Charles Knight, Director of Educational Excellence and Student Success at Advance HE, discusses some of the challenges facing organisations when (re)designing higher education.

The provocation we need to sit with 

Across the sector, the workforce conversation has shifted from “how do we become a bit more efficient?” to “what can we still reliably deliver, and for whom?” This is a hard but necessary conversation to have with leadership teams and with hard-working colleagues. 

In England, the Office for Students has been blunt about the outlook: its May 2025 analysis found that 43% of in-scope providers forecast a deficit for 2024-25, with surpluses and liquidity expected to decline. In its November 2025 update, it went further: without mitigating action, 45% of institutions in the analysis faced deficits in 2025-26, and “nearly one in six” were modelled as having under 30 days’ liquidity.  

Recent Universities UK analysis argues that fee uplifts mainly maintain real-terms income rather than reverse past erosion, while other policies, such as the international student levy and cost pressures, still worsen the aggregate outlook over the rest of the decade.  

So, the provocation for our webinar is simple: the question is no longer whether we need trade-offs. It’s whether we are making them deliberately or drifting into them by default.  

Capacity is not a headcount question 

Higher education involves a large number of people. In 2022-23, UK universities employed about 398,170 staff (excluding atypical workers), with academics making up just over half. This scale is important because “workforce design” isn’t just a technical HR task; it shapes how a university organises its ability to fulfill its mission, meet regulations, support students and respond swiftly to external changes. It reflects what the institution values. 

Assumptions are shifting as student recruitment becomes more unpredictable, especially for business models heavily dependent on international fee income. Regulators have consistently highlighted concerns about recruitment uncertainty and the sector’s vulnerability where international recruitment dominates, along with the practical challenge of whether institutions possess the necessary skills and capacity to implement operational changes.  

At the same time, there are strong signals of shifting student behaviours. UCAS reported record acceptances in 2025 and highlighted a growing proportion of school leavers living at home while studying, reflecting affordability pressures and changing expectations of “the student experience”. If more students are commuting, working more hours and interacting differently with campus services, then “capacity” needs to be designed around the reality of demand, not around historic structures.  

From incremental efficiency to deliberate design 

Many institutions have already implemented well-known strategies such as cost-reduction initiatives, course closures, asset sales, hiring freezes and a ‘do more with less’ mindset. However, while these incremental measures are often necessary in the short term, they can gradually erode the institution’s capacity: decision-making becomes sluggish, handoffs increase, accountability becomes less clear, and essential work maintaining quality and student support often goes unnoticed until it fails.  

This is where organisational design becomes a strategic discipline. Done well, it forces a higher quality conversation than “how many posts can we afford?” It asks what must be true for your strategy to work, and what configuration of roles, decision rights, processes, and communities of practice makes that possible. Who are you going to be? 

Similarly, workforce planning involves more than just creating a future organisational chart. It balances supply and demand and is directly connected to the mission and strategic objectives. Under limited conditions, this connection can determine whether a redesign is justified for growth or if reactive cuts are necessary.  

The hard choices are design choices 

When we say, “workforce trade-offs”, we often default to volume. But the most consequential choices are usually structural: 

• If growth assumptions are optimistic (a risk the regulator has explicitly flagged), what are the minimum viable capabilities you will protect in teaching quality, assessment integrity, student support and so on? 
• Where are roles duplicating each other because coordination mechanisms are weak? Do you have multiple teams doing similar work, or academic and professional services each compensating for gaps elsewhere?  
• Where have you inadvertently created “fragility hotspots”, single points of failure in timetabling, admissions, exams, safeguarding, placements, or specialist student support because posts have been reduced without redesigning the end-to-end service?  

And what about shared services and partnership approaches? There is renewed momentum behind collaboration. Jisc and UUK leaders have argued that sector-wide partnership working and shared services can unlock savings and scale what already works.   

But serious commentators have also challenged whether “back office” consolidation reliably delivers benefits without robust evidence, the right operating model and a clear-eyed view of implementation complexity. The point isn’t to be for or against any one model, it’s to choose deliberately, based on what you need the organisation to be able to do.  

(Re)designing higher education Member Benefit webinar 

This is exactly why Advance HE is creating space through our “(Re)designing higher education” Member Benefit for an honest, practical conversation about workforce design and institutional capacity. 

Via a webinar on 18 March 2026, we’ll move beyond generic efficiency narratives and focus on the real design questions: how roles and structures are shifting across academic and professional services, what “capacity” should mean in your context, and how to make organisational choices that strengthen delivery and resilience in conditions of constraint.  

If you’re currently navigating redesign, considering new operating models, or trying to reconcile your mission with the limits of your resource base, this session is for you.