You Can't Just Cut Your Way Out: Building a Plan for Institutional Resilience

Thursday, October 22, 2026 1:40 PM to 2:10 PM · 30 min. (Europe/London)
Abbey Room
Breakout
Finance, Strategy and LeadershipAcademic Strategy, Positioning and Growth

Information

HE is awash with news of cuts, redundancies, and growing existential risk. Institutions must address near-term deficits while maintaining a focus on long-term investment and mission delivery. This session explores a 9-part framework to build institutional resilience, including academic portfolio, revenue diversification, organisational optimisation, tech infrastructure, and strategic partnerships.

Specifically, we will share tactical and strategic approaches to build financial plans that balance revenue and cost reduction, hold to mission, and successfully message this work to campus and beyond. This will include turnaround case studies, as well as key lessons learned and mistakes to avoid from recent change programmes.

Key Takeaways / Themes

  • Institutional resilience requires more than cost-cutting.
  • Financial sustainability depends on both revenue growth and cost optimisation.
  • Technology, partnerships and portfolio decisions are key resilience levers.
  • Transformation case studies highlight proven strategies and common pitfalls.
Huron9Founded in 2002, Huron is a global management consulting and professional services firm, with a dual focus on higher education and healthcare. Our team of 1,250 higher education consultants is one of the largest in the sector and includes former university leaders and professionals with decades of experience. We support universities with a wide range of priorities, including strategy and innovation, institutional resilience, operating model transformation, student experience, digital risk, research enterprise, governance, and fundraising. We are also a full-service technology partner, leading university implementations of Salesforce, Slate, Workday, and Oracle. We have client experience in the UK, Europe, North America, Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. Our clients include over half of the QS Top 100 research institutions and more than 100 UK universities. University clients choose us for our deep sector expertise, practical delivery experience, innovative thinking, and advanced analytics and technology capabilities.