5 Principles to Maintain and Enhance Quality in Challenging Times

In discussions led by UUK, universities have been exploring the opportunity of reducing costs across the whole of higher education through greater collaboration. In late 2025, the Quality Council convened for a discussion focused on quality and efficiency, identifying how the financial context is creating challenges for universities. These challenges include: 

• Balancing long-term investments (eg in facilities and technology) against short-term needs 
• Delivering a range of modules and ensuring student choice despite fewer staff members 
• Offering extracurricular and academic support to enhance learner experience 
• Meeting student expectations and prioritising the student experience 
• Ensuring that teaching is research-led to provide a dynamic and coherent offering  
• Maintaining robust and efficient governance for quality while financial matters take precedence on board agendas 
• Managing staff capacity and morale  

When addressing these challenges, quality remains paramount. As a UK-wide collective, the Quality Council strongly affirms its commitment to turning these challenges into opportunities that enhance the quality of courses and students’ academic experience. We remain deeply committed to maintaining and enhancing quality, especially amid the significant financial strain facing the sector. 

Despite the varying regulatory systems and external quality architecture used across the four UK nations, the Quality Council has identified five common principles providers should consider using to maintain and enhance quality.

1. Students at the centre 
   Focus efficiencies on what matters most to students, working with them to understand their priorities and needs to co-create solutions.
2. Recognise and build a culture that enables change  
   Provide opportunities for meaningful input and consultation with staff to co-create solutions. The solutions should explicitly address the need to be creative within the twin imperatives of quality enhancement and cost management, drawing on support from stakeholders such as employers, professional and learned bodies and subject associations. 
3. Use data to guide decisions 
   Use data to identify trends in student engagement, attainment and feedback to evaluate the impact of changes and respond quickly. 
4. Maintain trusted external standards 
   Retain external reference points and standards across all levels of quality assurance, including the Quality Code and the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications.  
5. Partner with regulators 
   Work together with regulators, including Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs), to identify where regulation can be streamlined and innovation can be co-developed. 

We have already heard of many examples where these principles are being applied and opportunities are being taken.

Importantly, while these approaches help the sector respond to the acute financial challenges and bring about efficiencies, they are also reshaping the ways in which we think about quality and standards. Such new thinking ensures our approaches remain relevant how today’s students are learning and how future graduates will work. 

We know that this needs to be an ongoing conversation across higher education providers, sector bodies and agencies, regulators and governments. As the Quality Council for Higher Education, we will continue to bring people together and participate in these discussions, to maintain and continually improve the excellent quality of higher education provision across the UK. Participatory design for quality not only builds in efficiencies; it also prevents systemic issues that become costly to fix later. With increasing experience of mental health challenges, cost of living pressures on students and students as active citizens who provide care for others, being inclusive by design can increase efficiency by significantly improving effectiveness and a right-first-time experience for students.