Why is UK HE in crisis, and (how) can we fix it?
Monday 12 May 2025, 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Venue
Online (Zoom)Open to
All Lancaster University (non-partner) students, Alumni, External Organisations, Postgraduates, Public, Staff, UndergraduatesRegistration
Free to attend - registration requiredRegistration Info
Register for the Zoom meeting.
Please note: this event will be recorded and the video posted on the departmental website.
Event Details
Four experts from different disciplines will provide their overview of why (or if) UK higher education is in a period crisis and what needs to change.
The term 'crisis' is regularly applied to higher education, but the current situation appears to merit the term given that over 80 UK universities are currently reducing (or have recently) reduced their staff numbers significantly. There are a number of well-publicised factors contributing to this, including static domestic student fees competing with inflation, and falling - particularly international - student numbers. Additionally, ongoing industrial action by staff over the past decade, as well as other warning signs on social inequality across access, completion, and outcomes, suggest that the issues are not only external.
In this public seminar, four expert academics will provide their analysis of why we are in this hole, and how we might get out of it.
Speakers
Open University
Gunjan's research interests focus on the interplay between gender, class, education, and skilled mobility, reorienting gender and migration research by drawing on migrant experiences to understand patriarchy and other structural inequities in the receiving countries. Empirically, this work has stretched across South Asia, Southeast Asia, North America, the UK and the EU to examine the mobility of international students and highly skilled migrants within academia, the IT sector, and Finance.
Technische Universität Ilmenau
Ronald Hartz is Senior Researcher at Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany. Ronald has a first degree in Business Administration from Universität Leipzig and holds a PhD and a habilitation from Technische Universität Chemnitz. He has previously taught at Universities in Chemnitz, Regensburg, Zürich, Dresden, Koblenz, Leicester, Karlsruhe, Luzern, and Duisburg-Essen. His primary research interests are around Organisation Studies, Critical Management Studies, and Critical University Studies.
University College Dublin
Kalpana's research focuses on the uses of data and information (digital and otherwise) in the social sciences, open data, and data archives, as well more recently work on research evaluation and peer review. She has held funding from the US National Science Foundation, Alfred P Sloan Foundation, Irish Research Council, and Science Foundation Ireland.
University of Cambridge
Susan Robertson is a Professor of Sociology of Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, where her research focuses on education in a political context, including how education has developed to help service the economy, the commercialisation of education, and the role of for-profit companies in the education sector. Her research was funded by a variety of bodies, including the ESRC, the European Commission, and Open Society Foundations.
Contact Details
| Name | Dr Richard Budd |