nationally-significant host of cutting-edge research. What could change is that decisions about what provision is required in a locality, and the processes of working with local post-18 institutions to deliver that provision, move closer to the people served, the better to understand their needs and work together to resolve challenges. 

Improving the interplay between the provision of higher learning, whether academic, technical, or vocational, and the skills needs of the economy will not automatically generate prosperity, but it is impossible to imagine it occurring without that shift. Manchesterism sees that interplay being mediated at the local level, with a strong bent toward co-operation between different local and regional actors. For such eco-systems to properly endure and flourish, the ultimate arbiter for determining the success or otherwise of relevant initiatives, and therefore determining who will receive funding for these, must be fundamentally local. 

This last is not simply about allowing local politicians to spend money currently reserved to the centre, it is as much about reducing the pressure on the centre of resolving the arguments which will inevitably arise. We should not expect Manchesterism to end what are inevitable conflicts between different institutions seeking to serve some of the same students with similar education tools, especially in the context of the likely shrinking population of students the English system is facing. But instead of, at present, committees convened somewhere in and between the DfE, DSIT, and the DWP being expected to determine whether one or more FE and HE institutions within a given area are more-or-less likely to successfully respond to the needs of the locality, those decisions are made locally, owned locally, defended locally.  

It therefore seems both likely and sensible that a Manchesterist PM will want to review the oversight of the post-18 education system by the government. What they will discover is that those responsible for government oversight and leadership of post-18 education are actively hampered in doing so by the way the English state has wired those responsibilities.

How the English post-18 system is currently organised

The post-18 system can be thought of as making three crucial contributions to the prosperity agenda: developing students’ agency over their own lives, most especially through teaching powerful knowledge; allowing students to improve their career prospects through increased social, cultural, and personal capacity and well-devised technical skills training, both before and during their working lives; and generating improvement and innovation within the economy by fostering high quality research.

These three functions are not divided neatly between institutions: both further education colleges and higher education providers deliver teaching focussed on academic disciplinary knowledge and specific technical skills, although the proportions vary between sectors and between institutions within each sector. In general, research is undertaken only in universities, and not even in all of those.

Nor are the distinctions between these functions as clean as administrative arrangements suppose. The concept of “skills” often pre-supposes that these can be trained for in a vocational setting, separate from the disciplinary knowledge more commonly associated with university lecturing. In reality, skills are manifestations of knowledge, and knowledge is enhanced by practising skills. Research and teaching, especially at higher levels of study, are tightly bound together: those studying for degrees or other higher qualifications often, rightly, expect that what is being recently discovered in their fields of study should feature in their learning.

This is the context for the decisions taken over the past decade to divide the post-18 brief in ways not previously undertaken.

The current government divided further education in half, with FE colleges remaining in DfE, but adult skills moving to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). In theory, that represents a fusion of strategic skills planning with job readiness for the unemployed, but this has yet to yield either practical policy change or new legislation, and although Skills England moved, responsibility for the implementation of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, through which much future training might be funded, has remained with DfE. A single minister, Baroness Smith, holds both these portfolios, answering to a different Secretary of State for each, but Smith is also the only DfE minister in the Lords, and therefore responsible for all DfE business in that chamber, which has included several lengthy stints guiding non-FE or HE-related legislation. She is also the Minister for Women and Equalities, with additional responsibilities from that role.

DfE has retained responsibility for all teaching in higher education, but research has been the province of another department since 2016, and while a bridging minister held both portfolios for a time, this ceased in 2020. The minister with responsibility for research now still bridges two departments, but it is Lord Vallance, who serves both in DSIT and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and has no formal relationship with the other aspects of post-18 at all.

This lack of coherence is rare when compared to previous English arrangements, and unique internationally. Fuller comparisons are drawn in the appendices, but the key point is this: if post-18 education is a lynchpin of any strategy directed towards prosperity, then some reorganisation of government machinery is essential for delivering on the PM’s ambitions.

International comparisons

Not only is the current post-18 ministerial set-up in England anomalous by the standards of our own system, it is unique when compared with those used in other constitutional democracies of the G7 and the EU. Looking around the world, it is possible to classify three different models for government oversight of post-18 education:

• Model 1: A dedicated post-18 department, with FE, HE, research, adult skills and apprenticeships in a single department, separated from schools, led by a Cabinet-equivalent minister.
• Model 2: A dedicated post-18 minister within a broader education ministry; in some cases, with Cabinet status for that minister.
• Model 3: A higher education, science and research ministry, distinct from FE, adult skills, and vocational training, which generally, although not always, sit with schools.

In addition, several comparator systems have either formal federal arrangements or long-standing conventions which divide responsibilities between national and regional or local government.

Two features are universal across all three models. First, higher education research is always administered alongside higher education teaching – no comparator nation separates the two into different departments. Second, further education and skills are always kept together – no comparator nation splits FE colleges from adult skills and apprenticeships.

England currently has neither feature. HE teaching is in DfE, HE research is in DSIT, and the further education system is divided between DfE (colleges) and DWP (adult skills and apprenticeships). Of comparator nations, only Australia shares the education department versus employment department split for post-18 functions, but even Australia does not also divide the HE portfolio: schools and HE sit in one department, and FE and skills in another. A fuller comparison of international arrangements is at Appendix B.

What international comparisons suggest is that, while it is possible and often useful to distinguish between adult skills, higher technical education, academic qualifications, and research and development when discussing specific policy initiatives, the lived experience of students, staff, and administrators of these functions is that all post-18 institutions, everywhere in the world, engage in several of those activities simultaneously. Given the current English position has never been adequately theorised or explained by any government, there is no reason to suppose we are consciously proposing a fourth model others could follow. 

Ultimately, that no other comparable democracy has chosen to organise their post-18 oversight in this way suggests that it is not so much a model as a mistake. Certainly, it seems likely that it will hamper any attempt to build a more effective prosperity engine powered by high quality skill provision and research excellence. 

A PM looking for an appropriate vehicle for driving Manchesterism through Whitehall might consider a new department an additional encumbrance when what is needed is simply more devolution.

But the irony is that delivering devolution requires a central tool. The forty-year process of denuding local government of both money and functions means that the local state cannot absorb new responsibilities without a coherent national framework and appropriate support.

So a new central department will be necessary, and this department ought to be governed by three clear principles:

1. “Local where possible, national where necessary.” Instead of the present situation in Whitehall where every decision to devolve something must be justified against a status quo of central control, the calculus should be reversed: where decisions about matters covered by the department can be made locally, they should be, and justification is required to pull a decision back towards the centre.
2. “Collaborative by design.” This must not be a department for the wholesale outsourcing of central government problems to local government, telling them to get on with it without support – such methods are too reminiscent of the Coalition’s handling of austerity. While local decision-making should be preferred, the department should foster imaginative forms of collaboration, in form ranging from full transfer of functions to the regions, through properly accountable local and national partnerships, to simply improved communications between regions and the centre on implementation.
3. “Accountability comes with authority.” In determining how issues should be collaborated on with localities, the department should be mindful of not simply handing over the responsibility for the outcomes of a policy, but also the funding and decision-making necessary for a locality to take meaningful decisions.

A radically different approach to engagement with local government is likely to require a department built quite differently from many in Whitehall. Neither of the two largest current post-18 departments, DfE and DWP, is a suitable starting point. Both are very large departments — DWP is one of the two largest in Whitehall by staff, and DfE is one of the largest by budget. Both are also highly centralised. Both are also highly centralised, with other fundamental functions – benefits payments, schools and children’s welfare – which are only made more complicated by the addition of responsibility for a regionally-driven prosperity agenda.

DSIT has fewer of these problems. It is a newer department, only created in 2023, and without other enormous priority areas to manage, it is a prime candidate as the core of a prosperity-focused ministry. That ministry should carry a name that manifests directly its purpose, Prosperity, and the tools by which it is to be achieved, the enhancement and application of Skills and Research.

The Department for Skills, Research, and Prosperity

The DSRP would reunite the post-18 contributions – knowledge, skills, and research – that have been progressively separated since the dismantling of BIS, but unlike its predecessors, it would be built from the outset with a presumption in favour of local decision-making.

It should take nearly all of DSIT’s current responsibilities, recombine higher education research funding with responsibility for higher education teaching, also bringing over from DfE responsibility for further education colleges, and recombining that with adult skills and apprenticeships, which should leave DWP. 

This would create, for the first time since 2016, a single coherent post-18 department, with significant scope to influence both adult and young people’s education and training. It would also allow the new department to address a particular challenge flagged by Andy Burnham, of the creation of arms-length agencies which cut across rather than working with devolved bodies. Under this scheme, a single department would sponsor UKRI and the research councils, the Office for Students, and Skills England, providing a platform for significant change in how these bodies interact with each other, post-18 education institutions and stakeholders, and of course local and regional government.

The department should also take responsibility for the Industrial Strategy, currently with the Department for Business and Trade, giving it specific levers for initiating and co-ordinating activity in the regions and localities.

Previous governments built something similar to this, in BIS and BEIS, but those created overly-large departments by including company law, business regulation and support, consumer affairs and employment relations. Instead, those functions should be transferred to DWP to create a Department for Employment and Enterprise, charged to work on both sides of the employer-employee relationship. The idea that DWP ought to have a more coherent role in shaping policy to encourage prosperity, which underlay the movement of skills into DWP, was not entirely wrong-headed – the wrong aspects were combined.

The two departments whose functions are most complementary to DSRP’s are the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and the Treasury, and their respective roles need to be clearly differentiated.

Designing the legal nature of devolution and determining the specific policy objectives which ought to be achieved through it are not the same. Someone will need to keep thinking about how, both legislatively and practically, authority is shared out better between the centre and localities, and hold the ring in the inevitable tensions which will arise at the margins, and MHCLG should retain responsibility for directly managing the legislative framework for central government relations with local authorities. 

This ensures government is not creating a department that is marking its own homework when it comes to how successful any given devolved project is. DSRP should be the department that designs devolved skills and research policy; MHCLG should remain the department that brokers the devolution framework. This is especially important as the process of devolution in England is so uneven: no two “devo-deals” are entirely alike, and much of the country does not have the sort of strategic authority Manchester has, nor are their geographies necessarily favourable for the creation of these. Separating MHCLG and DRSP keeps both the mechanisms and objectives of devolution as the primary functions of two different departments, which is exactly the dynamic a Manchesterist PM would want.

As for the Treasury: as Appendix C discusses, there is a case for a more radical restructuring that would see growth-focused spending functions detached from HMT and placed in a new ministry. The lesson from Harold Wilson’s Department of Economic Affairs, however, is that the way to change the Treasury’s behaviour is to complement it, not rival it. DSRP complements the Treasury by building productive capacity – through skills, research, and regional economic development – that fiscal management alone cannot generate. It does not need the Treasury’s powers; it needs to be the department that gives the Treasury something worth funding.

Manchesterism is a serious governing philosophy with a genuine diagnosis of what ails Britain: that the most centralised large democracy in the world is also one of the worst-performing, and that reconnecting economic power to the places where people actually live and work is a precondition for reversing that decline.

But a philosophy is not a programme until it has institutional form, and at present no part of Whitehall is configured to deliver what Burnham is proposing. The post-18 education system – the principal mechanism through which skills, research, and productivity growth are developed – is fragmented across three departments in a configuration no other comparable democracy has adopted.

A Department for Skills, Research, and Prosperity, built on the DSIT base, absorbing all post-18 education functions and the industrial strategy, and governed from its first day by a presumption in favour of local decision-making, would give Manchesterism the Whitehall tool it currently lacks.

It would not, by itself, deliver prosperity.

But without it, or something very like it, the structural incoherence that has frustrated a decade of skills reform and a decade of devolution will simply continue – and the next government will inherit the same problems as every government before it.

England’s post-18 education system is currently distributed across three departments:

Department for Education (DfE) is responsible for a series of portfolios broadly related to teaching and qualifications provided by FE, HE, and other training providers. DfE is directly responsible for the roughly 230 FE colleges, following their reclassification into the public sector in 2022. DfE is also the sponsoring department for the Office for Students, the regulator for higher education; Ofsted, which inspects FE and teacher training and apprenticeships in HE; the Further Education Commissioner’s office; the Student Loans Company, which administers the student fee and living costs loans system; and Ofqual, which regulates qualifications offered by both FE and other training providers. DfE also administers the Strategic Priorities Grant, the last remaining significant injection of direct cash from government into the teaching side of HE, and is the lead department on the introduction of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. DfE is also responsible for the state school system, early years, and child safeguarding.

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is responsible for research infrastructure and spending, overseeing approximately £14bn per year, of which around £8.8bn is moved through UKRI, for which DSIT is the sponsoring department.

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has, since 2025, been responsible for a broad “skills” agenda, operationalised through the Growth and Skills Levy (the replacement for the Apprenticeship Levy), the Adult Skills Fund, careers policy and aspects of FE covering adults, defined here as those over 20. At the same time as acquiring these responsibilities, DWP also became the sponsoring department for Skills England, the arms-length strategic body for identifying and addressing skills gaps, in addition to its previous responsibilities, including Jobcentre Plus, Universal Credit and reducing economic inactivity.

Aside from this triumvirate, the Department for Business and Trade is responsible for the industrial strategy, which shapes decisions about the adult skills system and other education systems; the Home Office administers the visa schemes, and through UKVI has direct regulatory impact on any institutions with international students; the Department for Health and Social Care is responsible for student medical services, as well as the NHS being the employer of a very significant number of graduates; and Treasury holds the loan book. Accommodation and transport sit elsewhere again, but are of central importance, given that student movement to HE is the largest internal migration Britain experiences, and it happens every year.

Comparator nations organise government oversight of post-18 education in three broad models. The following survey covers G7 and EU member states and the devolved UK nations.

Model 1: A dedicated post-18 department

Under this model, FE, HE, research, adult skills, and apprenticeships sit in a single department, separated from schools, led by a Cabinet-equivalent minister.

Ireland created the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) in August 2020, led by a full Cabinet minister – Simon Harris, who subsequently became Taoiseach. The department covers FE, HE, research, innovation, science, apprenticeships, and adult skills, with schools separate. A junior Minister of State handles the FE and skills sub-brief. DFHERIS has survived six years, multiple changes of government, and two changes of minister – it is now led by James Lawless TD, with Marian Harkin TD as Minister of State for further education, apprenticeships, construction and climate skills.

Northern Ireland takes a variant approach: HE, FE, skills, and research all sit in the Department for the Economy, bundled with the wider economy brief including energy, economic development, and consumer affairs. The Economy Minister sits in the Executive and is an elected MLA. The design principle is the same as Ireland’s – schools separate, everything post-school together – but housed in an economy department rather than a dedicated tertiary one.

This model offers maximum ministerial focus, no competition with the schools agenda, and preserves both the HE–research and FE–HE links while integrating skills with the institutions that deliver them. Its vulnerability is political: small departments can be absorbed, and England’s own version – DIUS – lasted only 23 months. The school-to-university pipeline also crosses a departmental boundary.

Model 2: A dedicated post-18 minister within a broader education ministry

Under this model, one ministry covers all education, but a dedicated minister – usually with Cabinet status – holds the post-18 brief.

The Nordic systems are the paradigm. Norway, Sweden, and Finland each have two ministers inside one Ministry of Education and Research, both attending Cabinet. The HE and research minister has a dedicated brief and an independent Cabinet voice. In Sweden, the minister’s title – Upper Secondary School, Higher Education and Research – explicitly bridges the 16–18 transition into HE, owning the last years of school alongside universities.

The Netherlands inverts England’s seniority allocation. The senior minister (currently Rianne Letschert, a former university president) handles HE, research, and culture. The junior State Secretary handles schools. England does the opposite – Phillipson (senior) does schools, Smith (junior) does HE.

Austria, Japan, and Portugal are single-minister variants where one Cabinet minister covers the whole education and research landscape, but Austria and Portugal are significantly smaller systems, while Japan compensates through strong bureaucratic infrastructure including a dedicated Higher Education Bureau.

Wales and Scotland both have junior ministers for HE and FE who lack Cabinet status, but both have created compensating statutory agencies: Wales through Medr, the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research created by the 2022 Act, which funds sixth forms, FE, HE, apprenticeships, and research in a single statutory body; Scotland through the Scottish Funding Council, recently given a wider, more integrated remit through legislation.

This model provides dedicated ministerial focus plus Cabinet access without the overhead of a separate department, keeps the school-to-university pipeline visible, and is less vulnerable to reshuffles. Its weakness is that Cabinet attendance for the dedicated minister is not guaranteed – in the UK system, PM-granted attendance can be withdrawn at the next reshuffle (Willetts had it, Clark didn’t, Donelan had it, Jenkyns didn’t). The political salience of schools also creates a permanent gravitational pull on the Secretary of State’s attention.

Model 3: A distinct higher education and research ministry, with FE and skills elsewhere

Under this model, HE and research sit together in a dedicated ministry, while FE, vocational training, and skills are administered separately, usually through labour, education, or regional government.

France has had a dedicated Ministry of Higher Education and Research in some form since 1974, surviving every political configuration from Giscard to Macron. The current minister is a full Cabinet member, with schools in a separate ministry. The HE and research side is administratively coherent, but vocational training is fragmented across labour, education, and regional government.

Italy has oscillated between combining and separating universities from schools. The dedicated Ministry of University and Research (MUR) dates in its current form from 2020 and has been maintained through the Draghi and Meloni governments. Spain briefly had a standalone Ministry of Universities from 2020 to 2023, but without research, it was widely criticised and remerged.

Most German Länder follow this model, with education and research ministries at Land level distinct from vocational training oversight. Ontario and Quebec also broadly fit the pattern.

This model provides maximum HE–research coherence and guaranteed Cabinet weight. Its weakness is that FE and vocational training become fragmented, the FE–HE boundary becomes a departmental boundary, and lifelong learning falls between stools.

The US exception

The United States operates within a different governance tradition entirely – board governance rather than ministerial governance – but even within that tradition, the trend is toward coordination and integration through coordinating boards and unified systems rather than fragmentation. The states that have fragmented postsecondary governance across multiple uncoordinated boards, such as California until recently, are the ones that have experienced the most severe coordination problems.

England’s position

Of these three models, England most closely resembles Model 2, with a single DfE and a dedicated junior minister. But the division of adult skills from other further education across two departments, combined with the separation of HE research oversight into DSIT, marks it out from every comparator. Of comparable nations, only Australia shares the split between an education department and an employment department for post-18 functions, but Australia does not also divide the HE portfolio: schools and HE sit in one department, FE and skills in another.

Two features are universal across all three models. Higher education research is always administered alongside higher education teaching. Further education and skills are always kept together. England currently violates both principles simultaneously.

This paper proposes a bold reformation of central government departments with responsibility for the different aspects of the post-18 education system, in order to properly design and deliver the policies needed to achieve the stated goals of the Labour government. The creation of a new Department for Skills, Research, and Prosperity balances the need for significant reform in ministerial oversight of the post-18 system and new approaches towards the role of local and regional government with the complexities of significant Whitehall re-organisation.

However, there are other possible combinations that could be considered, ranging from the minimal to the very dramatic. Below, we explore two possible ends of that spectrum, both to elucidate what other options exist, but also to suggest why the DSRP represents a good balance of boldness and pragmatism.

As an additional note, all these options recognise that DSIT’s current responsibilities for digital regulation and telecommunications policy are not natural fits for a prosperity-focused ministry and should transfer elsewhere, most logically to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The minimal change option: a slightly smaller DfE and a slightly bigger DSIT

What about the other end of the scale – the smallest plausible change a PM minded to build a department for Manchesterism could consider? Minimal machinery-of-government changes would be required to move adult skills from DWP back to DfE, and to reduce DfE’s burden by reuniting higher education teaching responsibility with research oversight by giving DSIT all HE-related policy areas.

This would have significant benefits. The split between HE research funding and HE teaching funding is one not found in any other G7 or EU nation, and for good reason: although not every higher education institution is research-active, those that are profess a deep connection between their research and teaching work, and one of the foundational ideas of a university is that it is an academic community which communicates knowledge to others, but also creates and curates it.

Transferring adult further education and skills to DWP has yielded no significant benefits, and has rendered FE colleges answerable to two masters without any formal co-ordination arrangements. Reversing the split would be a commonsense acknowledgment that FE deserves a single directing mind.

This proposal would keep post-18 education split between two departments rather than three, on lines which are significantly more logical than at present and far more in keeping with G7 and EU comparators. It also involves only the three departments already directly concerned with post-18 education, and does not generate a wider ripple across government.

But the risk with small-scale changes is that they signal limited ambition. Even if rhetorical force can be deployed to change that impression, the government would still be relying on the same departmental tools which have failed to achieve the desired change under both Conservatives and Labour in the past decade.

The maximal option: a Ministry of Economic Growth

One of the specific explicit concerns raised by Andy Burnham about the Westminster governing model is the power of the Treasury, and in particular its role as a barrier to more radical action to invest for growth. There is historical precedent for a Labour PM seeking to circumscribe the Treasury through departmental creation: Harold Wilson and the Department of Economic Affairs in 1964. Moreover, since Manchesterism is a core principle of the new PM, and the delivery of economic growth and wider prosperity is both the avowed aim of the government as set out in the 2024 manifesto and an essential pre-requisite of its being re-elected at the end of this Parliament, a single mega-department committed to that aim might seem appropriate.

Such a department would absorb all the post-18 system functions discussed here from DfE, DWP, and DSIT, and would likely also encompass the whole of the Department for Business and Trade, bringing together industrial and commercial strategy with long-term skills planning. But, crucially, Burnham could go further and split the Treasury, adding its growth-focused spending teams, the tax policy functions relating to R&D credits, investment allowances and enterprise zones, the Green Book appraisal framework teams, and OBR liaison on growth forecasting. A new Ministry for Economic Growth, alongside a Treasury set firmly to the task of fiscal accounting, would be a powerful statement of the centrality of Manchesterism to the government’s identity.

However attractive such a bold move might be, it is not without serious problems. When Wilson tried this, the Treasury ultimately consumed the alternative economic ministry. Cynics might argue this is merely departmental empire-building, but the reality is that running investment spending separately from fiscal management is genuinely difficult. Investment decisions both enable and constrain fiscal ones, and while Burnham is a more assured politician than Liz Truss, the risk of triggering a rapid escalation in the costs of financing Britain’s debt through seemingly unrestrained spending is genuine.

 

University governance in the UK has never been under so much pressure. Institutional leaders and their boards face unprecedented challenges – between financial volatility, regulatory complexity, and intense public scrutiny, the volunteer role of governor has become exponentially more demanding. Most governing bodies navigate these pressures admirably. But the structural vulnerabilities exposed by recent high-profile cases suggest that even capable, well-intentioned boards lack the institutional architecture to prevent being blindsided by events.

Meanwhile, policy pressure is pulling the system to greater state interference and pressure. In England, the Westminster government’s post-16 education and skills white paper calls for “stronger governance” and backs the Office for Students’ (OfS) plans to strengthen its management and governance conditions. In Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has published detailed expectations on governance. It is against this backdrop that the Committee of University Chairs (CUC) has launched a review of its governance code.

Across the UK policy system, university governance has moved from technical concern to strategic priority. This attention is unsurprising. High-profile governance issues at some institutions have raised questions about board effectiveness. Franchising partnerships have exposed weak oversight of high-risk arrangements. OfS identifies financial sustainability as a “significant and urgent risk to the sector,” with multiple institutions requiring scrutiny interventions. Student recruitment challenges, inflation pressures, and over-dependence on international student fees have all contributed to creating a volatile operating environment for our current system of governance.

Yet the policy response follows a familiar pattern. The white paper argues that “governing bodies must ensure they have the diverse skills and capability to oversee strategy, plan prudently, understand and manage risk.” OfS proposes stricter regulatory tests, enhanced monitoring, and expanded data audits. The SFC mandates external reviews and systematic breach reporting. All three focus on skills, compliance, and professional expertise – the traditional reform playbook.

But this orthodox approach risks misdiagnosing the problem. Recent governance breakdowns suggest things went wrong not because boards lacked commercially skilled members, but because boards were systematically “managed” by executives, were not provided complete information, and lacked structural mechanisms to access independent perspectives on institutional realities. The real challenge may not be technical capability but structural vulnerability to capture.

This raises more fundamental questions. Much debate on governance concerns what governors are accountable for, but there is much less discussion and reflection about who governors are accountable to. Higher education institutions are neither solely commercial enterprises requiring corporate governance, nor are they public institutions needing bureaucratic oversight. Instead, they are something distinctive: quasi-public organisations serving multiple constituencies with complex accountability relationships. There will rightly continue to be a lively debate about the public or private nature of all forms of higher education provision. We take as axiomatic the principle that where organisations receive public funding or subsidy and exercise public powers they require public legitimacy in which autonomy is appropriately balanced with accountability.

Autonomous higher education institutions’ quasi-public character requires governance approaches distinct from traditional bureaucratic oversight or commercial structures. This paper draws on comparative analysis, particularly governance reform in similar quasi-public institutions in the Netherlands, alongside research on nonprofit governance and UK universities’ own internal dynamics. The evidence suggests that embedding further stakeholder participation within governance arrangements – not as consultation but as structural elements creating countervailing power – may strengthen rather than compromise governance effectiveness.

With governance prominent on policy agendas and all major regulatory bodies publishing new strategies, there is space for serious thinking and the articulation of alternatives to orthodox approaches. The following analysis seeks to contribute to that debate and expand the space for discussion about what the sector can achieve on its own before the march of greater external regulatory pressure gathers additional pace.

Understanding governance reform requires examining recent institutional difficulties. This is not to paint a picture of a sector in crisis – most universities remain well run and governed – but it is also true that, in the cases of recent challenges that have made it to the public domain, patterns emerge that illuminate broader structural issues that could cause problems for any shape or size of university.

The University of Dundee provides the clearest example of governance breakdown in recent times. Despite multiple warning signs – including banking covenant breaches, unrealistic budget assumptions, and systematic misreporting – an independent report found that the institution’s senior management and governing body failed to take corrective action until the crisis became unavoidable. The subsequent Gillies investigation found that “the Principal either was aware or should have been aware” of the deteriorating position from March 2024 onwards – yet continued to provide reassuring public statements, while being privately aware of an £8 million budget deficit.

Particularly problematic was the cultural dimension. Staff reported that challenge and dissent were actively discouraged, with few daring to “speak truth to power” in an environment described as exhibiting senior leadership “hubris.” The pattern – defensive cultures and weak challenge – appears across multiple recent governance issues.

De Montfort University faced significant governance questions around financial management and strategic direction. The University of Buckingham experienced leadership instability and questions about board oversight of institutional direction. Franchising arrangements have exposed particularly acute governance weaknesses across a number of other universities, prompting Universities UK, GuildHE and the Committee of University Chairs to publish a framework specifically addressing governance of franchise relationships. Years of inadequate board oversight of high-risk partnerships with private colleges have led to detailed OfS interventions, the possibility of new legislation, new reporting regimes, and tighter restrictions that erode institutional discretion.

The cases reveal boards that failed to understand or adequately scrutinise complex commercial arrangements with significant reputational and financial risks. These are not isolated incidents suggesting universal dysfunction. Many institutions govern themselves effectively. But neither are these outliers easily dismissed as uniquely problematic contexts. They represent structural vulnerabilities in current governance arrangements.

Common threads across these cases include boards being “managed” by executives rather than effectively overseeing them. This management takes multiple forms: control of information flows, discouraging of challenge through cultural pressure, and warning signs missed or dismissed. It is enabled by governing body members lacking independent sources of insight about institutional realities. The current model “works” when vice chancellors are confident, transparent, and competent, and boards are empowered and informed. It falters when executives are weak, insecure, incompetent, or occasionally dishonest – and when boards lack structural mechanisms to recognise they’re being given the runaround.

Recent survey evidence suggests governance challenges extend beyond high-profile cases. Most governors, understandably, feel loyalty to their institutions and may be reluctant to voice public criticism. Student governors, however, tend to be more candid about their experiences.

In mid-2025, Wonkhe surveyed student governors across 41 UK universities. The findings revealed patterns that illuminate broader governance dynamics. When asked about leadership that “routinely dominates discussions, controls narratives, or makes it difficult for governors to raise concerns,” 95 per cent reported experiencing this to some degree – 68 per cent “a lot” and 27 per cent “a little.” One governor noted: “You are told your job is to manage the VC and SMT but they manage the governors.”

The survey found systematic suppression of dissent, with over half reporting being “shut down, spoken over, or dismissed as obstructive” when challenging decisions. Information control proved critical – 54 per cent frequently experienced late papers or missing documentation, while 37 per cent received unclear financial reports.

Multiple respondents described a disconnect between meetings and reality: “The university that gets presented isn’t the university I was at as a student.” Crucially, only 32 per cent felt confident their governing body could identify serious institutional risks. One captured the dysfunction: “We’re not governors. We’re an audience.”

Further evidence comes from research by Steven Jones and Diane Harris for the Council for the Defence of British Universities. Interviewing governors across more than forty institutions, they found recurring cultural patterns: decision-making concentrated in the hands of a small inner circle of lay chairs and senior executives, information filtered or withheld, and formal meetings stage-managed around pre-determined outcomes.

While governing bodies are formally charged with holding leaders to account and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, in practice, their cultures can reinforce hierarchy and maximise compliance rather than enable robust scrutiny. Interviewees described being overwhelmed with paperwork and regulatory obligations that crowded out discussion of academic purpose, community engagement, and values. The result was not robust scrutiny but performative governance in which dissent was marginalised and executive control reinforced.

Composition emerged as a concern. Despite progress on diversity, positions of real influence were most often held by wealthy, retired men from corporate backgrounds. Recruitment to boards was frequently informal – the “tap on the shoulder” rather than open competition – raising questions about transparency, independence, and accountability. As one interviewee put it, appointments were often “convenient for the executive” rather than for the wider university community. Jones’ research suggests that even well-intentioned governors often find themselves sidelined, frustrated by opaque protocols and disempowering cultures.

These findings don’t suggest every institution experiences severe dysfunction. But they reveal how current structures create vulnerability to executive capture of governance processes. When boards depend entirely on management-filtered information, when challenge can be informally discouraged, when those experiencing institutional realities have limited voice, the conditions exist for governance breakdown even where individual governors possess relevant skills and good intentions.

The policy response to governance challenges follows a predictable pattern.

The post-16 education and skills white paper states that “governing bodies must ensure they have the diverse skills and capability to oversee strategy, plan prudently, understand and manage risk, challenge, deliver change and put in place sustainable business models.” It suggests governors should be “actively involved in financial management” and “challenge plans robustly where needed.” It adds that “all governing bodies should be “clear on their statutory and fiduciary responsibilities” with “focus on balancing teaching, research and civic activity.”

OfS’ draft strategy proposes ensuring “initial and ongoing regulatory tests are appropriately calibrated,” working with the sector to support “stronger understanding of our management and governance requirements,” and adopting “focused approach to monitoring and compliance where management and governance risks are most acute.” OfS will “increase regulatory requirements placed on institutions engaged in significant partnership activity” and “expand our data audit programme.”

The SFC’s expectations require mandatory external governance effectiveness reviews at least every five years, institutions must self-refer Financial Memorandum breaches, and the SFC will “increase engagement with both internal and external auditors to surface concerns early.” The framework emphasises Audit Committee independence, clear whistleblowing policies, and board training that may become mandatory.

Yet none of this would have been unfamiliar to readers of the Jarratt Report of 1985, which documented structural weaknesses that correspond closely to contemporary governance challenges – fragmented resource allocation, weak strategic planning, passive oversight bodies, and governing body authority eclipsed by executive dominance.

The emphasis on “robust challenge” is crucial – effective governance requires boards capable of challenging executive proposals rather than merely endorsing them.

This orthodox approach rests on three assumptions. First, that governance failures stem primarily from insufficient commercial expertise or financial management capability. Second, that enhanced monitoring and compliance systems can prevent future breakdowns. Third, that sector-led improvement through better training, clearer guidance, and professional development can strengthen governance culture.

These aren’t unreasonable responses. Skills matter. Monitoring serves purposes. Training has value. The Committee of University Chairs’ governance code review may generate useful recommendations. Supporting institutions to “assess and improve their own capabilities” addresses real needs.

Yet this approach has significant limitations. Most fundamentally, it misdiagnoses the core problem. Governance failures haven’t occurred because boards lacked commercially skilled members. The failures occurred because boards were systematically managed by executives, provided with incomplete or misleading information, and lacked structural mechanisms to access independent perspectives on institutional realities.

The emphasis on skills also reflects conceptual confusion about higher education institutions’ character. If they are fundamentally commercial enterprises requiring corporate governance the skills agenda makes sense. But if, as this paper argues, they are quasi-public institutions serving multiple constituencies with complex accountability relationships, commercial expertise may be insufficient or even inappropriate for governance work.

The regulatory intensification that accompanies skills-focused reform creates further problems. Each governance failure triggers more detailed reporting requirements, enhanced monitoring frameworks, and increasingly prescriptive guidance. In England, OfS has evolved from the light-touch market regulator envisioned in 2017 to an increasingly interventionist overseer. OfS strategy’s proposals for stricter regulatory tests, focused monitoring “where risks are most acute,” and expanded data audits continue this trajectory.

This regulatory ratchet reflects a fundamental policy dilemma. Higher education institutions can either develop genuine accountability through governance that commands public trust, or face escalating bureaucratic control as regulators respond to each crisis with expanded oversight powers. The current path leads toward greater direct state management of higher education – precisely the outcome that university autonomy was designed to prevent.

The persistence of governance challenges also creates acute political problems around future sector funding. Ministers facing pressure to support struggling universities confront a classic moral hazard dilemma – without governance reforms that command public confidence, securing additional investment becomes politically challenging.

Universities must make a fresh case for governing themselves responsibly if arguments for increased public investment are to be heard. Governance reform thus becomes a necessary condition for any future funding settlements, not merely an administrative improvement.

The traditional emphasis on recruiting governors with better skills and commercial expertise rests on a flawed theory of governance failure. It assumes the problem is technical capability, and so the solution follows logically – recruit more skilled governors, provide better training, ensure boards include members with “necessary business background.”

Evidence from recent governance breakdowns tells a different story. Dundee’s governing body included financially literate members. They had access to financial reports and risk assessments. Yet the board failed to prevent the crisis because executive management controlled information flows, discouraging challenge through cultural pressure, and board members lacked independent sources of insight about institutional realities.

This reveals the actual mechanism of governance failure. Boards can be “managed” through several interconnected dynamics:

• Information asymmetry: Governing bodies depend almost entirely on management-provided information. External governors typically visit campus for quarterly meetings, receiving papers prepared by executives. They have limited capacity to verify whether reports accurately reflect institutional conditions or independently assess strategic proposals. When management systematically presents optimistic scenarios or filters negative information, boards lack mechanisms to identify this.
• Cultural capture: Effective governance requires active challenge of executive proposals. Yet board cultures often discourage dissent, framing questions as disloyal or obstructive. Executives can reinforce this through subtle signals – responding defensively to questions, praising “constructive” governors who support proposals, creating meeting dynamics where challenge feels uncomfortable. Over time, board culture shifts from robust scrutiny to executive deference.
• Agenda control: Management typically sets board agendas, decides which issues warrant papers, and frames strategic choices. This procedural power enables executives to direct governing body attention toward preferred topics while limiting discussion of areas where scrutiny might prove uncomfortable. Governors may not even realise significant issues aren’t reaching the agenda.
• Social dynamics: University governing bodies typically include 20+ members meeting 4-6 times annually. This creates dynamics favouring cohesion over challenge. Dissenting voices can be isolated or marginalised. Individual governors may hesitate to question proposals when other board members appear supportive, particularly if they lack independent information suggesting problems.

The problem isn’t that governing bodies need better skills – it’s that they need different perspectives and independent information sources. Someone who has recently experienced the institution as a student or staff member brings fundamentally different knowledge than someone reviewing financial reports. They know when management presentations don’t match operational realities. They have networks providing information independent of executive channels. They experience different social pressures and incentives.

Recent polling reveals universities’ deepening disconnect from the communities they claim to serve. Public First research shows higher education ranking among the lowest public spending priorities, with only six per cent supporting increased university funding compared to 68 per cent prioritising the NHS. The UPP Foundation’s study of public attitudes to higher education exposes the underlying cause – 34 per cent of people have never visited a university, rising to 53 per cent among working-class communities.

This isn’t a failure of communication that can be remedied by better marketing. When a majority of the DE social group has never set foot on a higher education institution’s campus, the problem reflects a fundamental isolation from ordinary people’s lives and priorities. If higher education institutions expect to enjoy public legitimacy, they must embed genuine community participation within governance structures, creating institutional accountability mechanisms that give local voices real power over decisions affecting their areas.

Current governance arrangements create perverse incentives that deepen this disconnect. As documented in our paper Tooling Up, the sector rewards growth in numbers rather than alignment with national or local priorities – pushing institutions toward cheap-to-teach popular degrees over costly but strategically vital subjects, privileging full-time undergraduates over flexible or technical routes, and creating competition that destabilises regional providers without delivering the skills employers need.

This has been the natural consequence of what previous governments had asked for, but governing bodies now dominated by commercial expertise are likely to reinforce these market-driven behaviours, rather than challenging whether institutional strategies serve public purposes.

The post-16 white paper articulates a vision for higher education as “anchors for place, responding to local priorities and needs, working with partners locally.” Yet governing bodies dominated by external experts with limited connection to local communities or institutional realities are likely to struggle to achieve this. If higher education institutions are to function as genuine civic anchors, their governance must reflect that public character through structural participation of students, staff, and community members.

Traditional university governance operates on a fiction – that governors are objective independent figures serving only the institution’s interests. New governors are told they don’t represent students, staff, or their profession, but should exercise independent judgment. This sounds principled, but it obscures a crucial reality: different legitimate interests cannot be wished away.

Students have interests in educational quality and career prospects. Staff have interests in working conditions and academic freedom. Local communities have interests in graduate skills and institutional behaviour. These interests are real, legitimate, and sometimes conflicting.

The current model doesn’t eliminate these interests – it arguably privileges some while excluding others. When boards consist primarily of business leaders, their corporate assumptions about good governance and strategic thinking naturally shape decisions. These aren’t neutral judgments but reflect particular worldviews.

By insisting that governors don’t “represent” anyone, current arrangements prevent open recognition and reconciliation of different legitimate interests. Conflicts get suppressed rather than addressed. Executives can more easily claim proposals serve the institution when no structural voices articulate alternative perspectives.

Higher education institutions are not for-profit companies with clear shareholder interests – they’re quasi-public institutions serving multiple constituencies. The traditional induction process actually captures new governors into existing power structures. “You’re not here to represent X” can really mean “accept management’s framing as the only legitimate one.”

If we set the annual turnover of all of Liverpool’s universities alongside that of Liverpool City Council, the scales are strikingly similar. Yet, while city residents have the vote, scrutiny committees, and multiple ways to hold the council to account, students and staff at universities have no comparable stake in their institutions. That asymmetry matters. If universities expect to enjoy public legitimacy, they must walk the talk – renewing their social licence not just through glossy strategies but by embedding meaningful participative accountability.

A governance model that recognises, articulates, and creates processes to reconcile different legitimate interests would be more honest about what governance actually involves. It would enable boards to make genuinely informed decisions, balancing competing considerations, rather than pretending conflicts don’t exist until they erupt into crises that governing bodies failed to anticipate.

The Dutch experience offers instructive parallels. Before comprehensive governance reforms, Dutch educational institutions faced similar patterns – governance crises exposing weak oversight, executive dominance, and boards struggling to provide effective challenge.

The Netherlands’ quasi-public sector emerged from the country’s “pillarised” society, where religious groups built schools and hospitals serving public functions while remaining formally private. After 1945, the Netherlands expanded its welfare state through these hybrid institutions – operating with public money but with formal independence. Over time, that independence proved problematic.

In 2012, a massive Christian education conglomerate called Amarantis serving 30,000 students went bankrupt, requiring an €18 million government bailout. The parallels to recent UK cases are striking. Chairman Bert Molenkamp created an “angstcultuur” (fear culture), suppressing challenge. Multiple oversight bodies failed simultaneously. Financial mismanagement followed familiar patterns – unrealistic projections, inadequate board scrutiny, warning signs dismissed or ignored.

Dutch academic Rienk Goodijk’s analysis of such failures revealed the core problem. Private sector governance models were “blindly copied” to organisations operating in entirely different contexts. Unlike private companies with clear ownership and market disciplines, quasi-public organisations lacked ultimate accountability structures.

Goodijk identified four interconnected structural weaknesses. Information asymmetry left governing bodies dependent on management-filtered reports. A systematic lack of checks and balances enabled dominant management to operate without effective constraint. Uncertainty about governance purpose led to a narrow financial focus rather than a broader assessment of public value. An accountability vacuum meant governing bodies themselves faced little scrutiny of their performance.

Crucially, Goodijk argued that orthodox solutions alone couldn’t address these failures. The problems lay fundamentally in human behaviour and organisational culture rather than technical deficiency. Effective governance requires “courage, time, and practical wisdom rather than just professional knowledge” – a fundamental shift from traditional emphasis on commercial expertise toward capabilities suited to quasi-public contexts.

The Netherlands’ Scientific Council reinforced this analysis. Governance failures weren’t caused by lack of commercial skill, but absence of meaningful internal challenge. The remedy wasn’t more commercial expertise – it was more countervailing power.

The 2016 Amendment of Education Laws to Strengthen Governance Power of Educational Institutions represented the Dutch government’s systematic response to failures like Amarantis. Rather than simply tightening regulatory oversight or demanding better skills, the legislation embedded stakeholder participation and transparency requirements directly into institutional governance structures.

The law introduced several key reforms reflecting stakeholder governance principles. Board appointments must now occur “based on publicly announced appointment profiles” with “involved participation bodies having an advisory voice in establishing those profiles and in appointment and dismissal of board members.” A “reporting obligation for internal governors to the Education Inspectorate when there is reasonable suspicion of mismanagement” created formal whistleblower protections.

Most significantly, the legislation strengthened student and staff participation rights beyond mere consultation. Education councils (similar to UK academic boards) became formal participation bodies with real decision-making power. Student representation councils gained consent rights over key budget lines. These changes reflected recognition that effective governance requires genuine stakeholder engagement rather than tokenistic representation.

The 2021 evaluations of this legislation provide crucial evidence about stakeholder governance potential. The evaluations found that “since implementation… a positive influence on the quality of governance culture could be observed.” Specific improvements were documented across multiple areas, with “consent rights on budget main lines” developing “positively in recent years,” giving students and staff genuine influence over institutional financial decisions – precisely the kind of early intervention mechanism that might have prevented disasters like Amarantis.

The Dutch experience demonstrates that embedding stakeholder participation doesn’t paralyse decision-making or compromise institutional effectiveness. Rather, it creates structural mechanisms for challenge that don’t depend on executive good faith, diversifies information sources beyond management channels, and grounds governance in operational realities rather than abstracted financial models.

The UK’s international commitments through the Bologna Process provide an additional lens on reform. Despite Brexit, the UK remains a member of the European Higher Education Area alongside 48 other countries, committed to shared fundamental values. These explicitly link institutional autonomy to democratic participation, committing member states to ensure staff and student representation as full partners in the governance of autonomous higher education institutions. Rather than leading European thinking on governance, the UK risks becoming a non-compliant outlier, undermining commitments it has formally endorsed while other nations embrace and embed the democratic principles that give institutional autonomy its legitimacy.

The Dutch experience offers principles for governance reform that differ fundamentally from orthodox approaches. Rather than adapting private sector templates or intensifying regulatory compliance, this alternative recognises distinctive requirements of organisations serving public purposes while maintaining operational autonomy.

Central to this approach is understanding that effective governance of quasi-public institutions requires countervailing power, not just better skills. When boards depend entirely on executive-filtered information and lack structural mechanisms for independent challenge, adding more commercially skilled governors doesn’t solve the problem. What’s needed are governance arrangements that create multiple information sources, diverse perspectives that resist executive capture, and stakeholder voices that ground decisions in institutional and community realities.

Strategic partnership between governing bodies and senior management differs from traditional arm’s-length oversight. It involves substantive engagement with policy development while maintaining independence through diverse information sources and stakeholder connections. Governors function as partners in developing organisational strategy rather than distant monitors of management performance. But this partnership works only when boards have the structural capacity to challenge executive proposals through access to independent information and perspectives.

Triangular governance systematically incorporates stakeholder voices as structural elements rather than consultative additions. Students, staff, and community representatives have genuine influence over governance processes, not tokenistic representation. This creates the countervailing power necessary for effective oversight. When executive management knows their proposals will face scrutiny from representatives who experience institutional realities firsthand and have independent information networks, the dynamic shifts from board management toward genuine accountability.

Societal anchoring recognises that quasi-public organisations derive legitimacy from public trust and social value creation rather than purely financial performance. Governing bodies must assess whether institutions serve public purposes and respond to community needs, not merely whether they generate operating surpluses. Community representatives chosen for understanding of local needs and public service commitment ground governance in this broader accountability.

In this model, governing bodies would include substantial student and staff representation with real influence over key decisions. Community representatives would be chosen for understanding of local needs and public service commitment. Academic staff would have stronger voices in governance processes affecting educational and research activities. Information flows would be diversified beyond management-provided reports.

Polling data from Power to Change provides compelling context. Involvement in participatory organisations increases trust in government by 16-17 points, with the effect strengthening through multiple memberships. This demonstrates why governance reform isn’t just an internal university matter but connects to broader issues of legitimacy and trust.

The case for stakeholder participation is strengthened by governance research challenging conventional assumptions about board effectiveness. Academic work on nonprofit governance identifies three distinct modes boards must perform: fiduciary (oversight, compliance, financial stewardship), strategic (setting priorities, deploying resources), and what scholars term “generative” governance.

Generative governance involves critical thinking, questioning assumptions, and framing problems in insightful ways. It asks probing foundational questions: “What is our fundamental purpose?” and “How does this decision align with our core values?” Rather than addressing symptoms, this mode delves into root causes to find more effective, long-term solutions. It involves scenario planning, ethical reflection, and active consideration of how decisions affect employees, students, and communities.

The concept is introduced in Governance as leadership: reframing the work of nonprofit boards, which explores the dangers of preferring harmony and congeniality over productivity and candour, and the way that inhibits the type of meaningful discussions necessary for addressing complex issues. It looks at exploring sensitive subjects, probing, testing, and debating propositions and maintaining civility – all while avoiding dysfunctional politeness and groupthink: “As the board becomes more experienced and comfortable with the generative mode, there will be less need for such ‘contrivances,’ and robust discussions will occur more naturally.”

Crucially, the Dutch research suggests that governors whose experience centres on being students, staff, or community members are particularly suited for generative governance because it requires creativity, deeper engagement, and ability to see beyond apparent metrics in dashboards or risk registers. Their lived experience of institutional realities provides exactly the grounded perspective enabling boards to move beyond superficial monitoring toward genuine understanding of organisational purpose and challenges.

The financial and regulatory pressures facing universities make generative governance more essential, not less. When institutions face unprecedented challenges, boards need fundamental questioning and root-cause analysis that stakeholder governors are uniquely positioned to provide. Systematically including student and staff voices in governance processes improves rather than compromises board effectiveness by bringing exactly this generative capacity to institutional decision-making.

The University of Twente is a technical university located in Enschede, Netherlands, serving approximately 12,000 students. Founded in 1961, UT positions itself as an entrepreneurial university focusing on technology, engineering, and applied sciences, with strong emphasis on innovation and practical application.

UT operates a comprehensive multi-level participation system with extensive institutional support. Students and staff democratically elect representatives to bodies ranging from programme committees in each degree course through faculty councils to the institution-wide university council.

Each participation body holds three fundamental rights: consent (some proposals cannot proceed without approval), advice (bodies can provide binding recommendations on some issues), and initiative (they can propose new policies independently on some issues).

The university provides substantial infrastructure to make participation effective:

• Training and development: Open enrollment courses cover meeting techniques, participation legislation and regulations, and effective council operation. Tailored courses are available for specific councils, with central funding for open programs and council-funded customised training.
• Resources and support: Each participation body receives dedicated budgets, independent secretariat support, and statutory information rights. The university provides facilities and administrative backing to enable councils to function effectively.
• Annual participation events: UT hosts yearly conferences bringing together management, council members, and support staff for workshops on participation themes, networking, and idea-sharing.
• Communications: A dedicated participation magazine showcases stories of student and staff representatives, explains how participation works, and profiles council activities.

Among students, elections generate substantive policy debate between two student parties. UReka campaigns on detailed education policy positions including study requirements, mental health services, and entrepreneurial identity. DAS (De Ambitieuze Student) represents “ambitious students” seeking development beyond studies, emphasising flexible pathways and campus community culture.

This participatory infrastructure creates institutional capacity for what governance scholars identify as generative governance – representatives who understand operational realities while bringing external perspectives and accountability.

Enhanced participation would accelerate sound governance – while initial debates might extend meeting times, representatives’ forensic budget analysis would prevent expensive reversals and legal challenges that plague top-down decisions. Student and staff oversight would regularly identify financial discrepancies, procurement irregularities, and compliance breaches early in the decision-making process, enabling swift corrections rather than expensive regulatory interventions later.

When participation councils deployed impact assessments for strategic decisions, they would engage directly with external stakeholders – local communities, employers, and civic organisations – ensuring decisions reflected genuine public needs rather than internal institutional assumptions. The external engagement would create robust accountability mechanisms that strengthened public trust and prevented the reputational damage that comes from decisions made in isolation from community concerns.

Participation would streamline academic governance by incorporating diverse expertise from the outset, reducing the need for costly policy reversals when implementation revealed unforeseen problems. Participative scrutiny would enhance decision quality – students’ evidence-based challenges to curriculum decisions would often identify pedagogical improvements and accessibility issues that saved resources later, while staff oversight would prevent discriminatory practices that trigger expensive legal challenges.

The participatory process would mandate regular engagement with external professional bodies, employers, and community groups, ensuring academic programmes responded to real-world needs and maintained professional accreditation standards. This external accountability would create ongoing public value debates about university priorities, with participation councils regularly hosting public forums where community members directly questioned institutional decisions about local impact, environmental commitments, and social responsibility.

Participatory oversight would create proactive compliance systems – student and staff representatives’ systematic auditing would catch problems early, avoiding the massive costs of formal investigations, funding clawbacks, and reputational damage that resulted from hidden misconduct. Research governance through participation would dramatically improve institutional efficiency by preventing research misconduct, ethical breaches, and funding misuse before they escalated into regulatory sanctions.

These bodies would stage regular public engagement sessions where research priorities faced direct community scrutiny, ensuring academic work addressed genuine social challenges and maintained public support for university funding. Local residents, patient groups, environmental activists, and industry representatives would participate directly in research strategy discussions, creating dynamic public value debates about institutional priorities.

This community engagement would transform universities from ivory towers into responsive public institutions, with participation strategies providing statutory mechanisms for citizens to challenge research directions, demand transparency about commercial partnerships, and ensure academic resources served broader social goods rather than narrow institutional interests.

Such an approach could be phased in with a draft higher education governance framework that would allow for learning and improvement along the way to a new model. A pilot programme of 5-10 volunteer universities could trial different models over three years, backed by capacity-building funding.

The framework would apply to all degree-awarding providers – including private institutions, alternative providers, and overseas campuses – on the principle that public powers require public accountability.

Then a roadmap to implementing a new framework across the sector could look like the one below.

Rather than legislating, government could publish clear expectations covering representation, transparency, and accountability. Higher education institutions would be encouraged – and supported – to adopt the framework voluntarily, and the success or otherwise of this approach will inform government about whether further legislation would be needed in the future.

Under a central new model, allowing for some variation in different types of providers, governing bodies would remain legally responsible for institutional strategy, finances, and compliance, but would be slimmed to no more than 16 members. Membership would be rebalanced to include around 20 per cent student representatives elected democratically, 20 per cent staff representatives spanning academic, professional, and support staff, and 20 per cent community representatives chosen for local knowledge and public service commitment. Remaining members would be appointed for expertise but required to demonstrate understanding of educational purposes. All governors would serve staggered four-year terms with mandatory training on governance, stakeholder engagement, and public value creation.

Education councils would replace senates and academic boards, shifting from advisory forums to bodies with genuine decision-making power over academic matters. Their composition would be one-third students (UG, PGT, PGR), one-third academic staff, and one-third professional staff, all democratically elected. Councils would hold consent powers over academic regulations, degree standards, curriculum frameworks, academic appointments and promotions, and key policies affecting teaching and research. They would hold statutory rights to information.

Alongside this, institutions would be expected to adopt transparency and accountability practices, including publishing governing body papers, decisions and minutes (only narrowly redacted), conducting annual culture audits through independent stakeholder surveys, producing detailed executive pay disclosures, and publishing regular community impact assessments.

To deepen participative accountability, the framework would require annual public meetings where governing bodies report to local communities, student and staff assemblies with direct questioning rights for senior management, and statutory consultation processes on major local decisions. Some of this already happens in the sector, but far from consistently across institutions and issues. These participatory mechanisms would bring universities into line with wider quasi-public bodies where direct accountability is already embedded.

Implementation would be phased, beginning with the largest universities (25,000+ students) where failures have the most systemic impact, and extending to all providers within three years. Universities would submit governance transition plans showing how they intend to adopt the standards in ways that fit their traditions and contexts. To support this, around £10 million in capacity-building funding should be provided for training new governors, building participation systems, resourcing independent secretariats, and strengthening governance culture.

Enforcement would be gradual and proportionate. Initially, non-compliance would trigger support and enhanced monitoring. Over time, persistent failure could escalate to public censure, financial penalties, or – ultimately – suspension of degree-awarding powers. To protect those exercising oversight, stakeholder governors would have legal immunity for good-faith performance of duties, alongside whistleblower protections for reporting governance failures.

The overall aim is to balance autonomy with accountability. By starting with a voluntary standards framework, the reforms create the conditions for institutions to strengthen governance themselves. But the threat of mandation ensures this isn’t optional window dressing – if progress stalls, governments will legislate. The framework therefore preserves institutional diversity while embedding the principles of stakeholder governance, transparency, and public value that are essential to renewing universities’ social licence.

Neither the sector nor its governance is experiencing a universal crisis. Many institutions govern themselves effectively, navigate financial pressures competently, and maintain strong relationships with their communities. But recent challenges at several high-profile institutions, combined with broader financial pressures and changing public expectations, have brought governance to the centre of policy attention.

This creates an opportunity for serious thinking about the fundamental questions that orthodox reform avoids, about who higher education serves, to whom it should be accountable, and how governance structures can create genuine rather than performative oversight while balancing operational autonomy with public accountability.

These proposals may seem radical in the higher education context but they align with changes in the wider public realm.

The Westminster government’s Football Governance Act hardwires fan participation into club governance in a way long absent from English football. It mandates the creation of “shadow boards” of supporters at every club, gives them formal consultation rights over key decisions such as stadium moves or changes to club identity, and ensures ownership and governance structures cannot bypass the communities whose loyalty sustains the sport. The legislation reframes supporters not as passive consumers but as legitimate stakeholders with rights to be heard and respected. The government’s willingness to mandate stakeholder participation in football demonstrates this isn’t a radical idea – it’s becoming mainstream in how we govern institutions with public functions.

The Pride in Place strategy goes further. “This is about local people calling the shots,” the Secretary of State writes. The strategy requires all local authorities to establish effective neighbourhood governance, with decision-making sitting with neighbourhood boards that include residents, local businesses, and community organisations. “Policies are too often done ‘to’ communities, rather than ‘with’ them,” the document states. The solution is structural participation with genuine power.

Higher education institutions are quasi-public bodies. Integrating balance into their funding models, accountability systems and corporate governance structures shouldn’t be something we wait for think tanks to funnel through into Labour policy in a second term. It should be something the sector accelerates now, to prove it has the imagination and courage to embody public service delivery.

The choice facing higher education is whether to seize this moment for serious thinking about governance, or to continue the familiar cycle that has characterised the sector for decades. The latter path is well-worn and leads toward de facto state control disguised as regulatory compliance. The former requires imagination and political will, but it’s the only path that preserves what makes higher education institutions valuable – their capacity to serve public purposes while maintaining the independence that enables them to challenge, question, and advance understanding.