Director (Strategy)

The proposed 6% levy on international fees marks a 

This isn't just policy change—it’s a commercial stress test.

, we’re already supporting institutions to mitigate impact and plan with confidence. Our fee-setting reviews consistently (and conservatively) unlock 

For universities with strong international recruitment, this is an opportunity to 

review, refine, and reinforce commercial strategy

This is about margin protection and future resilience.

Universities that act now will be best positioned to:

Let’s explore how your institution can respond strategically—and turn uncertainty into opportunity.

Ready for the 6% Levy?

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting to BUFDG on a pivotal topic: how optimizing fees and scholarships can be a game-changer for addressing the current financial challenges faced by the HE sector.

Universities are missing out on millions in potential surplus. Fee Calibration: Insufficient and poorly calibrated fee points are costing the sector significant revenue. Scholarship Targeting: Scholarships that are poorly profiled and badly targeted represent a costly missed opportunity.

 Correctly profiling scholarships can significantly enhance income certainty and promote social equity – all for the same investment. 

The data and insights needed to uncover unrealized surplus from fees and exponentially increase ROI from scholarship investments is available.

The questions post-presentation were insightful and I’m pleased to confirm:

Applicability: This strategy can benefit HEIs of any size. 

Data Accessibility: Data is available for all HEIs. 

Price Sensitivity: Our analysis comprehensively covers price sensitivity. 

Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to the discussion. The conversation has already developed and I’m looking forward to hearing from more colleagues to explore the opportunities further.

How optimizing fees and scholarships can be a game-changer

Director of Data Science

In 2020, S2 developed the first iteration of our Course and Tuition Fee database, designed to be comprehensive, timely, accurate and to standardise the tuition fee landscape with new metrics.

Building on the success of our flagship product, we are pleased to launch a new, sector-first product focusing on Postgraduate Research courses.

Our PGR Course and Tuition Fee database is built using the same data science-led methodology as our flagship database. Closely resembling our Postgraduate Taught portion of the database, we collect and standardise all Postgraduate Research courses at UK higher education institutions. This includes both level 7 (e.g., MRes and MPhil) and level 8 offerings (e.g., PhD, DBA).

Our new database includes all Home and International fees, a course index, a new course level flag to indicate master’s and doctorate level study, subject coding, course URLs, delivery mode, duration as well as our original standardised metrics: a primary key for continuity between releases, a course flag to indicate new or discontinued offerings and fields that standardise the reported fee for integration into Business Intelligence tools.

The first release of the PGR Course and Tuition Fee database will be available after UK higher education institutions confirm their Home fee, which is usually in line with UKRI fees.

If you are interested in a demonstration or sample, please get in touch via the form below.

Announcing our Course and Tuition Fee Database: Postgraduate Research Edition

Times are tough right now for UK HE recruitment – but that doesn't permit or excuse bad behaviour.

With marketing budgets under pressure, long-neglected Financial Awards (Scholarships, Bursaries, et al), are being reshaped to help secure recruitment goals. So far so good. At S Squared we’ve long argued that more could be achieved in this area. The objective, though, should be to improve the outcome and output for recipients and providers alike; to find the win-win. 

While undertaking Financial Awards Audits, we read more T&Cs for Financial Awards than is probably healthy for us. It’s here that we’ve uncovered a concerning trend. Clauses along the line of, “you must make us your firm choice on your UCAS form”, or “you must have selected us as your firm choice by (insert date)” are becoming increasingly common. To be clear, Universities are making it a condition of being considered for a reduction in fees or a direct payment, that prospective students make them their firm choice. We have examples from Russell Group, Post-92 and Pre-92 institutions.

The CMA and OfS don’t specifically address scholarships. What is made abundantly clear though is the expectation and requirement that Universities acknowledge the disproportionate power they wield relative to prospective students. It requires explicit care to be taken in how Universities communicate with students and inform their decision making. This includes not engaging in pressure selling techniques. 

Designing and delivering financial awards should be one of the best jobs in HE. It absolutely can benefit recipients and providers. They can help you achieve your recruitment KPIs and targets, but it must be without straying into unethical practice.

So please, look at your T&Cs and make sure you haven’t crossed a line. If you have, then do the right thing and make the change. 

If you have examples of questionable T&Cs included in Financial Awards or if you have a different perspective on this subject, please get in touch.

Pressure Selling and Scholarships – a call for ethical practice

We can’t think of a better way to describe how S Squared will help your university realise additional surplus. 

David Brailsford, the director for British Cycling and general manager of cycling’s Team Sky, coined this phrase. His approach to performance development involved making small, continuous improvements across all aspects of the team. 

By focusing on incremental gains, he turned the British cycling team from a laughingstock into a dominant force for 17 years. At S Squared, we apply the same relentless precision to reviewing the fee for each of your programs. We analyse each program against its unique competitor set, identifying the optimal fee point. These seemingly small adjustments, when aggregated, result in millions of pounds in additional surplus. 

Curious about how we can achieve this for your university? Let’s connect! Reach out to us, and let’s discuss how S Squared can help you realize substantial gains.

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

Designing, awarding, and evaluating scholarships and bursaries should be one of the best roles in HE. Whether celebrating and attracting academic success, or addressing social inequalities, Financial Awards (FA) supercharge HE as an engine for good. With annual budgets in the millions, even tens of millions, this is a significant and generous investment. Other sectors make a greater fuss about much less. By balancing the drive for student income with transformational social impact, Financial Awards have the potential to be a win-win for beneficiary and University alike. 

So why, with considerable budget and a mission to do good, are so many Financial Award schemes a travesty of their intent? 

In place of a beacon of HE’s social impact, we have dismal, dull, disengaging scholarships and bursaries. 

you can find them on a university’s website, they may well be incomprehensible. Poorly maintained, bizarrely named, choked with legalese, they are seemingly designed to deter. These schemes are clearly regarded as a burden to be administered begrudgingly. How are first in family, or international students supposed to make sense of indecipherable jargon and overly complex schemes that confuse even HE professionals?

Thankfully, there are some exceptions, a few examples to lead the way. These are Financial Awards schemes designed with the beneficiary in mind as much as the provider. They are promoted with pride and excitement at the potential of this opportunity for student and university alike.

The University of Bristol and its PGT “Think Big” branded FA scheme is one example. Webpages are easy to find, bright and engaging, filled with testimonials and pictures (yes things are so bad I’m celebrating the use of photography). Everything an applicant needs to know is on that page, with one click taking you to more detail or the application form. That single form is used to assess the applicant for all FAs “Multiple Scholarships, One Application.” These pages are a lesson in how to reduce friction while increasing engagement. That engagement is leveraged to building community by referring the applicant to their University of Bristol International Scholarships LinkedIn page. Bravo, Bristol, Bravo. 

As HE professionals S Squared Insights recognised both the need for improvement of financial awards and the challenges frustrating that change. We painstakingly developed our Financial Awards database which gives us unmatched perspective and detail on this confused and confusing area. Together with our domain knowledge, this database informs our 

 This groundbreaking report will help you understand your FA offer relative to competitors and best-practice in the sector. 

If you’d like to learn how to diversify your intake, develop new markets, and understand if your FA scheme is compliant, then please get in touch.

Generosity Gone Awry: Why Universities Miss the Mark with Scholarships

At S Squared, we are privileged to share insight derived from our proprietary database, covering fees, tariffs, IELTs and more for the whole sector, in reports and fee reviews for our clients. Of increasing concern to us, as we head into difficult times, are those institutions (not our clients) we see sleepwalking into trouble. These Universities have allowed international fees to be eroded by inflation, have only a handful of fee points across hundreds of products, and rely on the market to grow “organically” to meet targets. 

In contrast, the University of York has been proactive and significantly increased the size of its Total Addressable Market (TAM). This describes the total population of potential customers who meet the criteria to purchase your product. In HE, for international students, these criteria are, IELTS, Tariff and Fee (and the greatest of these is Fee). This latest move by UoY follows a couple of cycles where they increased fees at a rate faster than most of the Russell Group. By pulling these two levers, fee and TAM, UoY should go some way to mitigate the financial risk of a particularly challenging year for international recruitment. Yes, there may be issues of reputation and ranking to consider but that is always easier from a position of financial strength. 

If you aren’t having detailed conversations about the interplay of fee, reputation, tariff and language qualifications, that are informed by the best available data, then please get in touch for a conversation. We’d love to hear from you.

York isn't the story – it's those sleepwalking into trouble.

Working in HE means that you are always “in cycle”. The dizzying spin is relentless with little or no scope for strategic planning or change. UCAS deadlines, campus visits, offer making, start of semester, end of semester, exams, graduations, start again. Even when a better way of doing things is identified, implementing the change among all that spin and churn seems impossible.

S Squared Insights wants to help HE colleagues step off the merry-go-round.

Our unique strength is combining the best in data science solutions with the lived experience of the HE practitioners who make up our team.

We want to hear from the HE community about the cycles they want to break. What are the issues you want to address but lack the support to change?

In the coming weeks we’ll be having these conversations with clients, old and new alike, confident we can find a way forward. If you’d like to be part of the dialogue then let us know.

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