As 2025 winds down, a familiar tension has resurfaced in UK higher education. Universities are, simultaneously, national assets that governments under-appreciate and institutions that sit uncomfortably in public estimation. Both claims appear true. And this contradiction has defined much of 2025.
The Wonkhe newsletter this week frames it starkly: higher education has been given less than it needs but more than many would have liked it to get. Political courage was required to commit to fee rises. Skills ministers have spoken of sub-par governance. The sector has received conditional benevolence with strings attached and finger-wagging alongside it.
Meanwhile, from across the Atlantic, the ghost of Christmas yet to come has arrived in the form of an American higher education system facing outright hostility from its federal government. The proposed ‘compact’ demanding universities screen international students for anti-American values and eliminate departments hostile to conservative ideas reads like dystopian fiction, yet it is current reality. Ted Mitchell of the American Council on Education has been urging his UK colleagues to take note.
It would be tempting to dismiss the American experience as an outlier, a product of political circumstances that do not apply here. But the newsletter’s observation deserves serious attention: many of the preconditions for an assault on universities exist in the UK too.
What we have tried before
This week saw the announcement of a new initiative from Universities UK to rebuild the sector’s reputation over the long term. The instinct is understandable and the effort sincere. Yet those of us who have worked in higher education for any length of time might recognise a familiar pattern.
Reputation projects are not new. The sector has been attempting to ‘land the message’ about its contribution for decades. Reports have been commissioned, campaigns launched, impact stories collated. Universities have economic impact assessments, graduate employment data, research excellence metrics and case studies demonstrating societal benefit. The evidence is abundant. The problem is not a shortage of evidence.
The question I find myself sitting with, as another year ends, is whether the reputation problem is actually about communication at all. Or whether something more structural is at work.
The gap between story and experience
Universities tell one story about themselves. It is a story of transformation, of research that changes lives, of graduates who go on to contribute to society, of anchor institutions that sustain local economies. Much of this story is true. But it is not the only story.
There is another story told in communities where a university’s growth has coincided with housing pressures and displacement. Another told by graduates carrying debt into a labour market where the promised returns feel increasingly uncertain. Another told by staff experiencing restructuring and redundancy whilst executive remuneration attracts media attention. Another told by students who feel more like customers than members of an academic community.
I am not suggesting these experiences represent the whole truth either. They do not. Universities are complicated institutions doing important work under significant constraints. But when the story institutions tell about themselves diverges too far from the story people are living, reputation campaigns struggle to find purchase.
The American experience is instructive here. Ted Mitchell’s advice to UK colleagues included listening to critics and identifying the weaknesses in the system: the things universities are rightly criticised for. The emphasis on ‘rightly’ deserves attention. It suggests that some criticism is legitimate and that addressing it requires something beyond better communication.
National value and local presence
One tension that has become clearer to me over the years is the distinction between being valued nationally and being valued locally. Universities can demonstrate enormous aggregate contribution to the economy, to research, to graduate outcomes. These statistics are genuine and significant. But aggregate contribution does not automatically translate into felt benefit for specific communities.
A university may be an anchor institution in economic terms whilst being experienced by its neighbours primarily as a landlord, a traffic generator, or a source of weekend noise. A university may produce world-leading research whilst its local community struggles to see how that research connects to their lives. A university may transform individual lives through education whilst the wider town wonders what the institution has done for them.
None of this negates the genuine value universities provide. But it might help explain why that value is not always recognised. The story universities tell is often pitched at a level of abstraction (regional economic impact, national research excellence, sector-wide statistics) that does not resonate with how people experience institutions day to day.
What 2025 has shown us
This year has brought into sharp relief the contradiction at the heart of higher education’s position. Ministers have increased fees and extended funding, recognising that universities cannot continue on a declining unit of resource. The same ministers have attached conditions and expressed criticism, reflecting a sense that the sector has not earned unconditional support.
The post-16 white paper speaks of placing higher education at the heart of local skills ecosystems and regional economies. Yet the financial pressures facing institutions are driving course closures and consolidation that may reduce their local presence. The bifurcation in recruitment patterns, with research-intensive universities growing whilst others contract, raises questions about which communities will retain meaningful access to higher education and which will not.
These tensions are not new, but they have intensified. And they suggest that the reputation problem cannot be solved by reputation strategies alone.
Questions as we enter 2026
I do not have a prescription to offer. The challenges facing the sector are genuine and the people working to address them are doing so with integrity and purpose. But as I step back from the policy detail and the immediate pressures, some questions seem worth holding.
If the sector has been trying to improve its reputation for decades with limited success, what might we learn from that? Is the problem primarily one of communication, or does it point to something about how universities relate to the communities they serve?
If people are sceptical of higher education despite the evidence of its contribution, what stories are they living that diverge from the story we tell? And what would it mean to take those stories seriously rather than dismissing them as misunderstanding?
If the American experience shows what happens when a sector loses public confidence, what early interventions might prevent a similar trajectory here? And are those interventions primarily about better messaging, or about different practices?
These are not questions with easy answers. They may not have answers at all in any definitive sense. But they feel like the right questions to carry into the new year.
A final thought for the year
There is something to be said for humility as we approach these challenges. Universities are good at telling people about their value. We are perhaps less practised at listening to what people tell us about their experience of that value, or its absence.
The most effective institutions I have encountered over the years are not necessarily those with the most polished communications strategies. They are the ones where the story told and the story lived are recognisably the same. Where staff experience reflects institutional values. Where students feel like participants rather than consumers. Where local communities see the university as part of them rather than adjacent to them.
Building that kind of alignment is harder than launching a reputation campaign. It requires changes that are uncomfortable and slow. It means acknowledging legitimate criticism rather than dismissing it as misunderstanding. It demands consistency between what we say and what we do.
Perhaps that is where genuine reputation is built. Not in the stories we tell about ourselves, but in the stories others tell about their experience of us.
With that, I shall sign off until the new year. Thank you to everyone who has read these Saturday reflections throughout 2025. I hope they have offered something useful, even when, perhaps especially when, they have raised more questions than answers.
Wishing you rest, perspective and a good start to 2026.