Could university-FE mergers turn the UK higher education hierarchy upside down?
Could university-FE mergers turn the UK higher education hierarchy upside down?
Australia may be about to conduct an experiment that should be watched very carefully in the United Kingdom. University of Canberra vice-chancellor Bill Shorten is pushing for closer integration, potentially a merger, between his university and the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT), which would create Australia’s seventh dual-sector university. The idea has circulated in various forms for around 15 years, but Shorten argues that current circumstances make revisiting it increasingly compelling. The University of Canberra itself describes “tertiary harmonisation” as a strategic priority, intended to create more seamless pathways between vocational and higher education.
It is an interesting proposal in Australia, but potentially an even more interesting one when viewed from the UK, where universities are under intense financial pressure at precisely the same time that government policy is placing renewed emphasis on technical education, skills, apprenticeships and regional economic development. Perhaps, therefore, we have been asking the wrong question about consolidation in UK higher education. Rather than continually asking which university might merge with which other university, should we instead be asking whether some of the most logical combinations are between universities and further education (FE) colleges?
If that happened at scale, it could have profound consequences for the hierarchy that has dominated UK higher education for more than three decades. Post-92 universities, with their vocational heritage, regional roots and longstanding relationships with FE colleges, could find themselves unusually well positioned for the emerging policy environment. Meanwhile, the Russell Group, for so long the golden children of British higher education, could discover that political influence, institutional prestige and research power no longer guarantee that government policy revolves around them.
Australia may be showing us the future
The Canberra proposal is part of a much wider Australian conversation about breaking down the boundaries between vocational and higher education. The Universities Accord advocated a more connected tertiary system. Reflecting that direction of travel, Australia’s vocational and higher education regulators, ASQA and TEQSA, signed a memorandum of understanding in August specifically designed to improve regulatory harmonisation for dual-sector providers. TEQSA described dual-sector institutions as playing an increasingly important role in Australia’s tertiary system.
There is an obvious logic to this. Students do not necessarily experience education as the neat institutional categories created by governments and regulators. Someone may move from vocational education into a degree, return later for professional development, retrain during their career or combine academic and technical learning. Employers are even less interested in institutional boundaries. They need people with the skills required to do specific jobs, whether those skills were acquired through a university, college, apprenticeship or combination of all three.
England appears to be moving in much the same direction. The government’s Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper call for closer integration between colleges and universities, explicitly says it expects “more consolidation and formal collaboration” and encourages new business models including federations and partnerships with FE providers. Its ambition is for two-thirds of young people to participate in higher-level education or training, not necessarily a conventional three-year university degree.
The distinction is important because, for decades, higher education expansion largely meant university expansion. The emerging system looks very different, with Level 4 and 5 qualifications, apprenticeships, modular learning, technical education, FE and conventional degrees increasingly expected to operate as interconnected parts of the same tertiary system. If funding, regulation and political priorities continue moving in that direction, it is reasonable to ask whether institutional structures will eventually follow.
Post-92 universities have been here before
If they do, post-92 universities may have a considerable advantage because many were never as distant from FE as the traditional hierarchy of British higher education sometimes suggests. Their histories frequently lie in technical colleges, polytechnics, teacher training colleges and other locally focused institutions, while their relationships with FE colleges, employers, local authorities and regional economies are often longstanding. In many cities, the university and FE college already recruit from the same communities, work with many of the same employers and operate within the same local economic strategy.
Indeed, Britain has already experimented with the very model Canberra is now discussing. In 1997, Times Higher Education reported that the University of Derby and neighbouring FE provision were pursuing what became an integrated FE/HE model. High Peak College subsequently became part of the university, creating provision spanning further and higher education. At the time, Derby vice-chancellor Roger Waterhouse described the division between the two sectors as an “historical accident” and predicted that other institutions might eventually follow. Nearly 30 years later, that observation looks remarkably prescient.
The University of Bolton, now the University of Greater Manchester, provides another important example, although also a reminder that institutional integration is not necessarily plain sailing. Bolton College merged into the university group in August 2018 as a wholly owned subsidiary, creating what the university promoted as a “one-stop-shop” for apprenticeships from Level 2 to Level 7. The college retained its identity and governing board, allowing the model to combine the benefits of integration with a degree of institutional autonomy. At the time, it was presented as a potentially important model for future FE/HE combinations.
Yet the wider university is now confronting serious governance issues. Greater Manchester Police is investigating alleged financial irregularities at the University of Greater Manchester between 2014 and 2025, including suspected fraud, bribery and money laundering. Three people were arrested in July 2026 as part of the investigation and subsequently released on bail without charge, while the Office for Students is separately investigating whether the university had adequate and effective management and governance arrangements. Former vice-chancellor George Holmes, who denies the allegations against him, had his employment terminated by the university’s governing body in August.
There is no suggestion that the 2018 merger with Bolton College caused these problems and the police investigation covers a period beginning four years before that merger. Nevertheless, the experience provides an important warning for anyone tempted to see structural consolidation as a simple solution to the sector’s difficulties. Creating larger tertiary institutions also creates more complex organisations, potentially spanning different funding regimes, regulatory requirements, student populations, governance structures and institutional cultures.
Scale can create opportunities, but without strong governance it can also create risk.
This matters because the case for FE/HE integration should not be based simply on the assumption that bigger is automatically better. It should be based on whether combining institutions genuinely improves pathways for students, strengthens employer engagement, reduces unnecessary duplication and creates institutions better aligned with their regional economies. Any new wave of mergers would therefore need governance, accountability and institutional purpose at its centre rather than treating consolidation primarily as a financial rescue mechanism.
Hard hats, not simply graduation caps
The political environment nevertheless makes these combinations interesting. For decades, the direction of travel in British education was towards the university degree. Tony Blair’s famous ambition for 50% of young people to participate in higher education symbolised an era in which expanding conventional university education was regarded as an economic and social good. Post-92 universities expanded dramatically during this period, but the ultimate measures of institutional success increasingly became research intensity, rankings, selectivity and international reputation, effectively encouraging newer universities to become more like their older counterparts.
The political language today could hardly be more different. In July 2026, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced reforms intended to give young people much earlier access to technical education, work experience and employers, declaring that Britain would “value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap”. Whatever one thinks of the slogan, it captures an important shift away from the assumption that the conventional university degree should automatically sit at the pinnacle of post-school education.
Funding is beginning to follow that rhetoric. In April, the government announced 19 new Technical Excellence Colleges backed by £175 million, targeting advanced manufacturing, clean energy, defence, digital and technology. Around 65,000 learners are expected to access training through the programme, following earlier commitments to construction Technical Excellence Colleges and the expansion of apprenticeships. It is increasingly a policy environment dominated by skills shortages, productivity, infrastructure, defence, construction, manufacturing, healthcare and regional economic development.
That could favour very different institutions from those that have historically enjoyed the greatest prestige. A post-92 university combined with a major FE college could potentially offer everything from Level 2 qualifications through apprenticeships and Higher Technical Qualifications to undergraduate degrees, postgraduate education and applied research, while maintaining deep relationships with employers across its region. Such an institution could educate people throughout their working lives rather than concentrating overwhelmingly on the traditional 18-to-21-year-old undergraduate market, becoming simultaneously a university, technical college, apprenticeship provider, adult education institution and regional workforce development agency.
Financial crisis could accelerate structural change
The other force making this more plausible is money. The Office for Students’ 2026 financial sustainability analysis continues to warn of substantial financial pressure across English higher education, driven by weak domestic funding, volatile international recruitment and institutional assumptions that have repeatedly proved too optimistic. Universities have responded with course closures, restructuring, redundancies and serious discussions about collaboration and consolidation, making institutional change no longer a theoretical possibility, but something already happening across the sector.
The University of Greenwich and University of Kent have completed their combination into the new London and South East University Group (LASE), while King’s College London and Cranfield University are progressing towards a proposed merger. Interestingly, the King’s-Cranfield proposal itself is partly framed around engineering, advanced manufacturing, defence, technology, industry and national capability, suggesting that even highly prestigious institutions recognise where political and economic priorities are moving.
But university-to-university combinations represent only one model. For many post-92 institutions, a merger with the FE college down the road could make considerably more strategic sense than a merger with another university 100 miles away. They may already share students, employers, progression pathways, civic relationships and regional labour markets. Combining them could create scale while removing duplication and providing precisely the seamless technical-to-degree pathways government says it wants.
There is also a political dimension that should not be underestimated. When public money is scarce, institutions able to demonstrate that they are training apprentices, addressing local skills shortages, supporting employers, widening participation and contributing directly to regional productivity may have a compelling case for investment. The government’s emphasis on hard hats rather than simply graduation caps could ultimately translate into funding priorities that favour large regional tertiary institutions over universities whose proposition remains overwhelmingly based around conventional degrees and research.
Where does this leave the Russell Group?
This raises an uncomfortable question for the traditional hierarchy of UK higher education. For decades, Russell Group universities have been the golden children of the system, dominating research funding, attracting a large share of highly qualified students and international students, enjoying global brand recognition and exercising considerable influence over national higher education policy. They remain enormous national assets and there is no serious argument for diminishing the importance of world-class research universities, but that does not necessarily mean they will continue to dominate the wider tertiary policy agenda in quite the same way.
A government focused on productivity, skills shortages, construction, defence, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and regional growth may judge institutions using measures that look very different from conventional university rankings. How many apprentices are you training? How many technicians, nurses and engineers are you producing? Which local employers are you supporting? Where do your graduates work? How easily can somebody progress from Level 3 through Levels 4 and 5 into a degree? What measurable contribution are you making to the economic development of your region?
Research-intensive universities can certainly answer many of those questions and the proposed King’s-Cranfield combination demonstrates their capacity to adapt. However, post-92 universities combined with large FE colleges could be structurally designed around them, giving them something that many research-intensive institutions have spent decades moving away from, a clear vocational purpose deeply connected to their local communities and economies.
For more than thirty years, much of British higher education has behaved as though there were one institutional ladder, and everybody was trying to climb it. Recruit more students, conduct more research, rise through rankings, become more selective and ultimately look more like the institutions already sitting at the top. An integrated tertiary system could replace that single ladder with several very different definitions of success, potentially redistributing funding, political attention and institutional influence in the process.
That would create considerable irony. After decades in which post-92 universities were encouraged to become more like their older, research-intensive counterparts, the institutions best positioned for the next phase of tertiary education may be those prepared to rediscover precisely what made them different in the first place.
Australia’s Canberra experiment is therefore worth watching closely because Britain is already creating many of the conditions in which similar institutions could emerge.
If university-FE combinations become powerful regional institutions spanning technical education, apprenticeships, degrees, applied research and lifelong learning, the question may no longer be whether post-92 universities can compete with the Russell Group. It may eventually be whether the Russell Group can compete with them for the funding, influence and political attention that will shape the next era of UK tertiary education.
