Will a mission group revival save universities or divide them?

The term “mission group” has somewhat gone out of fashion in recent years. Indeed, when the latest coming together of UK universities, ResearchPlus, launched in June 2025, organisers were at pains to avoid using the term at all.  

“Mission groups have come to have rather a poor reputation because they have been seen to be quite sharp elbowed and as advocating for themselves,” Sasha Roseneil, vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex – a founding member of ResearchPlus – said of the group’s focus on being seen as more of a “collaboration”.

But, formed by 10 UK research universities, the consortium’s launch was the latest evidence of a renewed interest in membership organisations across the UK sector. 

ResearchPlus has inevitably been compared with the Russell Group, perhaps the most high profile of all the mission groups. And the sector is already well served by other similar organisations – from the overarching umbrella body of Universities UK (UUK) to those representing specific types of institutions or united by being based in the same region.

Financial and political pressures are pushing universities into more active collaborations, strengthening the role and standing of the mission group. Bournemouth University, for example, recently rejoined University Alliance – a group of which it was originally a founding member. Other new groupings such as the Universities for North East England alliance have also launched.

But the same factors also bring a heightened risk of fractures and factions developing among a sector that has traditionally agreed on much.

Eyebrows were raised in the run up to last year’s autumn budget, when the Russell Group began lobbying for the international student levy to be a flat fee instead of a percentage charge – a setup that would benefit them and disadvantage universities with cheaper international tuition fees. 

It was a fight the Russell Group won, although there is debate about whether this was thanks to the group’s lobbying efforts or more down to civil servants’ view that a flat fee is simply easier to administer. 

And, with higher-tariff institutions seen to be scooping up domestic students that might once have gone to less-elite universities, the different groups appear more at odds with each other than would once have been the case.  

Ourania Filippakou, professor of education at Brunel, University of London, said she believed there will be a “renewed visibility of mission groups” in response to “sector-wide stress”.

“Financial pressures, uneven reliance on international student income, and ongoing policy uncertainty are encouraging institutions to seek clearer differentiation and targeted representation,” she said. 

“In this context, mission groups function primarily as mechanisms for positioning and risk management rather than as expressions of collective educational purpose.”

For ResearchPlus partners, the decision to form a new group stemmed from the feeling there wasn’t a voice for non-Russell Group research universities, said Roseneil. 

“There has been a bit of a danger that the Russell Group has been seen increasingly as representing the research-intensive universities, but actually it doesn’t. It speaks for some of them. And it’s been speaking with a very effective voice for them.

“If the UK is really to innovate and grow in the way that the government says is its aim, it needs much more than the Russell Group to do that.”

Recent changes to the distribution of research funding may have also added to the feeling that there needs to be a counterpart to the Russell Group.

“There are collective concerns over the research review framework, with continual down-valuing of anything that is not demonstrably of the highest internal excellence,” said Ronald Barnett, emeritus professor of higher education at UCL.

“In this situation, unless checked, the power and influence of the Russell Group will grow, as will the gap between the Russell Group and the rest of the sector.”

He continued: “A go-it-alone situation, with each university jostling for itself, just won’t do.”

UUK does play an important role in funnelling the views of a large portion of the sector to the government, but, with almost 150 members, forming a united front is a challenge.

“Mission groups resulted from similar institutions wanting to lobby on their shared interests at a time when they felt their voice was diluted within Universities UK and that the lobbying of UUK became too vanilla and trying to please – or at least not upset – all universities,” said Alex Bols, chief of staff at the University of East Anglia. 

Roseneil, who is on UUK’s board, said she valued the work that the national body does, but added it has “a very difficult job of trying to represent a very wide range of interests”. 

Instead, Filippakou said that fragmentation allows “institutions to articulate more tailored narratives about their role, contribution, and constraints, particularly in a policy environment that increasingly rewards differentiation”.

Bols, who previously led the now-defunct 1994 Group as well as serving as deputy chief executive at GuildHE, believes that mission groups “could make a comeback” but only “if they deliver real policy wins”. 

“When resources are tight, universities want sharper, more targeted advocacy,” he said. 

Vanessa Wilson, chief executive of University Alliance, said she felt universities were becoming more selective and thinking carefully about which groups they pay membership fees to at a time of intense cost cutting. 

She said the group was thinking carefully about its offer to members, including networking subgroups and discussion events. 

Nonetheless, one of the most important roles of mission groups and membership bodies is being able to provide insights on government thinking. 

“Mission groups succeed when they provide intelligence and early warnings,” said Bols. “That’s gold dust for universities planning in uncertain times.”

Crucially, they must not just listen to but influence policies in a way that is beneficial to their members.

Wilson said: “Where I see my role…is to make sure that, when I’m in the same room as [other groups], the voice of my members is represented in front of ministers and officials in all the departments and agencies across government, so that there isn’t one view that is represented.”

Policymakers – particularly civil servants and ministers in the current Labour government – are perceived to be very open to listening to mission groups and representative bodies, not least because it saves them from having to speak to hundreds of individual institutions in order to glean a coherent viewpoint.

But the influence of these groups over politicians is “uneven and highly dependent on context”, said Filippakou. 

“Mission groups can exert influence when their priorities align closely with government agendas, such as skills, regional development, or research concentration,” she said. “However, their impact tends to diminish when multiple groups advance competing messages and weaken the sector’s ability to speak collectively.”

Brooke Storer-Church, chief executive at Guild HE, said she had, at times, “questioned the value of various small lobbying groups if they are pulling in different directions”.

“I hold close relationships with the mission group CEOs in the hope of helping to align messaging where helpful and smooth out some of those potential tensions in the interest of the broader sector.”

As well as advocating for the universities in the group, Roseneil said ResearchPlus sees itself as “wanting a better deal for the sector” as a whole. 

“Every university is facing the same financial challenges because we all have our fees capped by the government,” she said. “We’re all facing the same restrictions on international students, the same kind of hostility and concerns about migration that are playing out through government policy. 

“We don’t want special treatment or to take money away from other universities,” she continued. “We are about the common good [and] about working for the public good.”