“Captain’s log, star date 12026.7…”
Those trying to lead higher education to a brighter future should consider insights from the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Circumstances have, after all, forced them on a mission “..to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Star Trekkin’, a 1980s tune from The Firm1, is less profound but gives some useful headings and helpful direction.
There’s Klingons on the starboard bow
Whether its Klingons, Vidiians or Borgs – read intensifying competition, technological predation or switchback visa policies – it’s always good advice to understand the threat and accept it is not going away any time soon.
Captain Kirk once told the Klingon Chancellor, “Your father called the future, ‘The Undiscovered Country.’ People can be very frightened of change.” For some in higher education that fear makes them cling to past glories and certainties or paralyses them from taking effective action. The only answer is to accept that it gets tougher from here and nobody is going to bail them out.
The Vidiians harvested organs from others in order to survive. Technology, from aggregators, to online delivery, to AI, will continue to undermine traditional models while “harvesting” sources of revenue, enrollment and academic standing. These are realities that need facing rather than clinging to a mid-1900s model of higher education that is not going to be fit for purpose in the mid-2000s.
The weight of visa policies for international students are Borg-like in suggesting “resistance is futile”. But griping about them, particularly where they reflect a Government’s intended response to public concerns, looks self-interested and out of touch. Drawing inspiration from the character attributes of Captain Kirk – ingenuity, boldness, exceptional tactical thinking – is more likely to make your institution a better choice for those students that remain available.
Ye cannae change the laws of physics
Chief Engineer Scott said, “I can’t change the laws of physics” and higher education should accept that it is not able to withstand generational, demographic, economic and political realignment affecting the laws of supply and demand. Physics is a good example because I was at the University of East Anglia when undergraduate physics was closed in the 1990s – it was expensive and didn’t recruit enough students to be viable. For the record the university currently offers four undergraduate courses with Physics in the course title – times change.
Another thought-provoking quote from Scott is “the more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.” University leadership is full of very smart, if sometimes limited in experience, people who like to think they are playing three-dimensional chess when they should be focusing on not getting beaten at tic-tac-toe2. Brilliant implementation, fabulous service, clear differentiation and an explicable value proposition will always beat fifteen months of consultation spent developing a strategy that nobody reads let alone understands as offering a competitive advantage.
In short, stop travelling hopefully and wishing for what you can’t have.
It’s worse than that he’s dead, Jim
As far as I can find Dr McCoy only ever said “He’s dead, Jim” but the import is the same. It’s reported that at least 20 colleges in the US closed in 2024 with more than 40 closures since 2020. The claim in the UK, where the proposed merger between the universities of Greenwich and Kent has recently been announced, is that half of the sector will post a deficit in 2026 and 50 providers may exit within three years.
The former seems small beer in the context of Clayton Christensen’s famous suggestion in 2017 that “50 percent of the 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years”. Michael Horn’s update on the thinking from November 2024 is worth a visit for context and it is difficult to believe that the fundamentals will change, except for the worse, in the foreseeable future. For institutions that rely on international student recruitment as a source of revenue the reckoning may come sooner.
The global context shows stresses in some other countries such as South Korea and Japan and it seems inevitable that ageing populations, constraints on international recruitment and declining returns on the cost of higher education study will continue to weigh on recruitment. But the sector is not dead and university leaders should take Captain Kirk’s advice, “.. don’t let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you’re there, you can make a difference.” If you don’t think you can make a difference return to administrative duties at Star Fleet command, don’t pass go, don’t collect a golden goodbye payment or pension pay off3.
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it
There is no return to a fondly remembered golden era where significant public investment, burgeoning youth populations and decision makers informed by their own degree fuelled career success, ensured higher education was a well-funded growth sector. Almost every institution has to come to terms with straitened circumstances and find new ways of operating that might seem alien (sic).
Geopolitics have always created shifting patterns that require adaptation. One big problem is that universities have not always shown themselves to be skilled at identifying and optimizing new opportunities or making good investments. The boom in transnational education (TNE), for example, may turn out well but there are sure to be some bloody noses along the way.
The sector’s media is awash with happy talk about the potential of TNE but there are whispers about business models failing to take into account local taxes, problems with repatriating money, and difficulties delivery academic standards. As Saskia Loer Hansen of RMIT noted there is “too much focus on making a quick buck” and that makes one wonder how near Damascene conversion of some university’s to seeking overseas campuses will survive full operational engagement.
University leaders might want to remind themselves of Spock’s line that, “After a time, you might find that having is not so pleasing, after all, as wanting.”
We come in peace, shoot to kill
The sector must evolve rapidly but the size of individual institutions is tiny compared to the global forces they face, so working more closely together is often seen as a natural development. But studies of symbiotic relationships distinguish between mutualistic (both benefit), commensalistic (one benefits with the other unaffected) and parasitic (one benefits at the expense of the other).
In many countries the “higher education sector” appears united but at a pinch point in the enrollment season better regarded universities will trawl for additional students without mercy at the expense of lesser institutions. Governments often laud the quality of the country’s higher education system as a national asset and treasure while declining to provide any significant practical support for its future.
The mix of autonomous institutions beholden to state restrictions mitigates against genuinely strategic realignment. What tends to happen next is mutual recrimination and a haphazard decline in provision that impacts different subjects, areas of the country and parts of the population in markedly different ways. UPP Foundation’s research reflects the way that “cold spots” in university provision can create a spiral of caution, low aspiration and resistance which exacerbates the decline.
Captain Kirk never said “we come in peace, shoot to kill” but it does reflect the doublethink of the ways university leadership is focused on institutional (sometimes personal) survival, reward and growth. The phrase reflects how well-intentioned people who are used to bountiful times can become meaner and more close-minded when times are tough. Spock’s comment, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” offers food for thought but I suspect that, “We will find hope in the impossible” is the way the sector is currently thinking.
Boldly going forward ’cause we can’t find reverse
This is really the clincher. There is no choice but to go forward so higher education leaders have to, um, start leading. In some cases there has been too much time, energy and resource spent on trying to turn back the tide of change rather than deciding what to do next.
Recent polling by Gallup suggests that globally people “..are marginally less optimistic for 2026” and that “economic pessimism is particularly pronounced in advanced economies, especially in Western and Eastern Europe.” In some countries belief in the direction of higher education has been in decline for some time with increase numbers of voters declining to accept the glossy, self-seeking responses trumpeted by sector leaders. These are the new realities – less money and a need to restore public confidence.
Unlike Captain Kirk’s solution to overcoming the certainty of defeat in the Kobayashi Maru scenario there is no way to reprogramme the test overnight. But it is reasonable for leadership to say “I don’t believe in a no-win scenario” as long as they start by accepting the realities. Best wishes to all for all in 2026…..live long and prosper.
NOTES
- Star Trekkin’ is a 1987 song by The Firm which became number one in the UK for two weeks and the sub-headings are all lines from the lyrics. I would have liked to have used the lyrics of Spizzenergi’s 1979 song “Where’s Captain Kirk” but they didn’t work well enough. Watching Spizz (Kenneth Spiers) dodge bottles flung at him by fans of 999 suggests how nimble universities might have to be in the future!
- Noughts and crosses to English audiences but the point is that it’s a game you can’t lose if you play it correctly.
- This is a reference to the game Monopoly where you may draw a card that says “Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. It reflects that some university leaders appear to have been rewarded for failure.
Image by Marcobaleno from Pixabay
