Strategic Implications For Higher Education

As noted previously, the political, academic and financial drivers and targets of the Academies Programme were very different to the circumstances the HE sector is facing now.

Academisation resulted in taking schools out of local government control and, in many senses, bringing them under more direct influence from central government under a new, uniform legal and regulatory framework. Universities, on the other hand, are largely autonomous, albeit with varying degrees of reliance on public funding.

In the absence of any appetite to create a completely new framework for MUTs or incentive packages, the MUT structure will likely only apply to select universities.

However, the MUT model offers some features worth exploring, alongside other collaborative legal models – ranging from informal partnerships and shared services to group structures and full mergers – with the aim of achieving long-term financial sustainability for institutions delivering the