Steph Morris, YU Associate
Steph Morris examines the role of universities in driving economic growth and makes the case that universities must be properly resourced to maximise their potential as economic engines for their places.
Universities as engines for growth
Listening to Tom Riordan, Envoy for Northern Growth, speak at recent events, it is clear that he sees universities as critical to the success of the Northern Growth Corridor. Tom told the audience of a Centre for Cities webinar on 1 June 2026 that any country in the world “would kill to have our northern universities”, and recommended that we should harness and accelerate the economic engine of the 33 universities in the North of England.
What the data tells us – and what it doesn’t
Higher education institutions (HEIs) contribute to regional economic growth in lots of ways. The challenge is that some of these ways are easier to measure than others. For example, through HE-Business and Community Interaction data, it is easy to track the amount of money universities have attracted for regeneration and development activities using public funds such as ERDF, ESF and the Shared Prosperity Fund. HE-BCI data also tracks how many spin-outs and start-ups emerge from universities, along with performance data such as employment and turnover. It’s reasonable to assume that a significant proportion of new businesses coming out of universities will be based in – and have an impact on – their local area, creating jobs and connecting into regional supply chains and clusters. Meanwhile, analysis of Innovate UK data can tell us about university partnerships with local and regional businesses on grant-funded projects, including Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) and Collaborative Research & Development.
This data helps us to understand the value the universities are adding to their local economies through commercialisation, enterprise and R&I activities. However, a major limitation of the above data is that while it captures inputs (i.e. the amount of money flowing into universities to support regional development and business innovation activities) and outputs (i.e. the numbers of spin-outs and start-ups created), it doesn’t tell us a great deal about impacts. Crucially, it doesn’t capture the value of the wider role that universities play in local innovation ecosystems.
The wider role of universities
There has been a lot of emphasis lately on ‘quadruple helix’ leadership for places, in which local & regional government; the private sector; communities; and universities all work together to agree priorities and identify shared actions to unlock inclusive growth. The contribution of universities to the quadruple helix is critical, and it is far more wide-reaching than much of the data would indicate. In addition to commercial and innovation activities, universities provide strategic place-based leadership, use their convening power to bring stakeholders together, develop novel approaches to improve engagement with under-represented groups in local decision-making, and use their institutional brand and global reputation to attract investment into the region. Universities provide long-term stability to place-based partnerships that is particularly important in a period when devolution, political changes and the economic headwinds facing businesses mean that other parts of the quadruple helix can be in a state of flux. As a partnership organisation representing all twelve HEIs in the region, Yorkshire Universities is co-signatory on an Memorandum of Understanding with all 19 Local and Combined Authorities, and works collaboratively with policy makers and HE partners to agree and undertake shared priority actions for the benefit of the region.
Developing new measures of impact
The fact that universities’ contributions to local economic development are under-represented in traditional metrics is not a new finding. Research England have been undertaking a national development programme for Knowledge Exchange (KE) metrics since 2023, and have been working in partnership with the UCI Policy Evidence Unit at the University of Cambridge to explore, among other things, how measurement frameworks can be developed to enhance our ability to capture the value of universities to their local economies. In March this year, UCI Director Tomas Coates-Ulrichsen and Policy Analyst Leonard Kelleher, participated in discussions with Yorkshire Universities Regional Development Group on this topic. In their May 2026 report, Improving data and metrics on knowledge exchange for regional growth: Insights from the UCI Expert Insights Series, UCI propose areas where KE metrics could be improved, and they identify a number of key areas where further research is needed, for example around evidencing the diverse contributions of universities to different kinds of economic growth (inclusive, sustainable, resilient etc.). UCI’s work has the potential to significantly enhance the availability of robust, comparable evidence of the value of universities in place-based ecosystems.
Giving universities the fuel they need
Senior political figures, like Tom Riordan and Patrick Vallance, the Science Minister, have placed universities at the heart of plans for the UK’s two major growth corridors (the Northern Growth Corridor and Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor).
So, if recognition is growing of the wider value of universities for places, is there still a challenge for the sector here at all? Well, listening to the discussions and presentations at last month’s KEUK Conference, Knowledge Exchange for the Future, it is clear that there is still work to be done. Delegates at the event shared insights on a wide range of impactful interactions between their universities and local partners to support place-based leadership, policy development, business innovation and community engagement. However, they also reflected on the financial challenges in the HE sector, with many institutions facing reductions in headcount and constrained budgets for KE. Until new metrics are more fully developed, funders will continue to use income measures as a proxy for impact when evaluating institutional KE activities and allocating funding to HE institutions. There is a real risk that universities will not have access to sufficient funding to enable them to support the full breadth and depth of KE that adds value for places, and that limited institutional funds for KE may be skewed towards those activities that generate returns that can be most easily measured using traditional income and output metrics.
Universities, including those in Yorkshire, are uniquely equipped to support place-based economic development. In addition to teaching students; conducting and commercialising research; supporting enterprise; and working with innovative businesses, universities have highly skilled and motivated academic and professional services staff who are keen to use their expertise to deliver positive outcomes and value for their local communities and economies. But unless universities are resourced to help build and sustain cross-sector collaborations within and between places, their role as ‘economic engines’ for national, regional, and local growth, runs the risk of stalling and spluttering to a halt.
