WEEKEND READING: Designing for the future, not just the crisis: a framework for portfolio review
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This blog was kindly authored by Anila DeHart, Advisor and Researcher, Education–Workforce Coordination.
Despite overwhelming consensus on the pace of AI-driven change, only 28% of employers – and in the UK, a mere 13% of students – believe universities are keeping pace, according to the Pearson/AWS AI Readiness Report 2026. More than half of employers cite finding graduates with the right skills as their main hiring challenge. Curricula are not keeping pace.
Universities know this. Portfolio reviews are happening at scale. Last year, 6,301 courses on offer at UK universities were no longer available the following cycle, while 4,321 new ones were added. The gap is visible in students’ own experience: HEPI’s 2026 Student Generative AI Survey found that while 68% of students believe AI skills are essential to thrive in today’s world, fewer than half feel their teaching staff are helping them develop those skills for their careers. But the primary drivers for these changes remain financial survival and compliance, not educational relevance. Whether programmes are designed for the world graduates are entering is too often the secondary question. Whether they fill seats or can be funded comes first.
I had the opportunity to see this up close last month. I was asked to participate in a portfolio review at a Russell Group university as an external voice to bring market data and challenge. What I observed was, in many respects, positive: committed leadership, cross-disciplinary thinking, concrete short-term changes on the table. What was missing were the conditions that would have made that commitment fully productive. The right questions were being asked without pre-circulated evidence to ground them. Quick wins were identified, but not connected to any direction of travel. Bold thinking remained just out of reach – not because people lacked the courage, but because the process had not created the conditions for it.
My conversations with university leaders suggest this is not a story about one institution falling short. It is a pattern.
The pressures are real – and converging
The pressures on universities are well-documented. The World Economic Forum estimates that 39% of the skills employees need to do their jobs effectively will change by 2030 – either evolving significantly or becoming redundant The student experience signal is shifting: paid work during term time has risen sharply, attendance at scheduled classes has dropped from 63% to 48% over two decades, and one in nine students would now choose a path outside higher education if they could decide again. Financial crisis is forcing closures at pace – two in five institutions are now considering mergers. And these pressures are not sequential. They are arriving simultaneously.
The stakes extend beyond the student experience. A QS/University of York/Public First analysis finds that 80% of roles critical to the UK’s Industrial Strategy require degree-level qualifications. What universities teach is now a matter of national economic strategy.
The provision that served the last decade will not serve the next. The question is not whether to review. It is how to do it so that the change is real.
What good portfolio reviews look like
From direct experience of these processes – and from the evidence – five things are consistently present in reviews that produce genuine change, and consistently absent in those that do not.
First, a long-term vision before the review begins. Without it, the frame narrows from ‘what should this institution become?’ to ‘what can it still afford to provide?’ A Times Higher Education survey found agreement of 4.34 out of 5 that staff cuts had negatively affected the student experience. One respondent reported that their pro vice-chancellor had adopted ‘minimum viable product’ as the explicit goal for teaching – the least that current staffing could sustain. Good reviews make one thing explicit before they begin: student experience is not a variable that financial pressure is permitted to minimise.
Second, a transparent evidence base that asks the right questions. The evidence base should be pre-circulated and specific: employer feedback on graduate readiness, student experience data, graduate outcomes, labour market intelligence and programme financial data. These should ground the conversation from the start – not be assembled to justify decisions after the fact. Skills England’s UK Standard Skills Classification now provides a shared language across curriculum design and labour market analysis. Emerging curriculum intelligence tools – such as the platform developed by Kwesi Bimpong – can map programme content against live labour market demand in near real-time, showing institutions where what they teach matches what employers need and where it does not and giving students the language to demonstrate their value to employers.
Third, student and employer voice designed in from the outset. Surveys conducted after decisions are made confirm rather than challenge. The gaps employers most consistently identify – communication fit for workplace contexts, resilience, adaptability under real conditions – require employer and student presence at the point where learning is designed. An overreliance on lectures, inconsistent work-based learning and structural barriers to cross-disciplinary teaching all point to a wider gap between how students learn and what curricula are designed for.
Fourth, a roadmap connecting near-term wins to lasting change. Near-term actions must be explicitly connected to a longer journey. Portfolio review is not a bounded event – it is the start of an ongoing discipline. A good roadmap shows what changes now; what changes over coming years; and what governance will sustain that discipline when the immediate pressure subsides. It also makes honest communication possible – not just internally, but to students, staff, and partners: what is changing, why, and how the institution will know whether it has worked.
Fifth, honest attention to culture and incentives. The conditions of a review shape the outcome as much as its design. Research Excellence Framework pressures, promotion criteria, siloed information flows – these are not peripheral constraints but the operating context within which portfolio decisions are made. A review conducted in the shadow of redundancies will produce different thinking than one held in a climate of genuine possibility. People who are not told why a review is happening, what it can and cannot change, or how its findings will be used will protect themselves rather than think honestly. Transparency is central to the process.
What the sector needs to do
The sector has the intent. Financial pressure is providing urgency. The Industrial Strategy and Skills England’s framework provides external architecture to anchor decisions. What is needed is better process design. Four commitments would help.
- Establish a long-term vision before the review begins – the anchor that gives near-term decisions their direction.
- Design student and employer voice in from the outset, at the point where questions are being framed – not after decisions are made.
- Use honest, transparent evidence to inform decisions and monitor that changes protect what matters most.
- Treat portfolio review as an ongoing discipline – and build the governance to sustain it when the crisis recedes.
- Share what works across the sector. The complexity is shared – so should be the learning.
The experience described at the opening of this article is not an argument against portfolio review. It is an argument for designing it well – because the moment is not waiting.
Comments
Dr John Milliken says:
Universities do not need more portfolio reviews. They need better organisational flow
Anila DeHart is right to argue that university portfolio reviews must be designed more intelligently. Too often, institutions ask important questions without circulating the evidence needed to answer them, identify short-term actions without connecting them to a strategic direction, and consult students or employers only after the major decisions have effectively been made.
Her account of committed university leaders attempting to think boldly, but working within a process that had not created the conditions for bold thinking, will feel familiar across the sector.
Yet the problem may be deeper than the design of the portfolio review itself.
Universities do not primarily suffer from a shortage of reviews. They suffer from fragmented organisational flow: evidence is gathered but not connected, stakeholders are consulted but not integrated, decisions are made but not followed through, and lessons are identified but not embedded.
Portfolio review is therefore not simply a curriculum-planning exercise. It is a test of whether the university can observe change, interpret what it means, make coherent decisions and translate those decisions into improved educational practice.
## The real problem is not a lack of information
Universities are surrounded by information.
They collect data on recruitment, retention, progression, student satisfaction, graduate outcomes, module performance, employer demand, labour-market trends and financial contribution. They receive external examiner reports, professional-body feedback, student comments, complaints, staff concerns and intelligence from partnerships.
The difficulty is not that institutions know nothing.
The difficulty is that what they know does not always travel effectively through the organisation.
Information may remain within departments. Student feedback may be summarised rather than understood. Employer views may be collected but disconnected from curriculum decisions. Financial data may dominate because it is readily quantified, while educational value, student development and social contribution are harder to express in a spreadsheet.
By the time the evidence reaches a senior decision-making forum, it may have been filtered, compressed, reinterpreted or detached from its original context.
The result is a familiar organisational pattern:
**Observation → Information → Interpretation → Decision → Action → Outcomes → Learning**
Where this flow remains connected, institutions can recognise change early, interpret it intelligently and respond purposefully.
Where it fragments, they repeatedly discover problems only after recruitment has fallen, student dissatisfaction has increased or a programme has become financially vulnerable.
The portfolio review then becomes emergency surgery performed on an institution that has not examined the health of its roots.
## Employer demand matters, but it is not educational purpose
DeHart is also right that universities must pay closer attention to the world graduates are entering. Artificial intelligence, automation, demographic change and new patterns of employment are reshaping professional life. Universities cannot reasonably defend curricula simply because they have always taught them.
But there is a danger in moving too quickly from one narrow measure of value to another.
Employer demand is important evidence. It is not the purpose of higher education.
Universities must prepare students for employment, but also for careers that will change, technologies that will become obsolete, organisations that do not yet exist and responsibilities that cannot be reduced to immediate workforce demand.
A curriculum based too closely on current vacancy data may become obsolete almost as quickly as the labour-market intelligence on which it was built.
The enduring contribution of higher education is not merely to equip students for the first job they obtain. It is to develop their ability to think, question, interpret, communicate, adapt and continue learning throughout working and civic life.
The central question is therefore not simply:
**Does this programme reflect what employers currently say they need?**
It must also be:
**Does this programme develop graduates who can respond intelligently when those needs change?**
That distinction matters greatly in discussions about AI.
A programme does not become modern simply because AI terminology has been inserted into module descriptors. Nor does established disciplinary knowledge become obsolete because it predates generative AI.
Students need opportunities to understand AI, use it responsibly, question its outputs and recognise its limitations. But these capabilities depend upon knowledge, judgement, ethical awareness and the ability to distinguish a plausible answer from a reliable one.
AI literacy without intellectual foundations risks producing confident users of systems they cannot adequately evaluate.
## Portfolio relevance cannot be separated from student reality
There is another weakness in many portfolio discussions.
Universities may redesign what they teach without adequately redesigning the conditions under which students are expected to learn it.
The contemporary student is increasingly likely to combine study with substantial paid employment. Many commute, provide care, experience financial insecurity or manage complex personal circumstances. Attendance patterns are changing, but institutional structures often continue to assume a student population able to organise life almost entirely around the timetable.
A university may launch a new programme described as flexible, innovative and employment-focused while retaining:
* fragmented timetables;
* unnecessary gaps between classes;
* disconnected modules;
* repetitive assessment;
* limited opportunities to apply learning;
* feedback delivered too late to improve later performance;
* and work-related learning treated as an optional addition rather than an integrated part of the curriculum.
Changing the course title does not correct these weaknesses.
Nor does closing one programme and opening another necessarily improve the student experience.
The real test is whether students can move coherently through the learning process: from initial understanding, through application and feedback, towards increasing independence and capability.
Portfolio relevance cannot therefore be separated from delivery integrity.
A course may appear relevant in a prospectus yet remain educationally fragmented in practice.
## Students and employers should contribute, not control
The article rightly argues that student and employer voices should be included from the outset.
But inclusion needs to be understood carefully.
Students can describe their experience, the barriers they encounter and whether the design of a programme helps them to learn. Employers can identify emerging needs, workplace weaknesses and areas where graduates struggle to apply their knowledge.
Both are essential sources of intelligence.
Neither should be expected to design the curriculum alone.
Students may understandably prefer fewer difficult assessments, greater convenience or more immediate vocational content. Employers may understandably prioritise capabilities they need today. Academic staff bring disciplinary knowledge, educational judgement and a longer view of intellectual development.
Good curriculum design brings these perspectives together without pretending that they are identical.
This is not a consumer vote, nor an employer commissioning exercise. It is a structured process of interpretation in which different forms of evidence are considered and balanced.
The role of the university is not merely to respond to demand. It is to exercise judgement about what students will need, including what neither students nor employers may yet recognise as important.
## From periodic review to continuous curriculum intelligence
The strongest development of DeHart’s argument is therefore to move beyond portfolio review as an event.
A university should have a continuous curriculum-intelligence system through which evidence is regularly observed, interpreted, discussed and acted upon.
Such a system would connect:
* student experience;
* patterns of participation;
* employer and professional insight;
* disciplinary development;
* technological change;
* graduate outcomes;
* assessment performance;
* external examiner evidence;
* financial sustainability;
* and the institution’s civic and educational mission.
The purpose would not be to chase every fluctuation in the labour market or redesign courses annually.
It would be to identify meaningful change early and distinguish a temporary fashion from a structural shift.
This would allow institutions to adapt before courses reach crisis point. It would also make change less threatening because curriculum development would become a normal organisational discipline rather than a periodic exercise associated with closure, redundancy and financial distress.
That cultural difference is important.
A review conducted under threat encourages defensive behaviour. Staff protect programmes, departments protect resources and evidence is used strategically to defend predetermined positions.
A continuous process creates greater scope for honest discussion because change is not automatically interpreted as institutional failure.
## Financial viability is necessary, but it is not enough
No serious discussion of university portfolios can ignore finance.
A programme that cannot recruit students, cannot be delivered responsibly and cannot be subsidised indefinitely may not be sustainable.
But sustainability is not the same as immediate profitability.
Some programmes contribute to institutional identity, regional need, professional pipelines or cross-disciplinary provision in ways that cannot be understood through direct income alone. Others may appear financially successful while imposing hidden costs elsewhere through poor retention, excessive assessment demands or weak student support.
Financial information should therefore inform curriculum decisions, not close the discussion.
The dangerous phrase in the current climate is “minimum viable product”.
A university may be able to identify the minimum level of staffing, contact or support required to keep a course operational. That does not mean the resulting provision remains educationally defensible.
Once minimum viability becomes the organising principle, gradual decline can be presented as efficient management.
The question should not be how little teaching the institution can sustain.
It should be what level and form of educational provision students have a reasonable right to expect.
## A different starting point
Before beginning a portfolio review, universities should ask five connected questions:
**What kind of graduates are we trying to develop?**
**What is changing in the lives, workplaces and communities they will enter?**
**What evidence do we have about the effectiveness of our current provision?**
**How well does information travel between students, staff, employers and decision-makers?**
**How will we know whether the changes we make have improved learning rather than merely reduced cost?**
These questions move the discussion from course inventory to institutional purpose.
They also help prevent a common mistake: treating the portfolio as a collection of separate products rather than as an interconnected educational system.
Modules support programmes. Programmes depend upon shared services, teaching capacity, assessment systems, timetabling, technology and student support. Decisions in one part of the institution create consequences elsewhere.
A programme closure may therefore release fewer resources than expected. A new programme may require capabilities the institution does not yet possess. A curriculum redesign may fail because the supporting systems remain unchanged.
Portfolio decisions cannot be understood in isolation from organisational flow.
## The moment is not waiting—but speed is not the same as progress
The pressures facing universities are real. Artificial intelligence is changing professional practice. Students are questioning value. Employers are demanding different capabilities. Financial conditions are forcing decisions that institutions may previously have postponed.
There is no case for complacency.
But urgency can produce movement without progress.
Universities may close programmes, rename modules, insert AI into learning outcomes and announce new partnerships while leaving the underlying educational system untouched.
The more fundamental task is to create institutions capable of learning continuously.
That requires more than better portfolio-review meetings. It requires connected evidence, transparent interpretation, meaningful student and employer participation, academic judgement, coherent implementation and systematic evaluation.
The aim should not be a portfolio that briefly appears aligned with the present.
It should be an organisation capable of responding intelligently to the future.
Universities do not need to become faster followers of every labour-market trend. They need to become better learning organisations themselves.
Reply
Jonathan Alltimes says:
The blog and the following informative comment generally presuppose scope for choice, when in fact the evidence quoted shows a massive cut in the number of courses being offered is evidence of greater constraint on choice. The OfS has warned providers about over-optimistic forecasting for growth in the number of international students. It is likely that the changes to the conditions causing costs to rise and recruitment to fall must constrain choice further, even if providers were more efficient and effective at administrating the processes of curriculum redesign. Radical portfolio reviews are likely to be overtaken by events beyond the control of smaller, less specialized providers. Government policy is likely to be restated following a Comprehensive Spending Review, as cuts are made to the programmes of planned government expenditure. What courses a provider offers to subscribers can only be made from what the academics know and not from what students, employers, and the government wants. A realistic appraisal of the financial situation over the next few years and the distinctiveness of each provider now is what determines the courses offered. Providers need to cluster the majority of their courses around sector-specific research institutes and a few may continue to funds other courses from grants, endowments, and investments. The colleges were the R&D function of the university, but they were abandoned by all but four universities, no wonder we are stuck in the mud.
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