And I see an element of caution around how the policy landscape is going to change. Could you demystify for some of our audience here what is underpinning that caution, and what are some of the key issues?
So I think we've a couple of things going on. The first is a really wide ranging universities' accord process, a big discussion about the future of the sector. And there's been a rich discussion. It's unclear really how much that will materially shape the sector.
But I think there's a second part here, which is actually the themes and issues that are underpinning the current government's approach to regulating education. And that is greater emphasis on equity. So that's enrolling students from a lot of backgrounds and enabling more of them to succeed. It's also about how to there's more controlling and more of a kind of hard regulator levers.
You see it in the student support and success regulations, and in other topics as well. So I think that for me is in some ways more interesting is to say, what are the the themes, the trends, the issues that that underpin the the philosophy?
And I think one of them we have to talk about is increasing efficiency of delivery.
But what should universities do in this time of change?
I think the one thing I would be looking at is to say, okay. We're probably gonna be asked to deliver more with the same resource, maybe even with less resource. And that means thinking about, the structure of curricula, being quite discerning about, the program catalog and and what efficient delivery looks like. I think you can do that completely consistently with quality and with with serving students' needs, but it might involve some quite difficult and important conversations with the academic workforce and, and so on. I think there are other options.
I'd love to hear what what other other ideas you've had.
Yeah. I think you you talked about efficiency, and efficiency is a conversation globally in education sector.
So and and clearly, role of technology is is being talked about quite a lot when it comes to efficiency. But but on the broader role of technology, the the the playbook that some of the operators are looking at is, hey. How can technology help in enhancing the revenue side of things? There you're talking about your existing business, how it can be made much more efficient in terms of student acquisition. There are new customers who can be targeted based on online programs. But on the cost side, I think it's about student support, making sure that, you know, retention levels are where they need to be, and using technology to identify at risk students. Even, I think, a greater deal of efficiencies in terms of teacher time utilization.
There are innovative solutions which are being developed around how lesson plans could be made for teachers, you know, with with some appropriate inputs. That can unlock significant element of faculty teacher time so that they can focus on the real task, which is the lesson.
I think that's right. I don't think we have to see efficiency just in financial lens, but also there's opportunities to greater quality and greater impact for further education. For me, period of regulatory change and policy change, I don't think that Universities Accord is going to make really radical changes in the short term. What I'd like to see institutions responding to is these broader trends that really we can see in a whole series of policy areas. Areas.
