New HEPI Report ‘Preparing for Populism’
HEPI’s new Debate Paper delivers a stark warning: the biggest challenge facing universities today is not funding, but trust.
In Preparing for Populism (HEPI Debate Paper 44), Professor Diana Beech and Edward Venning argue that as populist sentiment rises, public patience with higher education is wearing thin. The sector risks appearing insular and out of touch by relying on familiar arguments about economic impact and graduate earnings – messages that may no longer resonate in a changing political and economic climate.
The paper calls for a fundamental shift in how universities engage with politics and the public. Rather than focusing only on traditional allies, institutions are urged to engage credibly across the full political spectrum, including with more sceptical voices. It sets out a clear three-part framework for rebuilding legitimacy – instrumental, relational and moral – alongside practical proposals to reconnect universities with national priorities, public expectations and democratic debate.
At a critical moment for the future of higher education, this report challenges the sector to rethink how it earns and sustains public support. For those interested in the intersection of politics, public trust and the long-term sustainability of universities, this is essential reading. Click here to access the press release and find a link to the full report.
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Stephen Graham says:
This is such a welcome paper, particularly for its calls to engage meaningfully with all political parties, for its encouragement to ‘behave differently’ in relation to wider society and for its proposal for universities to build platforms for pluralistic political debates. If universities managed even some of these things I believe it would improve both their standing and their substance.
But I would characterise things a little differently than the paper, thinking of that last point, substance.
Whilst the paper does include important calls to action such as those mentioned above its emphasis is largley on perception, on ‘managing standing’, on ‘story structure’. This is fine and needed. But without an additional substantive change in who we are and how we orientate our thinking I fear we will continue to marginalise ourselves.
It is telling to me in this regard that the paper frames the debate around populism, and describes university policy makers and advocates as centrists. There is an actual excluded social ‘middle’ which barely gets a look in in universities, at the least ones I know; in a visible and in many ways real sense most university leaders, academics and even students would at most be left-of-centre (and more typically farther left; https://open.substack.com/pub/unsafescience/p/truth-trust-and-the-case-for-viewpoint?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5xbn30 includes data on ‘massive’ leftwing bias in US faculty). I don’t see too many centrists around me, at least in the important respects of self-identity, political allegiance and everyday attitudes.
In positioning itself (by implication) as a centrist call to broaden out to populist concerns and constituencies the paper does a welcome thing but also misleads as to the felt centre of gravity of many or most HEIs (at least in Anglophone countries), and also skews where the target for broadening needs to be, at least to my mind.
If universities really want to complicate and mitigate polarisation (which they themselves are perhaps the largest social agent of), it would probably be more effective and achievable just to focus on that excluded middle I mentioned above; I can at least imagine a world where academics as they are currently disposed are able to move or to open enough to consider adopting a centrist perspective. I can’t imagine the vast majority of current academics engaging with Reform in anything other than an attempt to prove they are wrong.
Thanks again for a very stimulating and hugely valuable paper.
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