New podcast looks ahead to 2025

In the latest edition of the QAA podcast, our Chief Executive Vicki Stott talks with Paul Greatrix – who last month retired from his position as Registrar at the University of Nottingham at the end of a 36-year career in higher education.

Vicki and Paul consider the changes that the sector has gone through over the last few decades and the challenges it faces today, as they anticipate the developments ahead in 2025.

"The scale of everything is bigger," says Paul. "And the regulation is massive compared to what it was."

Paul observes that one of the biggest quality issues to have emerged in recent years has been raised by the significant growth in franchised provision.

"As soon as you introduce any distance between the awarding body and the delivery agent, you are having to make up an awful lot in terms of oversight – which does need active attention," he says. "You can't just do these things at the margins and think: Great, what a money spinner, we can really coin it in here, and we don't need to make any effort!"

He adds that, as financial pressures upon institutions have increased, so "the desire to find new ways to make money easily" has also grown. He observes that, since 2017's Higher Education Reform Act, the expansion of the sector has seen more smaller providers looking for larger partners to validate their provision. 

"It was a very different market from 2017 onwards that fostered that kind of cut-and-thrust approach," he says.

He also recalls that some years back a number of issues identified by QAA as arising from transnational provision "ran the risk of bringing the whole of UK higher education into disrepute". 

Vicki notes that, during Paul's time there, Nottingham had become one of the first UK institutions to open a major transnational campus – and asks what lessons he'd learnt from that experience.

"It would always be the University's courses, delivered by people who one way or another would be part of the University," Paul says. "It would all happen directly under the University of Nottingham's name and it would follow the same broad curriculum, achieve the same learning outcomes and directly comparable standards. And the quality of experience would be as close to the UK experience as it could conceivably be."

He advises those thinking about such provision that "you've got to go into it with your eyes open, don't underestimate the level of cost required… and you've got to be in it for the long term".

Vicki says that, wherever and however provision is delivered, she fears that quality might start to feel like a problem for the sector to solve rather than a core principle of what we do – or indeed a thing whose outcomes we might celebrate.

"It remains absolutely central to what universities and colleges do," Paul says. "It is about the quality of the experience – the educational experience and the wider student experience – and the standard of the awards that are issued by those institutions."

He also stresses the continuing need to ensure the voices of students are at the heart of the ongoing development of the sector, and the value of extracurricular activities in enriching the learner experience and learner outcomes, and of drawing employers into delivery.

Vicki and Paul go on to discuss the challenges and opportunities raised by such hot topics as the lifelong learning agenda – and the importance of robust credit transfer mechanisms – and the proliferation of artificial intelligence.

Paul supposes that the rise of AI has returned much-needed attention to the question of assessment.

"There's been far too little time thinking about assessment, what it's intended to achieve, and how it needs to be reconfigured every single year," he says. "It's so fundamental, yet it's always the thing that's at the back of the queue. Even curriculum redesign is more sexy. I think this prompts a much greater focus on it. And it's a golden opportunity for academics to engage with their students, to say here's a new challenge which is requiring us to rethink everything. We need your help to do this, because otherwise we ain't going to be able to do it properly."

Vicki agrees that we are now seeing people being far more creative in assessment design – that assessment can become less about the regurgitation of facts than about the demonstration of skills in the application of knowledge. 

"That allows us to educate people in a way that embraces technology, is future-proof and forward-thinking, and satisfies the local economic agenda and the kind of policy articulations that we're hearing from the government at the moment," she says.

They conclude their conversation by considering the future of the sector and the "deep anxiety" around the "perfect storm" of financial pressures currently affecting the sector.

Paul recalls the similar resourcing crises that providers have faced over the past few decades, and observes that for the most part they survived and thrived. 

"No matter what the challenges, universities are incredibly resilient and resourceful places," he says. "They're full of the brightest people on the planet, and are able to respond and change and adapt and flex. It may not feel like it now, but I think there are real grounds for optimism... Where there are problems, collectively acting together as institutions and agencies, we can overcome them and create a brighter future."

QAA podcasts can be found on Buzzsprout and other popular streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. On these platforms, you can explore our full catalogue of podcasts, whose recent topics include awarding gaps, academic integrity, evaluation, competence-based education, work-based learning, embedding employability, the TEF, student engagement and the Quality Code.