18 Virtual Brochure – March 2025 2. Risk Register Analysis Executive summary Much has been written about the financial crisis in UK higher education in recent months. The underlying causes are well-documented – capped, non-index linked domestic tuition fees; stagnant domestic demand; tough international recruitment challenges exacerbated by immigration rules; rising pay, pension and tax costs; and upward the pressure of inflation on every aspect of operations. In the last year institutions have made significant cuts to staff, running costs and capital investments, as well as reviewing their education offer and streamlining ways of working. Despite the recent uplift in English tuition fees (which are tempered by the increase in national insurance contributions), an increasing number of institutions are struggling to return a surplus. As Universities UK (UUK) has said in its blueprint for change “the funding of universities across the UK is structurally unsustainable”. In this context, Uniac’s 2024 risk register analysis provides timely insight about how institutions are discussing, scoring and mitigating the risks to their financial sustainability, and how this is colouring the management and mitigation of other significant strategic risks. Uniac is the UK’s leading provider of expert internal audit and assurance services exclusively for the higher education sector. This gives us unrivalled insight into how institutions are thinking about their strategic risks, how risks are described and scored, the design of approaches to management and mitigation, and critically how these are changing over time. It also enables us to offer a perspective on the visibility that audit committees, and governing bodies have about strategic risks, risk appetite and therefore the breadth and depth of challenge that governance provides.
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