Society for Educational Studies 2025 Colloquium: Higher Education: (Re)Shaping the Future
Oriel College, Oxford
Thursday 4th September – Friday 5th September 2025
The Society for Educational Studies 2025 annual colloquium will take place at Oriel College, Oxford, September 4th-5th under the theme – Higher Education: (Re)Shaping the Future.
Higher Education in the United Kingdom today, as elsewhere, is facing an existential moment. While the general aims and purposes of higher education have remained relatively consistent over the last 100 hundred years, the relative focus and emphasis of these aims have ebbed and flowed. Participation rates in higher education in the United Kingdom have increased significantly over the last fifty years. So too, the institutions and places within which higher education takes place have altered – not least through the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992. Higher education has become increasingly internationalised and, at the same time, greater attention – in research and practice – is paid to matters of teaching quality, student experience and civic contribution. The Secretary of State has signalled strongly that any future rises in student fees will be linked to expectations to reform.
At the same time, some have spoke of higher education being in some form of ‘crisis’. University finances are now a common matter of concern, with the financial environment characterised as ‘increasingly challenging’ by the Office for Students with 40% of providers expected to be in deficit in 2024 and many providers operating some form of redundancy scheme for staff.
In such a context, universities (and indeed other providers of higher education) seek to compete for resources – including income generated from home and overseas student fees and from research. Intertwined with these financial concerns and heightened competitive environment are core questions that bring into sharp focus the purpose and value of higher education for students, for the economy and for civic society. Keynote addresses will be given by:
- Professor Steven Jones, University of Manchester;
- Professor Chris Millward, University of Birmingham;
- Debbie McVitty, WonkHE
The Colloquium Programme is available to view below.
