The Headlines
Entrepreneurial Leadership and Access
A new series of essays has argued that university leadership should take a leaf out of the entrepreneurial playbook. We unpack the highlights.
By John O’Leary
“Over the next 5 to 10 years, the emphasis should be on digital competency, with a particular focus on AI literacy and the ability to work effectively with emerging technologies."
"Entrepreneurial leadership is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It is deeply contextual and as such requires situational leadership."
Talking points
- Universities must become more entrepreneurial to handle tight budgets and keep up with new tech like artificial intelligence.
- These institutions also need to increase access for disadvantaged students, working with businesses to boost local economies.
- Ultimately, universities need to be engines of innovation and job creation to stay relevant and ensure everyone has a fair shot at opportunity.
University leaders will have to be more entrepreneurial and provide greater access to their institutions for disadvantaged communities if higher education is to thrive in an era of tight finances, a series of essays by senior academic administrators has concluded. The report, published by the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute (HEIP), envisages much greater collaboration with business and industry, as part of universities’ role as engines of economic growth.
The exercise drew on research by the National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education (NCEE), which supports universities and has run development programmes for over 300 higher education leaders. Its latest higher education leadership survey showed a significant shift in the last 18 months, with respondents reporting unprecedented challenges in generating income, working within tight financial constraints and responding rapidly to an increasingly complex and uncertain environment.
Nine out of 10 respondents believed their institution would need a complete overhaul or significant changes over the next 18 months to adapt to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. The rest thought minor changes would be sufficient. There was general agreement, too, that all institutions would need to make significant changes to contribute more to local growth, but almost seven in 10 were confident in the ability of their own institution to adapt over the next few years.
As well as requiring entrepreneurial approaches to attract and accommodate disadvantaged students, institutions would need to look closely at the skills they fostered in all students, the survey suggested. Over the next 5 to 10 years, the emphasis should be on digital competency, with a particular focus on AI literacy and the ability to work effectively with emerging technologies. Graduates would need to be adaptable and resilient to prepare for a rapidly evolving workplace.
The 11 contributors to Why Entrepreneurial Leadership Now? include three vice-chancellors, five pro-vice-chancellors and two senior NCEE staff. The fields of activity covered include international student recruitment and systems reform, as well as community-engaged learning. At St Mary’s University, Twickenham, for example, partner organisations include hospitals, care homes, a law clinic, as well as community arts projects, which feed into the institution’s access and participation plan by providing diverse pathways within reach of students from all backgrounds.
Bath Spa University (BSU) has seen its student population grow from 8,000 to 30,000 in three years, establishing tertiary partnerships in London, Birmingham, Leicester, Leeds and Bristol, becoming much more ethnically diverse in the process. Professor Andy Salmon, BSU’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor External, argues that a reimagined tertiary education model could see universities act as regional convenors, bringing together partners to expand access to higher-level skills and address global challenges through local action.
Professor Amanda Broderick, Vice-Chancellor of the University of East London (ULE), extends the argument for the ‘entrepreneurial university’ to cover careers, noting that one in four UK students starts or plans to start a business while in higher education. Startups from UK universities have surged by 70 percent in the last decade and now employ over 64,000 people, although Prof Broderick says there are early warning signs of increased barriers to entry with a decrease in the number of new startups and social enterprises in 2024. “Universities have a choice: become incubators and accelerators of productivity, innovation and job creation – or risk irrelevance in an increasingly sceptical yet talent-hungry, tech-driven economy,” she adds.
In six years since the launch of Vision 28, a 10-year strategy putting careers and entrepreneurship at the heart of the institution, UEL has jumped from 90th to second place nationally in the annual numbers of successful graduate startups. “Our success came from one simple but powerful principle: entrepreneurship must be everyone’s business, not just the Business School’s,” Prof Broderick writes in the report. “We embedded entrepreneurial thinking across all disciplines. We focused on practice- and competency-based learning. And we ensured that our students graduate with commercial agility, problem-solving skills and the mindsets employers value.”
Prof Broderick warns that the pressures the sector faces are “not temporary.” She calls on higher education to adopt a disruptive model, already unfolding in response to technological advances that are increasing the speed of knowledge obsolescence. She adds: “Entrepreneurial leadership is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It is deeply contextual and as such requires situational leadership. At UEL, our approach has been to amplify the potential of the opportunities available to us, transforming challenges into catalysts for growth, and moving further, faster – something that leaders can (and must) always apply to their own institutional contexts.”
The importance of access in a more entrepreneurial approach to university leadership was underlined in a separate study published this month by the UPP (University Partnerships Programme) Foundation. In the final part of an inquiry into widening participation in higher education, the foundation recommends that employers should play a larger role in the design and outputs of university study, with more funding and senior management time spent on local labour market work.
New data showed differences in teacher expectations and how parental support for higher education is being influenced by costs. Three quarters of teachers in London expect at least half of their class to progress to higher education, for example, compared to just 45 percent in most of the North of England. Similarly, three-quarters of teachers in schools considered outstanding by inspectors expect half or more of their class to progress to higher education, compared to just 35 percent in schools rated as inadequate or requiring improvement.
The UPP Foundation report also shows regional participation gaps widening, with financial support forcing students to choose between their studies and living costs, causing graduate outcomes to vary dramatically by location and choice of institution. Young people interviewed in Doncaster and Nottingham believed that the current system was failing to deliver on its promise of social mobility, leaving too many talented individuals behind and undermining confidence in higher education as a pathway to opportunity.
The inquiry put forward six recommendations to institutions and the government, which has set widening participation as one of its main priorities for higher education. They include a target to ensure that at least half of all young people in every region experience higher education, with an average of 70 percent having studied at this level by the time they are 25. It also calls for a restoration of student financial support to 2021 levels and a broader, more flexible plan to increase access and participation in higher education.
“A new mission for widening participation is the right scale of ambition for these changes,” the inquiry concludes. “This is not a moment for incremental change or pilot programmes; it is a moment for the sector, working with government, to demonstrate the leadership and ambition that has always defined English higher education at its best.”