What we learned from our tenth higher education sector leadership survey
For a decade, our annual leadership survey has tracked how the sector’s challenges are evolving and how leaders perceive our role in responding to them.
This year’s results, once again shaped by strong participation, confirm what we hear from you daily: a sector under sustained pressure, navigating financial uncertainty, rapid technological change and increasing security risks.
The survey continues to provide valuable insight to inform our priorities. In this blog, I’ve reflected on some of the key themes.
The sector’s biggest challenges are tightly interlinked
Leaders continue to highlight three dominant challenges: financial sustainability, the opportunities and threats associated with AI and cyber security. What stands out is how closely these issues are connected, and how often they compound one another.
Financial constraints, for example, directly shape an institution’s ability to invest in technology, adopt AI effectively, and maintain a strong cyber security posture. In practice, leaders are making difficult trade-offs across all three areas, often with limited room for manoeuvre.
Together, these challenges point to a broader theme of security: financial resilience, the integrity of the educational experience and the protection of institutional infrastructure and digital estates.
This reflects a consistent message from the sector. These challenges cannot be addressed in isolation; they require coordinated, strategic responses that recognise the hard decisions leaders are having to make.
Artificial intelligence – opportunities and uncertainty
AI has returned to the top of leaders’ concerns this year, with 67% of respondents identifying it as a key challenge or priority over the next 12 months.
There is clear interest in AI’s potential to improve efficiency and reduce administrative burden, but this is accompanied by significant uncertainty. Leaders have concerns about the cyber security implications of AI-enabled threats, as well as how to design assessment and teaching approaches that remain meaningful in an AI-enabled world.
Institutions are looking for practical guidance and support in shaping their response. Our focus is on supporting this through the sharing of insight, growing our portfolio of licence agreements for AI tools and increasingly consultancy with institutions developing their strategies for the adoption of AI. This often makes use of our maturity models, which help institutions assess where they are now and where they want to be.
The survey also tells us that recognition of Jisc as a leader in AI is lower than we would like. Much of our work sits within broader activity around licensing, security and connectivity rather than being labelled explicitly as AI. The feedback is clear and helpful: we need to be more visible and more explicit about the value we bring in this space.
Financial sustainability remains a dominant concern
Against a backdrop of global and national economic pressures, financial sustainability continues to weigh heavily on leaders’ minds, with 58% of respondents identifying it as a key challenge.
The financial pressures facing institutions are already well understood. Suffice it to say, this remains an incredibly difficult operating environment, and we know from your feedback that you need us to do all we can to help you manage these pressures. That is why we are focused not only on financial sustainability and security, but also on supporting transformation and growth.
We support the former through the provision of secure and sustainable infrastructure, underpinned by the Janet network, cyber security and cloud services. This is complemented by our negotiations with key vendors and the sector data we provide to inform institutional decision-making, both individually and collectively.
Alongside this focus on efficiency, we must also help institutions, and the sector as a whole, to change and grow. That is why, across our core capabilities, we are supporting initiatives around federated research infrastructure, tertiary education, transnational education, artificial intelligence and collaboration.
Cyber security as a leadership and governance issue
Cyber security, identified by 41% of leaders as a top priority, is closely linked to financial resilience and institutional risk. Leaders consistently recognise the importance of collective approaches that strengthen the sector’s ability to defend itself.
The launch of the Jisc security operations centre (SOC) and our work on licensing and procurement through collective negotiations are examples of how shared action can benefit the whole sector. More broadly, the message from government, reinforced through the survey findings, is that cyber security is a governance issue, not just an IT challenge, and should be treated as a strategic board-level priority. It is encouraging to see this reflected more clearly in leadership agendas.
How leaders view Jisc
Leaders continue to recognise our sector leadership and strategic influence across the sector, particularly in areas such as the Janet Network, licensing and procurement and sector-specific cyber security, alongside the insight and guidance we provide.
Improved ratings for overall customer satisfaction and recognition of Jisc as a force for good are rewarding to see. At the same time, the feedback reinforces the importance of clarity, responsiveness and continued focus on delivering value in a highly constrained environment. We will also be working to demonstrate more clearly the impact of what we do.
Looking ahead
As participation in the survey continues to grow, so too does its importance in shaping our priorities. I’d like to reiterate my thanks to leaders for taking the time to participate and share their perspectives honestly.
This year’s survey is not simply about recognising what works well. It is about understanding where pressures are intensifying and where Jisc needs to adapt. Over the coming year, we will continue to listen closely, strengthen engagement and be clearer about how we support institutions through uncertainty, not only through services, but through shared understanding and collective action.
About the author
I am managing director of higher education and research at Jisc and lead HE member engagement through and with Jisc’s account management team.
I am accountable for our HE and research strategies and their implementation. This includes engaging with senior sector stakeholders and, internally, working closely with Jisc’s product directorates to ensure we meet sector needs.
Alongside my role as managing director I am responsible for Jisc’s digital content and software negotiations, its provision of discovery services and its work in open research. My particular interest in the development of partnerships and collaborations at Jisc has seen me work with tertiary education, funders, cultural bodies, international organisations and the health sector to improve access to knowledge and information to support education and research.