Escaping the Red Queen Effect – re-thinking the university in the new economics of HE

With the global recession still looming, further reduced spending and challenging market conditions all are combining to create a permanent change in the economics of higher education (HE).  The impacts of this shift for universities are immediate and dramatic. Many institutions are projecting significant financial deficits; a growing number face risks to their very survival.

These challenges have had a direct impact on many institutions who have found themselves caught in what we call the ‘Red Queen’ effect.  Like Lewis Carroll’s, Red Queen, institutions have been “running as hard as they can” to break even, but without making progress towards more sustainable futures.

What is needed, is a fundamental rethinking of our assumptions on current university business models, to match the changed economics of HE.  This should entail “thinking the unthinkable” in terms of the basic building blocks of the 21st century university, regarding:

• the nature and presentation of HE offers and services

• the ways that different customer needs for those services are met

• how institutions organise themselves and secure the capabilities they need

• how quality is interpreted and assured. 

Radical rethinking of the university from the ‘outside in’, from the viewpoint of clients and competitors for HE services, opens the possibility of new models. These include the Amazon University, the On-Demand University, the Learning Hotel and the Umbrella University – all with successful analogues in other sectors and even in other parts of the HE market place.

To learn more about the Red Queen effect in HE, and how you can break free from it, please contact us now.

The "Red Queen" image, reproduced by kind permission of Macmillan Children's Books, is taken from "Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there" by Lewis Carroll. © 1872 Macmillan and Co.