An unsettled future for higher education?

Higher education in Britain continues to experience turbulence. A recent OECD report identified that Britain’s higher education system is expanding less rapidly than that of many of its economic competitors. In the league table of 20 countries, graduation rates for 20-21 year old first degree students in Britain fell from third, to tenth place over a five year period. The long-term impact of the introduction of top-up tuition fees in English and Welsh universities is yet to be fully understood, but short term, higher education institutes have seen a 2% drop in the number of people enrolling for first degree courses. Furthermore, funding cuts of £100m per year have resulted in universities announcing that they will need to introduce tuition fees of more than £7,000 a year for students taking second degrees and lower level, shorter courses.

Managing costs in a complex environment

Thus, trying to balance the requirements to improve performance and achieve government targets, as well as the need to find ways of bridging the economic shortfall caused by the funding cuts is a highly complex task. This puts increasing pressure on the Procurement professionals working in higher education to ensure that their activity is focused on effectively managing costs and identifying savings opportunities. Procurement within the higher education segment is complex. The buying and selling interfaces between the HE community and the many thousands of suppliers are many and varied. Just as there are many thousands of suppliers to the sector, so are there many thousands of buyers within the sector. Most institutions operate through systems of devolved financial management, making it difficult to achieve the necessary visibility of spend. Within the higher education sector, many procurement departments are already highly advanced in terms of their procurement transformation programme. Spikes Cavell’s solutions in the areas of Spend Analysis and Performance Monitoring can help your procurement function to more easily effect opportunities for collaboration, as well as manage and report on contract compliance and key procurement metrics. To find out how Spikes Cavell can help your higher education institution with their procurement transformation programme contact us for more information.