In my previous post, I argued that a central challenge facing universities in these times of flux is not resistance to change, but a lack of future and change capability. By this I mean the institutional ability to decide, deliberately and in time, when and what to change and when and what not to, and then to act on those decisions. This second piece considers a foundational condition for building that capability: clarity of purpose and identity.
Australian universities face constant pressure to adapt. Artificial intelligence, funding volatility, policy shifts and changes in student demand all demand response. Many commentators have pointed out that institutions are not built for speed or sustained change, and discussions about why often focus on process, structure, and culture. While these are important factors, I suggest that a key difficulty lies at the level of strategy, or deeper still, at the level of identity. Without a clear sense of purpose in an institution, too many changes appear equally urgent, equally plausible, and equally unavoidable, making coherent choice increasingly difficult.
Identity before adaptability
At the institutional level, future and change capability begins with shared clarity about what an institution exists to do, what it will prioritise, and what it will choose not to pursue as conditions evolve. Technical capability, financial capacity, and a skilled workforce all matter. However, in the absence of a coherent identity, even well-resourced institutions struggle to translate capability into sustained direction.
By identity I mean a clear articulation of purpose and long-term priorities that functions as a decision framework, with strategic and operational consequences. Identity shapes what we stop, what we scale, and how we allocate constrained time, budget, and political capital. It also informs how we respond to external pressure and internal opportunity.
As with individual identity, institutional identity emerges from a combination of self-awareness and contextual awareness. It synthesises understanding of distinctive strengths and values with knowledge of community needs, policy directions, and emerging opportunities. Institutional identities are not slogans or branding exercises. They are made visible through educational offerings, research agendas, engagement practices, and partnerships.
Importantly, institutional identity is primarily horizontal rather than vertical. It is not about tiering institutions by status or performance, but about purpose and mission. Institutions might orient themselves toward online lifelong professional learning; integrated academic and work-based education; modular skills development; deep regional engagement; or missions relating to environmental sustainability, health, or security. These are choices about contribution, not rank.
The future is diverse and fast-changing. It is increasingly clear that a single, resource-constrained institution cannot do everything or respond to everything effectively. Rather than maximising breadth, institutions need to make deliberate choices about a smaller number of priorities and pursue them well. Paradoxically, this selectivity strengthens adaptability by reducing noise and clarifying what matters when change is required.
It should be noted that clarity of identity does not remove short-term pressure. Universities will continue to face urgent demands arising from funding constraints, workforce challenges, and policy shifts. What identity provides is a basis for judgement: deciding which pressures to absorb, which to resist, and which warrant deeper adaptation. Without this shared basis, institutions risk treating all pressures as equally urgent, increasing fragmentation and strategic drift.
Starting with the sector: who are we and what are we for?
Institutional identity does not develop in isolation. Universities operate within systems that both enable and constrain what is possible.
At the sector level, fundamental questions remain unresolved: what does Australian society expect higher education to contribute over the long term? How does the sector understand its collective role in meeting those expectations? How can we design a system capable of responding to increasing complexity in technology, workforce demand, and social need?
Sector-level clarity is important because it shapes how institutions interpret external signals such as funding incentives, regulation, rankings, and reputational cues. Government policy settings play a significant role in shaping what kinds of institutional directions are seen as legitimate, fundable, and sustainable. While these settings inevitably shift with political priorities, they are most effective when underpinned by a shared understanding of what higher education is for and how it operates. In the absence of that foundation, short-term signals dominate and coherence erodes at both system and institutional levels.
Sector-level identity enables institutional positioning. Where it is weak or ambiguous, institutional identity is progressively diluted, and strategies become increasingly reactive.
The cost of trying to be everything
In many respects, Australian universities are strikingly similar. Many pursue growth in the same markets, compete for the same student cohorts, and seek recognition through the same measures of success. The result is duplication, dispersed capability, and rising internal complexity.
In some ways, duplication and breadth of activity are not problematic. In complex systems, some redundancy and slack can support experimentation, learning, and innovation. Difficulties arise when breadth reflects accumulated activity rather than deliberate choice, and when few activities are ever stopped. Under these conditions, inefficiency becomes structural rather than strategic. Cautious expansion happens across many fronts. Institutions grow widely rather than deeply, diluting focus and making it harder to sustain excellence or adapt coherently.
There are, however, signs of alternative approaches within the Australian system. Some institutions have begun aligning strategy around a smaller number of distinctive commitments, such as focused research concentrations, deep regional engagement, or industry-embedded education. Smaller providers often operate with clearer specialisation, orienting programs and partnerships around specific missions.
In these cases, identity starts to function as a lived decision framework rather than an abstract statement. Choices about investment, partnership, growth, and withdrawal are made with reference to mission rather than opportunity alone. This provides clearer signals to staff, students, and partners about what the institution is for and how success should be understood.
Such approaches involve trade-offs. They may require declining opportunities, narrowing scope, or resisting sector-wide trends. Yet they can also reduce internal friction, strengthen coherence across teaching, research, and engagement, and support more confident long-term investment. Where clarity is present, institutions are better positioned to adapt without repeatedly resetting direction.
Time horizons, strategic lurches, leadership, and trust
Institutional identity work unfolds over much longer horizons than those that typically govern university decision making. Three-year government terms, five-year strategic plans, executive contracts, and council appointments create short cycles of attention and accountability. In the absence of an enduring sense of purpose, these cycles can produce not strategic drift but strategic lurching: repeated shifts in direction as institutions respond to successive policy signals, leadership preferences, or funding pressures.
A coherent institutional identity evolves over time but provides continuity across these transitions. It enables institutions to adjust course without repeatedly redefining purpose, supporting cumulative rather than episodic strategy.
Clarity and continuity of identity are closely linked to trust. When priorities are diffuse or frequently changing, staff learn that effort invested in one direction may be under-supported or reversed. For students and partners, instability makes informed choices more difficult. For governments and communities, unclear identity weakens confidence that public investment aligns with public purpose.
Trust is built through consistency of intent. Adaptation is more likely to be supported when guided by stable institutional commitments. Identity functions as a durable reference point: core commitments remain relatively enduring, while their expression develops through evidence, experimentation, and learning. Identity work is therefore an ongoing institutional practice rather than a one-off strategic exercise.
Differentiation and the Australian policy context
A sector composed of institutions with clear, consistent, and complementary identities is a differentiated system. While differentiation is widely endorsed in principle, it is weakly supported by current Australian policy settings. Funding, regulatory, and accountability frameworks largely assume institutional homogeneity, while rankings reinforce convergence by rewarding comprehensive activity across a narrow set of indicators. Together, these dynamics encourage institutions to look alike and compete on similar terms.
The Australian Universities Accord has reopened important questions about sector purpose and coherence. One opportunity lies in moving beyond uniform expectations toward a more differentiated ecosystem. Mission-based or bespoke institutional compacts are often proposed as a mechanism for achieving this.
Mission-based funding has been widely criticised in Australia, and not without reason. In theory, such compacts align funding and accountability with clearly articulated missions rather than generic performance metrics. In practice, they have often drifted toward compliance or micromanagement, limiting their capacity to genuinely support differentiation.
International experience suggests that more effective approaches focus on a small number of long-horizon outcomes, include independent review, allocate meaningful funding to missions, and operate on stable review cycles. Differentiation can sit above a shared baseline of agreed principles around quality, equity, and regional provision. Specialisation at institutional level need not reduce student choice at system level when supported by credit portability, shared curricula, and cross-institution enrolment mechanisms. Rankings will continue to shape reputation, but institutions can rebalance internal success measures toward mission outcomes to reduce disproportionate strategic responses to marginal rank movements.
Historically, Australian higher education policy has prioritised comparability, growth, and comprehensiveness. While these settings have supported expansion and stability, they also make it difficult for institutions to pursue distinctive long-term missions with confidence or to adapt in conditions of ongoing complexity.
The work of institutional identity development
Institutional identity development is difficult work. It requires confronting legacy assumptions about breadth and growth, undertaking honest assessment of strengths and constraints, and making decisions that may be unpopular. Sustaining identity over time requires leadership and governance arrangements that treat purpose as enduring institutional work rather than branding or a static element of a strategic plan.
From identity to capability
A more future and change capable higher education system will not be achieved by expecting every institution to do everything, nor by relying on short cycles of reform or performance pressure alone. It requires institutions with clear, enduring identities that guide coherent choices over time, and a policy environment that enables difference without fragmenting the system as a whole.
When institutional purpose is stable, adaptation becomes more deliberate, trust more likely, and collaboration more feasible. Differentiation, understood not as hierarchy but as complementarity, allows institutions to contribute in distinct ways while collectively meeting public needs. In this sense, identity is not a constraint on adaptability but its precondition, providing a stable basis for judgement as universities navigate uncertainty, leadership change, and shifting societal expectations.
The next piece in this series turns to how clarity of identity can be translated into action and adaptability.
