SUMS Annual Conference 2026

Rightsize, Refocus and Rebuild

Wednesday 4 February 2026, 10:00 - 16:30 (drinks reception to follow from 16:30 - 17:30)

UK higher education is in crisis, with widespread redundancies and restructures across the sector. Rising costs, poor systems integration, and often overcomplicated academic models have left universities struggling, especially with declining international student income. While the government urges efficiency, many institutions remain trapped in a spiral of short-term fixes rather than pursuing genuine transformation.

You can’t just cut your way to strategic success. Long-term success depends on aligning institutional ambitions with financial realities and strategic goals. Real change requires understanding the academic portfolio's financial viability, aligning offerings with market demand, and exploring third-stream income. Institutions must rethink their models, simplify their structures, and embrace shared services and mergers where they will deliver long-term efficiencies. The call is to ‘think bigger’—collaborate, consolidate, and create institutions fit for future demand, not just survive current pressures.

Join us for this year’s SUMS Consulting Annual Conference as we invite delegates to explore alternative futures and consider how we rightsize, refocus and rebuild not just our own institutions, but the UK HE sector as a whole.

Info: Discover how SUMS and AHUA members are using the new Organisational Efficiency Maturity Assessment tool (OEMA) to drive change, with live examples and a first look at how the tool helps institutions to adopt a common approach to assessing efficiency and benchmarking costs. Rhiannon will guide us through practical applications, showing you how to harness OEMA’s insights for your own transformation journey.

Info: Is the UK HE sector's situation truly unprecedented? Do shared services and mergers really fail to deliver value? This panel brings together leaders from the NHS, local government and further education to share their transformation stories, exploring the successes, setbacks, and surprising solutions that emerged under similar financial pressures. Discover which cross-sector strategies really worked and might translate to the HE context.

Info: How do the morning's insights apply to your institution? Join this interactive networking session to explore the hottest topics affecting universities today. Facilitated by the SUMS Consulting team, we'll work together to shape what meaningful transformation could look like for you, and help connect these ideas to practical support. Share your suggested ‘hot topics’ for the session by email to: [email protected].

Info: What does successful transformation look like when universities lead it themselves? From institutional mergers and shared services to transnational education (TNE) partnerships and curriculum redesign, SUMS members are pioneering their own solutions. This panel showcases real transformation journeys, exploring what's working, what conditions enabled success, and how homegrown approaches are delivering sustainable change.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher SUMS Consulting