I had to duck out of afternoon sessions yesterday to speak with Educause on potential areas of collaboration which was fruitful, but meant I missed HESPA content.
Back on it first thing this morning though between calls

😉

This event has been so intensive there’s not time for a social aspect, so here’s a view of Warwick Castle;

Session 1
HESPA Updates
1. There’s a new HEPSA working group on Transparency and Increased understanding of HESA policy and practice. It has 5 broad aims, in summary to enahance HESA data collection and ownward use. Seems a good link to the planned Jisc / HESA Business Intelligence Service. Here are those broad aims;

Capture and application of ‘data intelligence’
Improving support for HEIs during the data preview process
Promoting use of corrected data
Improving quality of supporting information
Influencing onward use of data

2. There’s a HESPA coordinated training initiative running events to support the planning community under;
HESA for planners (3 topics, 16 events)
Statistics for planners
And under discussion;
Leadership development (via LFHE)
BI, visualisation, performance monitoring, data management

Again these seem a great opportunity for collaboration with Jisc and perhaps as part of a national business intelligence competency centre. I spoke with a number of HESPA colleagues yesterday and highlighted the opportunities technology can bring for communication, coaching and even training. We may explore the use of WebEx type content delivery to the HESPA community. Watch the BI National Service initiative for this.

3. HESPA / HEFCE biannual meetings
Self explanatory I think!

4. Collaborations by Jackie Njoroge
Features Jisc first and foremost(?!) mentioning my meeting this afternoon with the HESPA Exec and HESA, HEDIIP and various sector reviews.

We then heard the feedback from delegate dinner tables about the conference. Hugely positive and I’d echo all of that. Nice that my suggestion on use of technologies to promote communications made the plenary and happy to work with HESPA to explore the opportunities.

The speakers yesterday were most insightful, inspirational and with gravitas. There was call from a sponsor to include more content from the commercial sector. This is something I have on the wish list for the JISC BI initiative. There are likely to be a lot of lessons we could learn from one another. The art of the possible …. what can the new technologies achieve beyond the day to day grind of providing a planning service.

I gathered some great insight on the latter yesterday. Planners frustrations at responding to requests for information. These are often fired back to query the data, the evidence, the methods, used out of context causing more queries, poorly expressed sometimes requiring a total restart, being told the conclusions wanted and asked to manipulate the data and more besides. Seems to me there’s an opportunity for a national dashboard service to handle much of this ‘heavy lift’ in terms of technically providing the right dashboards at the right time to the right people with defined data vocabularies, supporting the consumers in data lieracies and the inference they can draw, transparency and standardisation and perhaps the opportunity to self build / amend queries with safety built in. This could free off planner resource to work on higher level activities. These people are after all the sectors frontline data scientists and we all know that’s the worlds sexiest job – right?!

Session 2
Nigel Thrift, VC Warwick
Implementing a vision
On joining in 2006 Warwick had lost much confidence due to a failed attempt to set up a campus in Singapore. It needed putting back on the attack. A 12 month exercise achieved a new vision importantly with buy in. Nothing unusual in the goals…. world leader, high quality, internationalism, stakeholders, financial sustainability. Implementation was crucial and the planning office was integral. Warwick are VERY KEEN ON ANALYTICS. It’s as much an art as a science. It is CRUCIAL. Without it you only think you know what is going on!
Data and analytics and BI is reflected in Jisc strategic impact areas;

· Research enablement
· Learning, teaching and the digital student experience
· Sector and enterprise efficiency
· Collaboration and internationalisation
· Open agenda
· Data and analytics
· Digital translation and transformation from other sectors
· Institutional and academic leadership in the digital age
· Cyber security and access and identity management (AIM)
· Digital standards and policies at UK/ European/ international level

Also in our organisational structure. We are recruiting a director of data and analytics, closing date 8 March. Do take a look.

KPIs at Warwick include research grant income, 139 million which is 86% up on previous years. Spend of 50 – 75 million million a year since 2006 on new buildings. Quality of undergradiate students attracted – 97% are AAB. Clearly no impact here of the UCAS trend reported yesterday of BTEC influence.

Implementation characteristics include
International network
Joint professorships
Joint senior management
Actual and virtual mobility
Research income
Joint appointments (ability to work in Warwick, Malaysia, Australia, etc etc is appealing to some)
Meaningful Industrial Partnerships eg National Automotive Innovation Campus

Nigel forecasts that small research intensive institutions will not survive. He classes Warwick as medium sized. Expect mergers / takeovers to carry on as research intensive or changes in mission.

Coventry VC; Affect of removal of the SNC Cap; the cap protected some HEIs. The sector has a track recod of taking changes and turning them into opportunities. Expect a couple of years to see new models and ways of engagement, many issues eg blended learning will receive a spur on as a result of this.

Can Universities still ‘try new things out’, have they the space to allocate time, energy and interests. In essence I think can Universaities still innovate? VC Warwiock states the need for income sources to enter into projects. Underlying is the ability to generate the income. Without that you will be restrained by circumstances. The income genberation is essential. Budget 18-10 million a year for room to maneouvre.

VC Coventry – the surplus generation isn’t always where you’d expect. EG 7-10% turnover is quite normal, but needs awareness and managing. Coventry know which courses are producing surplus and how much. Have a RAG system. Seems a key area for Jisc and the BI initiative but to do this requires ‘local live data’ not 18 month old HESA data. Interesting challenges.

Session 3
The future of funding in HE – a panel session with Mario ferelli, Neil Surman, Derek Ross, Paul Clark, Simon Jennings

I have to say there has been a very high profile and standard of speaker at this event. Multiple plenaries of a great standard. Am only sorry my live blog can;t so full justice to them. Still, we try…

Paul Clark;
How to live well on nothing at all – a shift to higher skills based economy so expecting a Higher demand. Increased private contribution to HE. Increased requirement for efficiency from Government. 4% increase in student intake next year, lifting of the cap, less public investment.
1.2 billion of sector surplus quoted. An increased focus of effectiveness, efficiency and innovation with quotes of actual figures from Diamond / Diamond 2 here I think)

Short term this means a difficult transition – revenue for capital funding, competition, increased support from HEIs for disadvantaged student, the whole student loans thing. There is caution in growth and positioning, the rate of change has been very high.

Concluding – changes required;
Cost of the funding system needs to be brought down
The RAB Charge….
Net revenues need to increase, fee cap unlikely to be increased above inflation so some restrictions on net funding removed
Keep up the pressure on efficiency AND innovation – Jisc is involved in both of these through core business of innovation to new services and the UUK Efficiency Exchange initiative
The long term opportunities for the sector could be substantial

Next speaker
Asking to discuss the future of funding is like forecasting the weather and the effect of climate change. One thing for sure – we are in this together…..the importance of alumni is greater than ever before. Jisc has done some work on how to optimise alumni relations
The SLC has records on past and present students and will be in touch with those alumni for much of their working lives. The evidence base is coming. The importance of employment prospects of graduates is key.
The RAB charge, a loan, financed by the government with a huge public cost, to call it private is inaccurate. Retention is improving which is adding to the cost….! Earnings of our graduates is going to be key and therefore employability is more important than ever. Jisc is running a Summer of Student Innovation – a crowd sourcing of student ideas for tech based start ups / new services to the sector along with a Jisc school for entrepreneurship. Worth a look at the out going stuff here and an announcement of the new phase is imminent. Our Digital festival in March will showcase some of the candidate services.

Next Speaker
The Welsh picture – spent last 3 years being reactive. Whatever happens in England has an effect on Wales. Competition is key at a global level but also for the scarce centralised funds. Welsh Minister principles are very different to English (Willets is here later). HE should be seen as a public good benefiting from public support. Legislation on future regulation of HE in Wales is coming and hsould given more certainty to Welsh institutions.
Diamond is chairing a review of HE funding and post 16 student finance in Wales. HE, FE, Under and post grad, full time and part time with a 2 year time frame.
Ian is also gearing up for a round of efficiency and effectiveness two and JIsc are involved with UUK in delivering on some aspects of that.

SLC Speaker
Ensuring that 1.5 billion pounds flows through to HEIs. Systems designed to implement a single set of complimentary policies. Now have 4 independent Governments pulling in different directions. The growth of alternative providers has been huge, with an unexpected increase of 400% on loan applications with 90% of those form commercial providers. In addition SLC is grappling with the sell off of the legacy loan portfolio.

Scottish Speaker
Similar picture to UK level. Alex Salmond has committed to the existing funding regime. The sector was protected to the detriment of other sectors, this seems untenable in the future and any change in Government would likely cut HE funding. The independence referendum in 8 months time is key.