Basically, no version of the levy delivers the intended redistributive aims in practice. It is one of those policies that looks like a political win until you try to make it work at which point it becomes a headache beyond the powers of paracetamol.

There is perhaps a version that makes a flat fee the baseline with a percentage uplift for those institutions that charge more than a threshold. But this would be unnecessarily complex and the exact opposite of what the flat fee proponents want to achieve.

The levy was conceived to redistribute international fees from some thriving unis to other parts of the tertiary sector, but this would protect the most well-off and ensure the pain is felt worst by those in the struggling middle that'd be least able to absorb the cost through increasing fees.

If it can succeed in this, then it will prove its necessity.

If it can't, then it may probably fail to resist the gravitational pull towards becoming just another mission group.

14/14

That means universities will need to create their own ways to find the benefits of collaborating on what they do, not just on what they say. I would like to think that is exactly what Research Plus is seeking to do.

13/14

The White Paper calls for great collaboration, but it offers no levers to make it happen. Instead it doubles down on many measures that drive competition. Greater specialisation, for eg, won't force unis to work together. It's an incentive to be ever more cut-throat for slimmer pickings.

12/14

It also takes us into the 'plus' part of the name and the areas where benefits and effectiveness in other areas – social justice, industrial and regional growth, cultural impact etc – can all be supercharged by collaboration, not competition.

11/14

That will be winning research funding, aligning specialisms, sharing services, expertise and even staff, etc.

10/14

The key to balancing outward-facing engagement with the advantages of joining will be to show that this is a club that it pays to be part of because of what its members can achieve practically, not just politically, by acting together.

9/14

So the proposition for Research Plus's inaugural members – and those it will, no doubt, be hoping and needing to attract –  must also be to reap the specific and tangible benefits of collaboration.

8/14

The whole sector and the whole country needs that, but it would mean fewer clear, direct and exclusive benefits for Research Plus members (especially since, if this is all it does, its purpose is not sufficiently distinctive from Universities UK).

7/14

The challenge for Research Plus will be to do more than that, to be something different: to rise to the challenge of articulating what the HE sector (particularly the research-led parts of it) can do for wider society, not just what society can do for certain HE institutions.

6/14

Mission groups serve a vital purpose in coordinating the babble of voices from different HE institutions, but they explicitly exist to serve their members' particular interests, mostly in the sphere of policy and politics.

5/14

'Necessary' is an important word here because, for Research Plus to succeed, it will need to establish its clear value to its members, to the wider sector and to the government.

4/14

It was a timely enough message then in the light of the @universities-uk.bsky.social's Efficiency Taskforce recommendations. But, yesterday, with the Post-16 White Paper calling for greater collaboration, particularly around research, Research Plus seems even more prescient and necessary.

3/14