May 29

Facing Financial Reality: Why Now Is the Time for Universities to Rethink Estate Strategy and Professional Services Value

It feels like every day brings another headline or post highlighting the financial pressures facing higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK — and the tough decisions being made as a result. With declining real-terms funding, rising operating costs, and shifting student demographics, many universities are reaching a critical point. Whether it’s the slowdown in international student growth, surging energy bills, or the freeze on tuition fees, the message coming through is consistent: the current financial model is under real strain.

And yet, despite the seriousness of the situation, we regularly find that many HEI estates remain significantly underutilised, a missed opportunity that could play a key role in improving financial sustainability.

The Hidden Cost of Space

One of the most significant and often overlooked areas of expenditure is the physical estate, which in many cases has minimal direct impact on the student experience. Post-Covid, office space utilisation tends to sit below 20% during core working hours and teaching weeks, let alone the quieter parts of the year. Many teams are now hybrid or remote for much of the week, yet office footprints remain largely unchanged. Even before the pandemic, office utilisation was often low compared to private sector norms, and it's only declined further.

Teaching spaces paint a similar picture. When measured on the ground, utilisation typically falls between 10–25%, considerably lower than the levels suggested by timetabled demand.

This gap between what’s planned and what’s actually used is more than a data issue, it’s a strategic one. Buildings are expensive to maintain, operate, and decarbonise. And when estate planning is based on incomplete or overly optimistic data, institutions risk committing to millions in unnecessary capital expenditure, alongside the ongoing cost of maintaining, heating, and servicing space that was never truly required.

Given the financial backdrop, being able to accurately plan and manage the estate isn’t just helpful, it’s essential.

And yet, in many places, space continues to be treated as something fixed or untouchable. It doesn’t need to be. The data shows that there’s often significantly more space available than is actually needed, and that much of it is no longer aligned with how teaching, learning, working, and research are now delivered.

Rationalisation Isn’t About Cuts — It’s About Clarity

Now feels like the right time to pause and rethink what space is really needed, how it’s being used, and where there may be opportunities to release or repurpose it. Rationalisation shouldn’t be seen simply as a cost-saving exercise, it’s about being clearer and more intentional in how the estate supports the university’s goals.

That could mean consolidating office space, rethinking how buildings are used, adapting surplus areas for alternative functions, or withdrawing from the least efficient parts of the estate.

It might also involve reviewing how teaching is timetabled, improving data quality, reducing unnecessary constraints, and simplifying complexity, all of which can make a real difference to efficiency and long-term planning.

Alongside this, there’s also value in reviewing curriculum design itself, exploring whether the delivery of modules and assessments can be better spread across the academic year to avoid peaks and troughs in space demand. Smoothing this demand across semesters or terms can help make better use of the available estate, ease pressure on key weeks, and support more efficient use of teaching and support resources.

These aren’t easy changes to make, and they do require collaboration, pragmatism, and sometimes a shift in mindset. But the alternative — holding onto an oversized, underutilised estate — brings financial risks that are increasingly hard to ignore.

Collaboration Over Silos: Finding the Best Answers Together

Making progress here isn’t something that can happen in isolation. The best, most lasting solutions tend to emerge when different teams come together to solve shared challenges, aligning priorities, combining expertise, and ensuring decisions are joined up across the board.

That might mean estates working closely with planning, timetabling, academics, IT, and finance to not push one function’s goals over another’s, but to find solutions that work institution-wide and account for all the relevant trade-offs.

Where we’ve seen this kind of collaboration in action, it has helped universities to:

  • Connect data with decision-making, so strategies are based on what’s really happening
  • Balance operational needs across functions, rather than shifting challenges from one area to another
  • Streamline processes and reduce unnecessary duplication or complexity
  • Foster a shared sense of ownership and partnership, where everyone feels part of the solution.

The Role of Professional Services: Heroes of the Hour

Professional services teams are in a unique position to make a real difference right now. These teams can help universities move towards more efficient, effective, and sustainable ways of working. With expertise across planning, systems, operations, estates, data, and strategy, not to mention vast knowledge on what their students want, these teams are central to helping institutions navigate change with confidence.

This is a chance to focus attention and energy on work that delivers clear impact, whether that’s:

  • Improving cost efficiency, by making better use of space, resources, and processes while still supporting the university’s academic mission,
    and/or
  • Achieving positive outcomes, by enhancing the student and staff experience, supporting recruitment, or improving long-term planning capability.

Teams working in estates, timetabling, planning, IT, and data services are particularly well placed to lead this work. And what will matter most is clarity of purpose; knowing what really matters and aligning efforts accordingly. That might involve:

  • Building and using trusted data to better understand how space is really used and where there’s room for improvement
  • Working across departments to break down silos and co-design more coordinated, practical approaches
  • Looking ahead with scenario modelling and longer-term strategy to avoid the inefficiency of reactive decision-making
  • Clearly communicating the case for change in a way that brings people on board and makes the benefits visible to all

This is a real opportunity for professional services teams to show leadership, demonstrate value, and play a central role in shaping what comes next. The work done now can help secure a more stable, resilient future for both the institution and the people it serves.

Conclusion: A Timely Opportunity

The financial challenges facing the sector are unlikely to ease anytime soon and there’s little indication that government support will bridge the gap. That means institutions will need to find their own paths forward, often by making hard, but necessary, decisions.

Rethinking the estate represents one of the clearest opportunities to do that. It’s one of the few levers universities can pull today that has the potential to reduce costs, increase agility, and better align resources with how the institution actually works, all without compromising the student experience or core mission.

Professional services teams have a critical role to play in making this happen. By staying focused on impact, working in partnership with colleagues across the organisation, and using data to drive good decisions, they can help universities not just weather the storm but emerge stronger and more sustainable.

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If this resonates with you and you’re keen to explore the opportunities your estate might offer, we’d be happy to have a conversation. We can help you identify where there’s potential to make smarter use of space, what actions can be taken to rationalise the estate effectively, and how to start building buy-in and implementing change in a way that aligns with your institutional goals. Feel free to get in touch. We’d be glad to explore how we can support you.
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