WEEKEND READING: ‘Things must change so everything can stay the same’: the paradox of university transformation

This blog was kindly authored by Lee Sanders. Professor of Practice in Leadership, Governance and HE Policy, University of Birmingham.

Watching Netflix’s adaptation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard set me thinking about how its oft‑quoted maxim – ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’ – applies to higher education. Not in the sense of 1860’s Sicilian nobility adapting to revolution, but in asking: what should universities be preserving through change? I am not alone in invoking Lampedusa. Anthony Finkelstein recently reflected on academic morale and the erosion of pay, autonomy, and collective governance. His argument – that the answer is not nostalgia but a willingness to embrace change – is well made, and I won’t retread it here. My concern is different: whether transformation across the sector is being guided by clear, enduring purposes.

‘Transformation’ discourse is everywhere – sector strategies, ministerial speeches, consultancy slide decks, and Universities UK’s Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce report, which argues that universities face a ‘critical point’ requiring collaboration and change to remain sustainable. Yet has this brought clarity to what the change is seeking to preserve? The central argument of this article is that transformation must be purpose-led rather than crisis-driven and rooted in universities’ contribution to society.

Transformation is everywhere – because pressures are everywhere

UK universities face overlapping pressures that make transformation feel unavoidable. Rising costs, the erosion of home‑fee income, intense competition for students, and volatile international markets have pushed institutions into near‑constant crisis management. Some universities, unable to recruit enough students, face the looming spectre of institutional failure. These financial stresses intersect with broader structural shifts. AI is reshaping assessment, teaching, and administration. Demographic change is influencing demand, while global competition for talent intensifies. Universities are buffeted by geopolitics and embroiled in culture war debates over immigration and free speech. Public confidence in the value of higher education continues to be in question. Regulation is tightening and government expectations are undiminished. Universities are being asked to deliver high‑quality teaching and outcomes, drive innovation and growth, widen participation, maintain excellent research aligned with national priorities, while becoming more efficient and improving governance.

Little wonder that institutions have launched transformation programmes, complete with transformation directors and units. Cost reduction and efficiency measures dominate – consolidating professional services, reducing staff numbers, deferring capital projects, and shrinking estates. Shared services and joint procurement have re‑emerged. AI‑supported education, predictive analytics, and process automation are expanding. New IT systems promise streamlined operations. Academic portfolios are being reshaped, low‑demand courses are being closed, and new programmes introduced. Faculties, schools, and research areas are being restructured. To counter declining international recruitment, universities are developing new TNE partnerships and international pathways. Radical collaboration is encouraged: mergers, federations, shared campuses, and deep partnerships aimed at eliminating duplication, stabilising finances, and building scale to compete. Leadership and governance are under scrutiny too, with growing pressure for strategic and financial acumen, transparent and realistic planning and forecasting, and decisive action under uncertainty. Transformation has become, for many, the default condition of universities in 2026.

These pressures matter, not only because they make university operations more difficult, but because they create conditions in which transformation risks becoming reactive. Without deliberative purpose, universities may unintentionally erode the very things they exist for.

What should universities preserve through change?

If transformation is now ubiquitous, we need to clarify what is worth preserving. Lampedusa’s paradox holds when something enduring is at stake. Ronald Barnett’s concept of the ecological university is useful here. Universities operate within and sustain multiple ecosystems – knowledge, society, culture, the economy, and the environment. Their value lies in nurturing these ecosystems through inquiry, imagination, and critical thought. Transformation, therefore, should be anchored in purpose and values, not just necessity. Several foundational purposes stand out­:

Knowledge creation. Research drives discovery, innovation, cultural insight, and informed policymaking. While not all institutions can sustain research – and more concentration is on the cards – maintaining sector‑level capability is essential to the UK’s competitiveness and intellectual vitality.

Knowledge transmission. Teaching fosters critical thinking, curiosity, and disciplinary understanding. As AI reshapes learning, universities must safeguard academic rigour, integrity, and the human relationships at the heart of education, while preparing graduates for emergent labour markets.

Economic contribution. Universities anchor regional economies, supply skilled graduates, attract investment, support innovation ecosystems, and contribute to productivity. Financial resilience and partnership‑building are essential to sustaining this role.

Social and cultural value. Universities enrich democratic discourse, civic life, culture and the arts, and professional formation. They play a critical role in social mobility, offering life‑changing opportunities to disadvantaged students.

Student experience. High quality learning environments, support and accessible services, and a strong sense of belonging and community are currently essential, not only for educational quality but for maintaining the social compact universities hold with the public. With AI and financial pressures, the student experience seems likely to evolve, but transformation needs to be careful not to neglect or weaken the central purpose.

Scholarly integrity. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy underpin good scholarship and have been hallmarks of leading universities. Yet these depend on organisational and financial resilience as a university that cannot sustain itself cannot protect these values.

Being clear on mission in an ecosystem of public and private benefits.

Instinctively, many would see these purposes as public goods embodying the idea that knowledge serves society. However, there is debate about the balance of public and private goods in contemporary higher education, with variation between university activities linked to who pays for them and the type of institution and its mission. I don’t have the space here to do justice to this matter, but would refer readers to Simon’s Marginson’s Higher education and public good in England for the argument that marketisation, tuition fees, and the student loan system have driven English higher education towards private benefit and away from public good.

I am struck by my colleague Chris Millward’s characterisation of the English university ecosystem as having both public and private dimensions and benefits, with institutions contributing to both to varying degrees depending on their type and scale. When thinking about transformation in this context, what is important is for an institution to be clear-eyed on its mission and the particular contribution it should and can make to the ecosystem. This requires an understanding of what matters most and being clear about what should be sustained through transformation. Change should then seek to preserve the core purposes identified, consciously adapting the way related activities are delivered so they are fit for the realities we face. Not all institutions will, of course, contribute to the full range of sector purposes, and the need to change should sharpen the focus on institutional mission. It remains to be seen whether change and consolidation will contribute to greater differentiation of mission in the sector, for which the government seems to be looking.

Mission‑driven transformation: lessons from ASU

Transformations with lasting impact are guided by mission, not merely by budget constraints. Arizona State University (ASU) is frequently cited as a case study in mission‑driven redesign. Under President Michael Crow, ASU has spent two decades pursuing a model of being ‘more excellent, more inclusive, and more responsive’ – a triad requiring structural redesign to widen access, expand innovation, and operate at scale.

Crow’s vision, outlined in Designing the New American University, combines expanded access with research excellence, deep partnerships with industry and government, and large‑scale digital learning. ASU demonstrates that transformation can strengthen rather than dilute a university’s public purpose. It models the galvanising power of a long-term intellectual vision and the reality that universities cannot preserve their social purpose by standing still.

The UK context differs, but the ASU lessons resonate. We need more research and deep case studies of UK examples – whether successful transformations or cautionary tales – to investigate how change can invigorate universities, aligning purpose, structures, partnerships and resource decisions.

Why transformation is so difficult

If transformation is essential to preserve purpose, why is it so hard to achieve? Partly this is because university culture – long a source of strength – can also impede adaptation. In Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education, Brian Rosenberg argues that universities possess a cultural ‘DNA’ resistant to change because of: attachment to tradition, dispersed authority, deliberative decision‑making, institutional exceptionalism, and a professional identity grounded in autonomy. The title, borrowed from Groucho Marx, captures a prevailing mood: scepticism as default. Resistance is not irrational – it often defends scholarly values – but it slows adaptation even when survival demands it.

Organisationally, universities are difficult to transform. John Kotter’s Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail emphasises urgency, coalitions, compelling vision, and the removal of obstacles. Universities are decentralised, consultative, unionised, and organisationally complex, making these steps hard to enact consistently. Concern about identity, loss, and perceived degradation of academic working life also matter. In this context, articulating a clear vision of change that goes beyond financial exigency and defends enduring purpose and value is important in building coalitions of the willing.

The erosion of collective governance further complicates matters. As pressure intensifies, executive teams and governing bodies face demands for accelerated decisions. Traditional mechanisms of shared governance – senates, academic boards, committees – can be seen as a hinderance leaving the academic voice feeling marginalised. Anthony Finkelstein’s comment that academic governance risks becoming a ‘theatre of grievance’ is pertinent here. Michael Shattock’s work on Managing Good Governance in Higher Education underscores that successful universities maintain strong shared governance between academic and governing bodies, and I agree that this needs revitalising in ways that balance smart decision-making while engaging the academic and staff community. As the CUC reviews its Code of Governance, these issues deserve serious attention.

The Leopard’s paradox: change as continuity

This is where Lampedusa’s line gains meaning. Academic cultures resist change because they aim to protect what matters. Yet, in facing today’s challenges, universities must change precisely to preserve those things. Transformation works best when guided by a long‑term sense of institutional purpose and a realistic mission, animated by a compelling intellectual vision. It is not about abandoning identity, but ensuring identity can endure in a significantly altered environment.

From my own experience of 35 years in university leadership and administration, one of my tenets was that good financial management and financial sustainability are critical bedrocks of success, but they are not, on their own, a strategy. The danger is that ‘transformation’ becomes code for cuts or is driven solely by crisis. Universities are long‑term, complex intellectual enterprises. Transformation must therefore be understood as stewardship – preserving values while adapting structures and approaches.

For institutions facing severe student recruitment decline and the real risk of insolvency, survival will understandably dominate the thinking of leaders and notions of deeper purpose may seem a luxury. But even mergers, acquisitions and radical restructuring should be evaluated through the lens of purpose and value. For the majority of universities – those not at the precipice but needing to adapt – mission, purpose, and enduring value must guide transformation, not follow from it.

In these challenging times, universities need allies and advocates. By using change to re-articulate their mission and purpose, demonstrating contributions to society and being honest about the balance of public and private goods they provide, they go some way to strengthening the social compact. As a wise colleague once put it, ask ‘what are universities good for, not simply what they are good at’.

Above all, institutions need to use the autonomy they hold dear to chart their own course. The government is not going to come to the rescue of the sector with more funding. We have to take responsibility for our change and do so from a self-confident defence of our institution’s purposes and enduring values seen in a broader ecosystem. Transformation is not a finite project but a condition of contemporary higher education. Done well, it enables continuity of purpose amid financial and political pressures and demonstrates wider value. Lampedusa’s lesson is clear: if universities wish to remain engines of knowledge, opportunity, and civic value, they must change – sometimes profoundly. The task is to ensure change sustains mission, rather than erodes it.

Further thoughts

It was encouraging to see that as I finished this article HEPI published a report on the merger of City and St George’s. We need more case studies of ‘how to do change’; in higher education to share experience and practice. But the aim of my article has been to ask broader questions about the longer-term purposes of universities and whether, at a time of major external pressure and much change, the enduring values and core activities of higher education might be adapted for the future while preserving the essence of what really matters.

More research is needed on two fronts. First to test and develop the general argument with some worked and more specific examples. For instance, taking teaching and education, when programmes are being rationalised or changed, what place is there for subjects with declining student demand but which are academically or nationally important? Does the internal resourcing of a university continue to be, in effect, a complex series of transfers and cross-subsidies, and, if so, what principles underpin it? Who should make these decisions, and how is the academic voice heard in a meaningful and efficient way? How should the model of teaching change if net income is declining and delivery is transformed by AI? Can this stay the same, and if not, how does it change to sustain essential qualities at lower cost? What do international comparators show us – noting that it is said that the Australian teaching model is more efficient than in the UK, and yet Australian graduates are still internationally competitive in the job market. Should universities continue to do things which are a public good but for which they are not funded, and if so, should, for example ,student fees be used to fund the civic mission?

Second, there is room for a major comparative research study of transformation in higher education, to test hypotheses and draw out themes, principles and pathways – something akin to Burton Clark’s work on university transformation of over 20 years ago. 

I would like to thank David Eastwood, Chris Millward and David Sweeney for the helpful discussions in shaping this article.