Higher Education Leadership Pulse: From Reporting to Actionable Insights
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Higher Education Pulse Report: Confidence is not the same as resilience.
Download the Higher Education Leadership Pulse report: Confidence, Evidence, and the Gap Between Them…
250 senior leaders across UK higher education told us how resilient their institutions are.
We checked their answers against the Office for Students, Jisc, HESA, UCAS and the Home Office. The differences are the interesting part.
Higher Education Leadership Pulse Report: Confidence is not the same as resilience.
Every university is taking action but very few can show what actually changed.
UK higher education is restructuring at a scale without modern precedent. Across 90 published 2024-25 accounts, the sector spent £303.3 million on compensation for loss of office — a 71% increase in a single year, and almost triple the 2022-23 figure. Roughly 13,300 people took severance from that sample alone, on top of 9,290 and 6,960 in the two years before. Close to 30,000 roles in three years.
Meanwhile the English sector’s adjusted surplus was 1.9% of income in 2024-25, forecast to fall to 1.1%. More than a third of providers reported a deficit. Sector borrowing stands at around £13.5 billion, and the Office for Students judges the sector’s own recovery forecasts to rest on optimistic recruitment assumptions.
None of that is news to anyone running a university. The harder question is the one underneath it: reducing expenditure is not the same as transformation. The sector is demonstrably cutting. Whether it is structurally changing is a separate matter, and far less evidenced.
This is an evidence base for the question your governing body will ask next
The Higher Education Leadership Pulse report is original research from Differentis. In September 2026 we surveyed 250 senior leaders across finance, technology, transformation and operations, assessing 27 statements across three dimensions: financial sustainability, transformation capability, and technology and digital maturity.
We then did the part that is usually left out. We set those perceptions against independent evidence from the Office for Students, Jisc, HESA, UCAS, the Home Office, HEPI, Universities UK and published institutional accounts — and against three live institutional cases: the Dundee intervention, Nottingham’s Future Nottingham programme, and the Greenwich–Kent merger that formed the UK’s first multi-university trust.
The report does not rank universities and was never capable of doing so. What it does is show where the sector’s confidence and the sector’s evidence have come apart, which institutions that is happening to, and the five questions that close the gap.
The Central Finding
What the data told us
Across all 27 statements, agreement was high and tightly clustered — the entire range spans 9.2 percentage points, less than two margins of error. Absolute confidence levels are therefore not the story, and we do not publish them as a resilience rating. The differences between groups are the story, and those hold.
Finding 1
The middle of the sector is the exposed part
Universities with 10,000 to 19,999 students score below the national average on all 27 statements. There is not one measure where the middle of the sector comes out ahead. Against institutions of 30,000 to 49,999 students the gap is statistically significant on 19 of the 27. The Office for Students has separately identified medium-sized and teaching-focused providers as the most financially exposed part of the sector. Financial exposure and capability exposure are landing on the same institutions.
Finding 2
Finance leaders are least convinced
Chief financial officers and finance directors (30 respondents) sit significantly below the national average on 10 of the 27 statements. No other role does. On whether benefits continue to be tracked after go-live, 57% of finance directors agree against 93% of chief information officers. The people who sign off the business case are markedly less convinced than the people who deliver it. Base size is 30 and the margin of error is wide, which is why this finding is never quoted without it.
Finding 3
Analysing self confidence
Negatively framed statements attracted the same high agreement as positive ones. “Our current financial response prioritises short-term control over structural sustainability” drew 80% agreement — identical to the statement that the institution protects transformation investment under financial pressure.
See where your own institution sits, in five minutes
The 27 statements in this research are available as a free self-assessment. Answer them for your own institution and you’ll get an immediate score against the three dimensions and the sector distribution — not a raw agreement percentage, but where you sit relative to 250 of your peers. No email required to see your result.
What the authors said…
We did not set out to catch anyone out, and the research cannot prove that university leaders are overconfident. What it does show is that confidence and evidence are not yet joined up. A governing body that accepts a high self-assessment without asking what would disprove it is not being reassured — it is being deferred. The institutions that come through the next five years will be the ones that went looking for the disconfirming evidence while they still had options.
Dave King
Chief Executive Officer, Differentis
The finding that should concern the sector most is where the two exposures meet. Mid-sized universities are the part of the sector the regulator already identifies as financially stretched, and they are also the part that scores lowest on the governance and delivery disciplines that would let them respond. That is not a coincidence to be noted. It is a sequence to be broken, and it has to be broken before the cash position decides it for you.
Dan Midgen
Chief Operating Officer, Differentis
Restructuring and transformation are not the same activity. One reduces expenditure; the other changes the economics that produced the expenditure. Nearly 30,000 roles have left the sector in three years, and a great deal of that was unavoidable. The question a governing body should be able to answer is which of it changed the operating model, and what evidence exists that it did.
Patrick Browne
Delivery Director, Differentis
The Higher Education Leadership Pulse FAQs
What is the Higher Education Leadership Pulse?
The Higher Education Leadership Pulse is annual original research from Differentis into how senior leaders in UK higher education perceive their institutions’ resilience. The 2026 edition surveyed 250 senior leaders in September 2026 across finance, technology, transformation and operations, assessing 27 statements across three dimensions: financial sustainability, transformation capability, and technology and digital maturity. The findings are then set against independent evidence from the Office for Students, Jisc, HESA, UCAS, the Home Office, HEPI and published institutional accounts.
Does the report rank or score individual universities?
No. The research measures how leaders perceive their institution’s capability, not how resilient any institution objectively is. Institutions were not identified, the sample was not designed to be representative by provider type, and individual responses cannot be linked to institutional financial data. Agreement across all 27 statements was high and tightly clustered — a range of 9.2 percentage points, less than two margins of error — so we publish the differences between groups rather than absolute levels, and we do not present the overall figure of 73 as a resilience rating or a league-table position.
Who took part in the survey?
250 senior leaders at UK higher education institutions, surveyed in September 2026 by Censuswide on behalf of Differentis. Respondents were C-level or senior management, aged 25 and over, working in finance, technology, transformation, operations and related leadership functions. Greater London accounts for 97 of the 250 respondents, and because several nations and regions returned fewer than five responses, regional analysis has been excluded from this publication.
What does the research say about mid-sized universities?
Universities with 10,000 to 19,999 students score below the national average on all 27 statements in the survey — the only size band for which that is true. Against institutions of 30,000 to 49,999 students the difference is statistically significant on 19 of the 27, with the largest gaps on tracking benefits after go-live (64% against 92%) and knowing which technology failures would cause the greatest disruption (64% against 92%). The Office for Students has separately identified medium-sized and teaching-focused providers as the most financially exposed part of the sector, which means financial exposure and capability exposure are landing on the same institutions.
Can I benchmark my own institution?
Yes, and without downloading the report. The 27 statements are available as a free five-minute self-assessment that returns an immediate score across the three dimensions, positioned against the sector distribution from the 250-leader survey rather than as a raw agreement percentage. No email address is required to see your result.
How does this differ from the Office for Students financial sustainability report?
The Office for Students reports audited financial data and provider forecasts; the Higher Education Leadership Pulse reports what senior leaders believe about their institution’s capability, and tests those beliefs against the OfS data and other independent evidence. The two are complementary. The OfS tells you the sector’s adjusted surplus was 1.9% of income in 2024-25 and that it considers recovery forecasts optimistic; the Pulse tells you that 83% of senior leaders say their financial plans remain viable if recruitment comes in below plan. The gap between those two statements is the subject of this report.
