The future higher education workforce in locally and globally engaged HEIs

This project included case studies of eight universities in the four UK nations: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; five in England and one in each of the other three countries. It comprised a longitudinal qualitative phase (2017 and 2019), and a quantitative phase (2017 to 2018). The latter were carried out by a survey of academic staff across the institutions participating in the qualitative phase of the study, with the aim of obtaining up to 5000 responses.

For each institution we held 8 in-depth interviews with academic and professional staff across different levels of seniority and across different disciplines – a total of 64 in-depth interviews in 2017 and early 2018.

Every effort was made to engage interviewees in the study so as to encourage them to undertake a second interview. This phase took place with the same individuals in 2019/20 in order to obtain longitudinal data. A pilot study was undertaken in one institution before starting the field research.

The quantitative (survey) component of the research was  designed on completion of the first round of qualitative interviews, drawing on responses to the interview questions.