When I was younger, I loved mountaineering. It involved risk. Calculated, measured, exhilarating risk. There were, perhaps, a few times when I pushed things too far: a summit reached late in the day, leaving a tricky night-time descent; a stone chute crossed in the midday sun.

If I had fallen, I knew what people would have said: “He should never have taken the risk.” “He pushed it too far.” “He was too ambitious.” So, I did my best to both manage and embrace the risk. After all, you can’t experience a summit view, with all its attendant glory, from base camp. There is no reward in mountaineering without risk.

As chief executive of Dudley College of Technology, to me the environment of further education today seems more perilous and unpredictable than any mountain of my climbing days.  The risks are so much more complex to manage. I long for the relative simplicity of shimmying up a polished wet slab on a summit slope late in the day. And, as a mountaineer, I had a choice. I could turn back when faced with that wet slab. I could even stay safely tucked up in my sleeping bag at base camp as the rain splattered the tent. I didn’t have to climb at all.

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Why co colleges take risks? 

I’ve been struck recently by a number of reports about college failures and the embedded narrative on risk-taking. Putting aside the tabloid-style hysteria of some reporting, the sector’s more respected commentators have been highly critical of leaders who they say have “overseen” these failures. Principals and their corporations, they assert, have been “too ambitious”, particularly in their “growth strategies”. The risks taken, they claim, were “unacceptably high”. These reports rarely address a fundamental question: why did the college take such risks in the first place? Why did they set out to climb at all? What would have happened if they had done nothing?

In at least some of these cases, the answer must be “context”. Take the case Dudley College of Technology circa 2007-08. The college’s position was weak: Ofsted “inadequate”, inadequate facilities and resources, no compelling offer to meet the needs of local industry. The outcome was falling numbers and an annual underlying deficit in the region of £3 million. A cost efficiency programme could have slowed the college’s financial deterioration. Hanging on to reserves may have kept the college solvent for a few years. But neither approach would have secured the college’s future nor delivered on the college’s mission of providing “outstanding technical and professional learning, which raises aspirations, develops skills and changes lives”.

The opportunities were out there. It was clear that young people, adults and employers in Dudley would embrace technical learning if it did genuinely enhance their life chances or if it fuelled their employees’ productivity. But to deliver on this promise, the college required industry standard facilities and resources and dual professional staff paid at an industry competitive rate. Where was this to come from? The context at the time: no Learning and Skills Council/Skills Funding Agency  capital; no local or regional plan for skills investment; no FE innovation fund to bid in to; no cash-rich multi-national looking for a corporate social responsibility investment option.

Invest in your college or shut up shop

So the choice for the corporation was stark. Either shut up shop and effectively wave farewell to 150-plus years of technical education in Dudley or invest in the future of the college. We knew we had to invest. To do this, we knew we had to borrow; and to pay for the borrowing, we knew we had to grow. A growth strategy - the same strategy that some colleges are now criticised for, in hindsight. 

So that’s what we did, we climbed. We invested heavily in engineering and advanced manufacturing, digital and creative, and most recently modern construction methodologies. With the exception of some welcome help from the Black Country LEP, we raised all the funding ourselves on a commercial basis and we alone have shouldered all the associated risk, some £60 million of investment to date.

It’s worked for us. So far! But the margins between success and failure are perilously tight. Along the way, we nearly came unstuck when hit by unforeseen challenges: adult funding cuts, diminishing 16-19 funding, numerous funding rule changes and pension strains. Post-investment returns come slowly sometimes, leaving cash uncomfortably tight. More recently, the dramatic and unintended consequences of changes to apprenticeships have presented what could be an unmanageable risk.

And the environment ahead for the sector looks even more challenging. It’s no wonder some corporations have retreated to base camp, hanging on to their reserves hoping to survive these cash-strapped times. If we had had that choice, in 2007-08 - really had it - would we have taken it and stayed in the tent, as such? Perhaps we might have. And that’s a sad statement to write.

It is, of course, easy to criticise in hindsight when risk-taking has failed. But this should be done carefully, in full understanding of the context at the time. Otherwise, a culture of recrimination and blame will leave the sector with a toxic legacy of fear. If all colleges are forced into being risk-averse, we will end up with a sector woefully unfit to meet the technical skills needs of learners and employers at the outset of the fourth industrial revolution.

Lowell Williams is principal and chief executive or Dudley College of Technology