Surviving Crisis: Lessons from Higher Ed's Financial Storm

In this episode, we welcome back Andrew Millar from the University of Dundee to discuss the current state of higher education, vibe coding platforms for non-developers, and the importance of community-driven conferences like Scottish Web Folk.

App of the Week: Bolt.new

This week we're looking at Bolt.new, a vibe coding platform designed specifically for non-developers. Unlike tools like Cursor that are built for developers to pair program with AI, Bolt is aimed at people like marketers, designers, and small business owners who want to create functional applications without ever touching code.

Paul has been using Bolt to build practical tools for his own business, including a custom top task analysis app, WordPress plugins, JavaScript extensions, and CSS animations. The platform handles everything from the database to publishing and hosting, making it genuinely accessible for non-technical users.

However, we'd caution against treating these tools as production-ready for enterprise use. They're excellent for prototyping, internal tools, and small-scale applications, but they likely won't pass rigorous quality control in larger organizations. Think of them like desktop publishing was in the early days. They democratize creation but don't eliminate the need for professional expertise.

For production-ready code, the real value comes when developers use AI pair programming tools where they can review, understand, and quality-check the output. The future likely involves professionals using these tools to increase productivity rather than replacing expertise entirely.

Topic of the Week: The State of Higher Education and Digital Transformation

Andrew Millar, who runs the digital team at Dundee University, joins us to paint an honest picture of the current higher education landscape. It's not pretty, but his candid insights offer valuable lessons for anyone navigating organizational crisis, whether in universities or elsewhere.

The Perfect Storm Facing Universities

Higher education has always claimed poverty, but the structural problems have become impossible to ignore. Universities face two fundamental financial challenges: funding per student hasn't kept pace with inflation over the past decade, and research grants typically only cover around 80% of actual costs, leaving institutions to make up the difference.

International students became the solution to plug this gap. They could be charged higher fees and effectively cross-subsidized teaching for domestic students and research activities. This worked until a perfect storm hit: COVID disruptions, international conflicts, hostile government rhetoric toward international students, and for Dundee specifically, the Nigerian economy's collapse, which dramatically reduced one of their key international markets.

Dundee found themselves with a 30 million pound deficit. Within a year, the principal resigned, the entire executive changed, the Scottish government stepped in with emergency funding, and 500 staff members have left from a workforce of around 3,000.

The Three Phases of Crisis Management

Andrew outlined three distinct phases organizations go through during financial crisis, and his framework offers practical guidance for anyone facing similar situations.

Phase 1: Cut, Cut, Cut

When crisis hits, budgets get slashed, often multiple times. Andrew recommends categorizing everything into three buckets: what's absolutely critical to keep the lights on, what will hurt but won't cause lasting harm, and what's easy to eliminate. This is actually an opportunity to clear out legacy systems and processes that nobody uses but somehow persist.

The challenge is that during this phase, people aren't open to change or new ways of working. They just want to see the existing stuff cut. Don't waste energy trying to introduce innovations here. Focus on strategic pruning.

Phase 2: The Great Spaghetti Flying Contest

This is where everyone becomes an expert on how to solve the crisis. Phrases like "we should at least try it" and "isn't it good to test ideas?" fly around constantly. The problem is that these are the exact phrases digital teams have been using for years to encourage experimentation, now thrown back at them by people with competing priorities.

Governance structures become critical here. You can clarify requests (ensuring they're truly worth pursuing), compromise on scope, or clog them up in committees until priorities become clearer. When your escalation paths have collapsed, as they did at Dundee when leadership departed, you're left justifying decisions without backup.

The key insight: never say "computer says no" via email. Have conversations. Explain your reasoning. When people understand the constraints, they typically accept them. Email refusals just get escalated to whoever shouts loudest.

Phase 3: The Big Squeeze

With less money, fewer people, less institutional knowledge, and no clear strategy, this phase is when things get really difficult. But paradoxically, it's also when people become more open to change. They've accepted that old ways aren't working and are more receptive to credible, evidence-based proposals for doing things differently.

Digital Team Transformation and the Hub-and-Spoke Model

Andrew's team has evolved significantly since their original digital transformation work. They reduced the number of people managing the corporate website from 350 to about 20 while maintaining quality. Now they're moving toward a hub-and-spoke model, with centralized governance but distributed execution.

The ideal version of this model, which IBM pioneered, has people embedded in individual departments but reporting into the central digital function. This creates healthy tension, since they need to keep their central manager happy while also serving their local colleagues. It maintains standards while building subject matter expertise across the organization.

One emerging priority is what Andrew calls "generative engine optimization," ensuring content is structured so AI tools can accurately surface and represent it. As more users get information through AI intermediaries without ever visiting your website, getting this right becomes critical.

The Value of Community: Scottish Web Folk

The conference that inspired this episode, Scottish Web Folk, emerged partly out of necessity. When travel budgets got cut, Dundee created their own event. It's now grown to over 150 attendees with strong sponsor support, all while maintaining its community-first ethos.

The conference bans sales pitches from sponsors, limiting them to 30 seconds of self-promotion. Instead, it emphasizes knowledge sharing between suppliers and institutions. This approach keeps sponsors coming back because they recognize that embedding themselves in the community pays long-term dividends.

For any digital team, hosting events like this builds internal credibility and external relationships simultaneously. It positions you as thought leaders within your organization while creating the networks that sustain careers and enable collaboration across institutional boundaries.

Marcus's Joke

"I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out she was a cheetah."

That's a wrap for this episode. See you in the new year!

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