Everyone’s worried about students developing AI skills, but is there enough attention paid to educators? It’s not just about teaching AI literacy, it’s about using AI capabilities to support curriculum and learning design, assessment, and teaching administration – and being able to use academic judgement on continuing to uphold academic quality and standards while doing so. This session will seek your views on how AI changes the academic quality environment and how best to support educators across higher education to use it in the most appropriate and impactful ways.

It might be a “new era of collaboration” in higher education but collaboration happens from skills not just will. Our expert panel will discuss some of the nuts and bolts of working together across institutional boundaries: how to build common purpose, manage collective delivery and manage all the big personalities involved.

Trust underpins a whole range of relationships in higher education: between leaders and staff, educators and students, and between institutional actors and communities and stakeholders outside the institution; as well as the relationship between higher education and the public. But sometimes it doesn’t – trust appears fragile, fragmented, or absent. Who can be trusted in higher education, and on what grounds?

Discussion sessions will take the form of a brief initial provocation followed by open debate and sharing of views from those attending.

Student support needs seem to be changing in inverse proportion to the amount of money sloshing around to throw at the problems. Layering more provision on top of what’s already there isn’t an option for most – it’s time to rethink how students are enabled to thrive. Our experts will share their evidence base and invite you to share your insight from your own knowledge and experience.

Discussion sessions will take the form of a brief initial provocation followed by open debate and sharing of views from those attending.

Our panellists aren’t in the business of changing just lightbulbs, they’re trying to roll out change across their whole institution. Tasked with developing digital skills and creativity through pedagogic change under the auspices of the Adobe Creative Campus programme, our panellists will talk through the theory and practicalities of moving whole-institution agendas forward and what it takes to inspire meaningful change.

As the UK Government launches the Local Innovation Partnership Fund and announces major changes to the Higher Education Innovation Fund, it is clear that universities are being asked to fundamentally sharpen their approach to driving economic growth. The Data City, Metro Dynamics and Favier Ltd have launched a new partnership to help universities answer the question: “what’s your university industrial strategy?”

In this interactive workshop, you’ll be able to see how institutions can access Real Time data to understand their innovation footprint by geography and by sector, before working with institutions to align this with 1) their future strategic direction across research, knowledge exchange, talent and capital development and 2) the economic priorities of both local, regional and national government. Using real-world examples from your universities, you’ll also be able to work through the process of identifying those “sweet-spots” where university economic intent matches local and national government priorities. 

In this interactive unconference-style session, we’ll hear from a panel of research and evaluation experts from across the sector about what’s currently being explored, including emerging trends and evolving requirements. We’ll then break into group activities to consider: what are we curious about, and what remains poorly understood in higher education? Participants will be encouraged to think boldly about their own research agendas – anything goes, no holds barred. We’ll wrap up by reconvening for brief summaries from each group and reflecting on possible next steps.

They said it would never take off, but now radical collaboration is the hot topic of the moment. Yet despite the widespread interest in different ways of merging or otherwise combining institutions – to create economies of scale, and new offers to students and regions – there remain cultural, legal and structural barriers to making radical collaborations work. KPMG and Mills & Reeve have undertaken in-depth work on the strategic and legal implications of bringing HE institutions together – and in this session you’ll have the chance to think through the various options available, what opportunities and risks might emerge, and the implications for ways of working and student experience. 

Imagine a world where universities could see and understand the whole picture, every interaction, every barrier, every bit of useful information and could use that insight to design learning, support, information systems and engage with students and colleagues in a way that actually works. This session seeks to understand what’s possible when institutions move beyond compliance and towards a truly data-driven culture. One where data isn’t just for those with “data” in their job title, but for all to use to enhance and make their work more efficient.

Join Clare Walsh and Martha Horler to look at where the sector is now when it comes to data capability, how we can utilise our existing strengths and to imagine what would be possible if higher education became fully data capable.

With AI reshaping the labour market, what skills and attributes should universities prioritise to future-proof graduates, and what is the value of a degree in an AI normalised world? Appealing to academic leaders, and digital strategy, careers and curriculum design professionals, this forward-looking session brings together labour market data, employer insights, curriculum innovation and the existential question for all universities. 

Key questions include: What would universities look like if we were designing them in current times?   What new forms of employer engagement and curriculum design are needed to keep pace with rapidly evolving labour markets? What are the implications on assessment and research at our institutions? What does employability mean in an AI-driven economy, and how should universities redefine their role in preparing students for it? How can institutions embed AI literacy and future-facing skills across all disciplines without reinforcing existing inequalities?

Making the case for research-informed policy, Sarah Chayter from Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) explores the argument for evidence-based policymaking in practice. Key questions include: Why is it important to increase the use of research evidence in policymaking? What’s difficult about it, and why? What strategies can be employed to address barriers, particularly in the current climate? What examples (approaches, projects, etc) do we have of things which have worked well? Fundamentally, how do we make the case for this in the context of squeezes on university budgets and the public purse?

Higher education’s social licence requires constant renewal. Universities UK Director of Communications Seb Gordon has been leading a project to explore public perceptions of higher education and work through what universities need to be doing to sustain public trust and confidence in the sector. He joins us to share some of the findings and invites discussion of their implications.

Will we see a consolidation of higher education provision in the UK in the decades ahead, with a trend towards mega-institutions offering the full gamut of options? or will we see increasing specialisation and coordination, as institution seek to play to their strengths? Will the sector be entirely cloud-based? Will we have robot academics? Nobody knows for sure, but for the final session of the Festival of Higher Education we’ll be indulging in some speculative fun with a serious intent – because to a not-insignificant degree, the future of higher education will be determined by the leaders and decision-makers of today.

At last year’s Festival of Higher Education OfS director of regulation Philippa Pickford said she wanted to “start a conversation” about higher education governance, prompted by the regulator’s initial work into institutional financial sustainability which found a degree of reluctance in some quarters to fully grasp the nettle of the financial challenge facing institutions.

A year on, she’s back, in conversation with newly appointed chief executive of Advance HE, Alistair Jarvis, arguably one of the people in the sector with the greatest scope to shift the dial on the effectiveness of HE governance across the whole system. Philippa and Alistair will discuss their diagnosis of the nature and extent of the issues, what the regulator might reasonably expect of higher education governance, and what the sector’s development agency can do to improve it.

Higher education can in lots of ways be a fantastic environment in which to work, but there’s no denying that staff across the sector are having a tough time, with many coping with major institutional restructure and redundancies. Drawing on the evidence base for staff experience in higher education, we’ll draw out actionable insight for leaders and future leaders on what could make the difference in supporting staff and helping teams to support each other.

Announcing your values are liberal these days immediate puts you at a disadvantage in public debate. Yet higher education is, in principle, grounded in the pursuit of truth, rational debate, free speech, and tolerance. On the other hand, higher education institutions have often found themselves struggling to defend their choices when they seek to express a values-based position on contemporary cultural or global issues, accused of creating a chilling effect on debate on the one hand and tolerating a culture of silence in the face of atrocities on the other.

As an interlocutor on public policy and ideas through his newspaper column, his Striking 13 Substack, his books on political thinking and practice, and the brilliant Origin Story podcast which he co-hosts with Dorian Lynskey, Ian Dunt is the perfect person to help us find novel perspectives and ways of thinking about this perennial moral challenge for the higher education sector.

Universities drive economic growth through graduate skills, research and innovation, and commercialisation and knowledge exchange. Some are getting creative in deploying their assets, whether tangible or intangible, for wider benefit. But generally speaking higher education is incentivised to produce high quality knowledge outputs, not drive growth. Certainly it is often difficult for higher education to share in the proceeds of growth. Our panel will discuss whether higher education institutions could go further and faster in contributing to growth and what interventions would be needed to make that happen.

Wonkhe associate editor for research and innovation James Coe sits down with outgoing principal of the University of Glasgow Anton Muscatelli for a deep dive on the UK research landscape and how research funding changes are likely to reconfigure the shape of the sector in the years ahead.

Lunch is served in Macmillan Hall and Grand Lobby from 12.00 – 13.45.

There are various lunch options available to suit a range of dietary requirements.

If you need any help, a member of our festival team will be happy to help.

The Wonkhe Show is your weekly way in to this week’s higher education news, policy and analysis. Join us for a live recording of the show, where we’ll be getting across the week’s policy developments and reflecting on highlights from the festival. Bring your lunch, and feel free to dip in and out. It’s all coming up!

Paul Greatrix hosts a live episode of My Imaginary University – the podcast where guests are invited to build their fantasy higher education institution from the ground up. A Festival of Higher Education staple for a reason.

Registration takes place in Crush Hall and refreshments are served in Macmillan Hall from 08.30 – 09.45.

We’re very grateful to Saxton Bampfylde for sponsoring the delegate breakfast.

If you need any help, our festival team are easy to spot and would be delighted to assist.

We also have a cloak room and team members on hand to direct you to wherever you need to go.