Kent and Greenwich Universities to merge

[TizerorFizz]

It’s come to pass! Cutting costs by merging. Seemed an obvious solution to me. Others to follow?

Agree - not the first in the sector though And yes others will follow.

More here: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-first-multi-university-group-arrives/

Several more to come I am sure.

It makes sense to me. I think we should have fewer better quality universities. Especially when so many are in financial difficulty and so reliant on oversees students.

wow.

Are we going towards a more US model of state universities? Larger groups with multiple campuses.

I remember reading a thread where you suggested this, @TizerorFizz
The only proviso I would say is that Kent has always been low hanging fruit, university wise, I doubt there will be a huge knock-on effect other than with similarly ranked institutions.

Oxford Brookes is never going to be absorbed into the University of Oxford, for example.

@Tkaequondo No. Not those 2 in Oxford but OB isn’t far from Gloucester or Northampton. Sheffield Hallam isn’t far from Derby. Nor is Nottingham Trent. Keele and Staffordshire might be logical too.

Kent was considered a very good “new” university in the 70s. A school friend went there for MFL and became an Ambassador and now a Dame. It was established in 1965, exactly the same as Warwick. Look at the difference now. Why have more than one university in Canterbury?

The issue is low hanging fruit is in a precarious position. Greenwich was a poly, but not Kent. I believe going back to tiered HE provision might suit many students a lot better. From a finance position it feels inevitable.

There are too many universities, too reliant on foreign students in many cases, and many providing degrees of low value in terms of getting a good career.

This may happen more often but will not solve the issue.

Agreed 100%. They should never have renamed polytechnics and they should never have expanded the curriculum from vocational studies to more traditionally "academic" studies, only for so many of those courses to fail and be closed down.

Kent's reputation 50 yrs ago is still a half century old reputation. No longer relevant, despite a promising start.

@Tkaequondo I agree 50 year old status isn’t entirely relevant but these universities were established at the same time as the polys but had different functions. By the 80s there definitely were degrees at polys but, from memory, were work related. We then, post 92, added every HE college, teacher training college and arts college into the university mix and that was the big mistake. The sector is too large and we need that middle HE sector back. You could go to a poly with 2 A levels in the 70s. That suited many. Or students went part time whilst working. We now call them apprenticeships but there’s too few of them at the moment.

Thanks very much, @TizerorFizz and @titchy. An interesting idea and an interesting article.

Am I missing something, or are real savings to be obtained mainly by combining the programmes offered by both universities? Some programmes at Kent are losing a lot of staff recently so this might be somewhat less painful than one would expect.

I agree we need more pathways to jobs that command real respect with all that this implies. I think that’s generally trickier than it sounds. Programmes are launched with the best of intentions and don’t really catch fire.

There will always be individual success stories - you yourself, @TizerorFizz , to say nothing of your friend and many others - but we need scalability, in terms of both earnings and social capital.

@poetryandwine Yes but VC saving too! Every little helps.

I agree we need pathways into work for young people and there’s nothing wrong with building up to degree level from a more humble course.

I did know Kent had problems and I would think other universities must be looking at poorly selling courses. I’m beginning to wonder if it really matters that a few less universities offer musical theatre and English (for example). That isn’t to say we do not train for the stage, but we perhaps need to be more selective given the work situation? Many new subjects have sprung into life, but are they worthy of degree status? Or are there pathways via existing degrees so these more specialist areas could be offered as modules? I really do think universities have the combined intelligence to work this out and ensure better outcomes for students.

Kent was considered a very good “new” university in the 70s.

And in the 80s too. I actually turned down Cambridge (King’s) and LSE to go to Kent because Kent was number one in the UK for my course and significantly better. They partnered with Sciences-Po in Paris for my 3rd year (as long as you passed the rigorous Sciences-Po entrance exams, 1 taken in Kent and another 1 in arrival in Paris).

But even back then Kent was all about the money. They were quite unusual at the time as 1 in 4 students were Chinese. Obviously a sign of things to come.

I’m very sad to see how far they’ve fallen.

Kent was in the top 20 then dropped to top 40 in the country. It's never going to attract as many overseas students as the more well regarded, so linking with a more London-centric one works for finances.

Agree with others there should be fewer old poly's as these really dilute the quality. I know someone who chose to go to one over Kent as the points required was higher and thought the calibre of students would therefore be higher. What was never mentioned was how many they accepted who didn't get the required grades, unlike Kent. It's tricking good students into poor quality courses that don't lead to employment that affects the whole sector.

The old poly system which linked with industry worked well & as previously mentioned provided a pathway to furthering your education through a different route. I myself did this, failed A levels but already had a job offer which allowed me to study via day release to gain an HNC(Btec) followed by a degree BSc (Hons - as it gained Uni status while I was studying, prior to this you gained a GRSC) and all paid for by my employer.
My concern is that these employers no longer exist and even if they do, why pay for an employee to do day release when they can get a graduate to take on the debt.

I generally agree with you. I had forgotten about VC salaries and probably bloated layers of admin that could be unduplicated.

I’m not so sure about the example of an English degree, because a strong (big caveat there) liberal arts training should be good preparation for many careers. We’re in danger of losing sight of this.

Although I would agree that any degree programmes with small applicant numbers should be offered strategically instead of continuing a competition for crumbs.

As always I am cautious about the silver bullet / quick fix for the HE sector, it does need to transform but I haven't seen any compelling arguments for a particular approach.

If there are tiered institutions, like suggested upthread, how do you enable social mobility in a way that university expansion has done? Will the top tier be less accessible to "non-traditional" students?

Is this not just the equivalent of MAT's for HE? It hasn't worked out well for a lot of schools who joined a MAT. That is my fear. MATs creaming off the money at the top, and the schools still struggling on the ground.

Interesting. I wonder whether there will be less oversupply of courses too as a result? My DS is looking at Universities for Politics and IR, and both Kent, Greenwich and actually Canterbury Christchurch are providing the same course. It would make sense to pool all their resources and have regional centres for different things. I know CCCU aren't in the mix here but they are very small and don't really need to do the breadth of courses they seem to be doing. It will be interesting to see who else merges. It is a bit concerning for kids going in 2026 though, who have to apply for courses in a few months and may not know where they are or even what the Universities they are applying for will look like, where they will be or what they will be called.

Yes this is the issue with industry placements, apprenticeships, day releases etc. There aren't the opportunities around now. Its been going the same way for years. Employers just aren't offering the opportunities to young people anymore to do these different routes. There are still colleges of FE and HE offering HND/C's as well as part time degrees but they have been underfunded for decades too. While government after government talks about upskilling, they have consistently under resourced the FE sector. There is also the issue of staffing. It is almost impossible to get teaching staff in some areas, so no matter how many ways you slice post 18 education, if there are no staff the course cannot go ahead.

Universities are prevented from this kind of coordination, they are not allowed to do this as separate organisations even if they wanted to. In this particular regard, regional mergers make things tidier. The problem is when the region has a high tariff university and a low tariff university, There are big drawbacks to the high tariff uni to merging.

@Neversaygoodbye You would have less graduates to choose from and a better pool of 18 year olds wanting to work. The employers pay into the apprenticeship levy so do want young people. Many think grads don’t meet their needs.

@FirstCuppa I don’t think former polys are the real issue. They were established in the 60s for work related qualifications. When I was a day release student at a poly in the 80s, they offered degrees. I think they did so earlier than that. However degrees were not normally offered by colleges of HE and teacher training colleges. These are now universities and should be HE colleges with a remit to educate employees and an offer a broad range of HND type courses. Instead we have degree foundation years. Of course income from students is the issue but HE non degree is cheaper to run.

@AlphaApple There's a lot of low tariff ones now!

There was huge social mobility in the 60s and 70s. It’s what the new universities and polys did. Those students are now parents and many are in middle class jobs. There’s plenty of scope to move socially via work and training. It’s not necessary to have a degree to do that unless required by the job.

@Poetryandwineyes. I know the arguments about English and it was one example where students are struggling to get grad jobs. They have to compete with history, sociology, politics, IR, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, classics, MFL, business, law, studies of this, that and everything else grads to get a job.

Oh I didn't realise that. That seems like an arbitrary and pointless rule. Especially when you look at clearing this year, when universities like Reading were basically slashing their tariffs to pieces and syphoning off students from the mid/lower ranking universities. If the ranking of the university as high/low tariff is based on staffing and/or resources, then surely sharing those resources makes sense. There is plenty of choice to go round, sometimes too much choice when we have a dwindling population of young people. So just running the course at the institution with the best reputation for that particular course makes sense. The article linked to above stated what courses each Greenwich and Kent have a reputation for.