Rethinking Value in Higher Education: Why FASTlab’s Approach Offers a New Narrative for Impact and Innovation
- Paul Egglestone
- May 21
- 3 min read
Calls to make higher education more “efficient” are growing louder across the globe. But as highlighted at a recent UNICA conference, (covered in the Times Higher) the frameworks being used to define and measure this efficiency are often ill-suited to the complexity and purpose of the sector. As Professor Liviu Matei of King’s College London noted, higher education is not a product—and yet we continue to evaluate it using metrics derived from microeconomics, such as journal outputs and citation counts. These narrow indicators overlook the broader societal, cultural, and ecological value that universities generate.
The problem, however, is not just the inadequacy of these metrics. It’s the lack of compelling alternatives—and the failure to tell a story that resonates beyond institutional walls.
At FASTlab, we agree that the sector is stuck in a cycle of internal validation and output-chasing. But we also believe that universities can measure and demonstrate value in ways that speak to public needs, economic realities, and future challenges—if they are willing to think differently.
The Efficiency Trap: When Measurement Misses the Point
The pursuit of efficiency is often framed in purely transactional terms: more graduates per dollar, more papers per academic, more patents per research grant. But as Ha Wei of Peking University wisely noted, “not everything that can be counted can be funded—and not everything that can be funded can be counted.”
This echoes what we see across Australia and globally. Teaching hours and publication counts are easy to tally, but they miss the richness of collaborative knowledge production, systems change, community impact, and long-term innovation. Worse, they risk devaluing the very things that make higher education essential in a complex world: trust, curiosity, civic imagination, and public good.
Why Universities Are Losing the Narrative Battle
Marcelo Knobel, former rector of the University of Campinas, put it bluntly: universities are “failing at the public communication of the importance of higher education.” The facts, he argues, are not enough. What matters is narrative. In an age of misinformation and economic insecurity, the public wants to know not just that universities exist—but why they matter to their daily lives.
This is where FASTlab sees both the greatest risk and the greatest opportunity. If universities cannot articulate their value to society in real, visible, tangible terms, others will define it for them—often with short-term, extractive, or populist agendas.
FASTlab’s Response: Applied Innovation, Public Impact, and Radical Collaboration
FASTlab exists to bridge this gap between research, relevance, and resonance. We were created not to publish more papers, but to design and deliver real-world solutions to wicked problems—across health, energy, sustainability, social inclusion, and creative economies.
Our approach is grounded in:
• Applied Research Translation: We connect researchers with industry, policy and community partners to co-create interventions that are deployable, scalable, and measurable—not just publishable.
• Transdisciplinary Innovation: We blend the arts, sciences and humanities to solve complex problems, recognizing that innovation does not happen in disciplinary silos.
• Narrative-Led Communication: We help universities and researchers win the narrative battle by showing—not telling—how knowledge improves lives. Through creative storytelling, design, and public engagement, we make research human.
• New Models of Value: We are piloting ways to track social impact, lived experience outcomes, ecological benefit, and long-term system change—beyond the traditional KPIs.
Our work with projects like Healthy@Home, LumiQubes, and community-powered neighbourhood energy mutuals is already demonstrating that universities can be engines of transformation if they work with society rather than merely producing for it.
A Way Forward
We agree with the UNICA speakers: the old efficiency metrics aren’t working. But rather than retreat into defensiveness or internal benchmarking, we must propose something better. We must show what real value looks like—in streets, homes, policies, and communities. We must move from proving worth in the abstract to co-creating futures on the ground.
FASTlab is proud to be part of this shift. And we invite other universities, researchers, and partners to join us.
Let’s change the question from “How efficient are we?” to “How are we making the world better—together?”
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