- By Dr Julian Dobson (@juliandobson.bsky.social), senior research fellow at Sheffield Hallam University.
- Over the weekend, HEPI’s blog took a look at the forthcoming post-16 strategy – see here.
The Government wants English universities to play a greater civic role in their localities. But new research shows universities are failing to invest in the people who perform this work, putting local relationships at risk.
A new report from the National Civic Impact Accelerator (NCIA) programme, funded by Research England to support civic universities and hosted by Sheffield Hallam University, finds that universities’ work with their communities and local partners is particularly vulnerable to the financial crisis now engulfing higher education. This is despite a strong message from education secretary Bridget Phillipson that the civic role should be one of five top priorities.
In her letter to university leaders on 4 November last year, Phillipson highlighted that universities should ‘play a full part in both civic engagement, ensuring local communities and businesses benefit fully from your work; and in regional development, working in partnership with local government and employers…’
Yet there is increasing evidence that those tasked with this work are facing a loss of resources, redundancies, and downgrading as universities focus on balancing the books. Some institutions, such as the University of Staffordshire, have disbanded their civic teams entirely; others have failed to renew employees’ short-term contracts or demanded that staff part-fund their civic roles by generating income.
Faced with this situation, we at the NCIA decided to explore further the impacts of this trend. We did so initially through an online survey and then through three focus groups in which we explored the situation in detail with 25 participants from 20 universities in England and one in Wales. The participants were all in ‘civic’ roles with responsibility for local partnerships. While some held academic posts, most were in management or professional services positions. The discussions were held under the Chatham House Rule to encourage participants to speak freely.
“There has been constant restructuring… it is expensive to lose all that valued knowledge.”
We identified four key risks to universities’ civic activities and relationships. Taken together, these pose a serious threat to universities’ status as ‘anchor institutions’ in their localities.
The first risk is that universities lose focus as they concentrate on their financial survival, generating uncertainty among local stakeholders about their reliability as partners. The second is a loss of institutional memory: as staff leave or are moved to other roles, relationships are abandoned and need to be rebuilt.
This risk was summed up by one participant in the discussions: ‘…because of the constant restructuring which seems to be repetitive over so many years … there’s not that continuation of learning, and all the knowledge and those relationships and that richness of what we do feels like it’s been lost… It’s expensive to lose all that valued knowledge.’
The third risk is a loss of credibility: partners in local government, healthcare or business see a growing gap between universities’ rhetoric about their civic role and their reduction of investment in relationships, or the junior status of the staff assigned to civic activities. This leads to a fourth risk, which is a loss of relevance, reinforcing the populist notion that higher education has little to contribute to issues that matter to local people.
As one participant commented: ‘If you’re sitting in rooms with leaders of councils and hospitals, for that to be a junior role is a big ask, especially if it’s a junior role on a temporary contract.’
From the discussions we identified five ‘civic capitals’ that now need to be rebuilt. These are economic (direct investment in local communities); social (relationships and networks); cultural (institutional support and resources); symbolic (leadership and ‘buy-in’ by senior staff); and emotional (the personal commitment and passion of those who do the work).
We make five policy recommendations for university leaders based on our findings, and three for national government.
University leaders should:
- Set clear local priorities in strategic documents such as Civic University Agreements
- Make room for ideas and organic development by fostering a civic culture
- Resource civic teams with long-term budgets
- Ensure the sustainability of civic activities through long-term commitments
- Be accountable both internally and externally for delivering these commitments, with regular reporting supported by locally agreed metrics
Government policymakers should:
- Articulate a clear narrative about the value of civic engagement and expectations of local impact
- Incentivise civic activity by ensuring resources are consistently available through the core funding mechanisms for higher education
- Foster conditions to make civic activity sustainable by coordinating place-based policies between government departments
We recognise that universities and government both face challenging times and multiple financial and political pressures. Yet if universities are to play a long-term civic role in their communities, and if government wants higher education to support its ambitions to tackle local inequalities, then sustained investment in civic work is a prerequisite.
This is my experience from working in this area and thank you for sharing this. Your right to high-lite the funding situation, which is a significant part of the problem, and to look at the central civic teams, but most of the civic work is actually happening in research centres. There the skills are poorly understand by research managers and some senior academics – who fail to recognise, value or know how to assess the skills involved. I have seen experienced engagement professionals replaced by favourite PhD students with no experience – “because it will be good for their development”. During funding restrictions engagement roles are specifically targeted as they are seen as additional to core research rather than critical to its relevance. Further complicating this, is the fact that these roles are neither quite academic or professional support roles, they often use experience gained and developed from other related industries and can often be part-time. Consequentially, there are a whole range of stigmas and biases that people working in this area are vulnerable to. Added to this, institutions rarely have any way of sharing or developing expertise across academic silos. They also don’t share this work with other civic institutions and charities, leading to overlap and overuse of certain publics. Even if they do encourage working groups and ‘heads up’ networked practices, they don’t allow the time to develop them as these activities are not core to the needs of any particular research group and the central civic teams have a seperate agenda.
A timely and sobering piece. It’s striking how the very roles tasked with building trust and partnership between universities and their communities are often the first to be cut when finances tighten. If institutions truly want to be seen as civic actors—beyond rhetoric—they must invest not just in strategy documents, but in the people, relationships, and long-term infrastructure that make local impact possible. As the report rightly identifies, losing institutional memory and credibility isn’t just a staffing issue—it’s a strategic failure. Civic engagement can’t be treated as a luxury or side project; it’s central to the legitimacy of universities in the public realm.