2014: a Year of ‘Consolidation’ in Britain

By Nigel Thrift. For British higher education, 2014 will be a period of consolidation. Specifically, I think we will see four trends grow as budgets tighten, as the system becomes more market oriented, and as universities face more pressure to produce better education and research with less resources. These developments mean more universities will be forced to ask themselves whether they have the right scale of operations to succeed.
First, there will be much more competition around the student experience. As more and more students find themselves shopping around for the universities that offer the best value for the cost, not surprisingly they will demand more of institutions. Read more...