Report
Tackling technical legacy in UK higher education: a strategic imperative
About this briefing
Technical legacy places a material constraint on the resilience and performance of UK higher education. It has accumulated through fragmented processes, policy complexity and uneven investment, leaving universities with outdated, customised and poorly integrated systems that are costly to sustain and difficult to modernise.
Its effects are visible across student services, research management, finance, estates, security and digital research infrastructure. This briefing draws on sector interviews, workshops and analysis to set out the scale of the issue and highlight areas where coordinated action will have the greatest impact.
"Technical legacy is the result of accumulated decisions. It is not inevitable, and it can be addressed through focused and purposeful action."
-Professor Sir Anthony Finkelstein CBE FREng FRS, president, City St George’s, University of London
Read the full briefing
pdf, 3.2MB, 17 pages
Key points
- Technical legacy affects essential systems across institutions and shapes how universities operate; it reflects decades of incremental decisions and complex policy and funding environments.
- Annual sector costs are estimated at £2 billion–£4.7 billion, driven by duplication, maintenance requirement and increased staff effort
- Fragmented systems heighten security exposure and constrain the adoption of AI and other modern capabilities
- Student experience and research productivity are affected by disjointed processes and proliferated tools
- Staff productivity is reduced by manual workarounds and the need to sustain complex, heavily customised systems
Opportunities
There is clear scope to build on existing sector initiatives and strengthen coordinated action on technical legacy. Policymakers, funders and regulators can support simplification of policy and regulatory requirements and enable more consistent, shared approaches to digital, data and research infrastructure.
Sector bodies can extend current work on assessment models, costing approaches, skills development and vendor engagement, ensuring greater alignment across programmes already underway. University leaders can embed legacy reduction within strategy, governance and investment planning and strengthen oversight of the systems that support core institutional functions.
Next steps
We will convene universities, funders, regulators and sector bodies to develop shared recommendations and coordinated approaches to address technical legacy.