Thank you for inviting me to speak here in Wolverhampton. It is a huge pleasure for three particular reasons. First, despite working in higher education policy for well over 15 years and despite having visited nearly every UK university, I have never visited the University of Wolverhampton before. Secondly, it is a particular pleasure to be here because I am a huge fan of your current (interim) Vice-Chancellor, John Raftery. John wrote one of our most important ever HEPI reports, about the turnaround that he oversaw at London Metropolitan University, which has proved to be a useful guide to vice-chancellors up and down the land. Thirdly, it is a great pleasure to be here because HEPI is supported by nearly all UK universities but I am sorry to say that, historically, our supporters have not included Wolverhampton. That was very recently rectified and so it is fantastic to welcome you as HEPI’s newest University Partner. Being a HEPI University Partner brings a number of advantages, including a termly Policy Briefing Paper summarising recent higher education policy issues, free places at our events – such as our Annual Conference – and early sight of all our publications among other benefits.
I want to start with what is happening in higher education policy right now, in late July 2023. Some people might think the sector resembles a calm oasis, at least until the new academic year starts in the autumn. The students have largely left, graduations have mainly been and gone and the Wonkhe Daily is paused. But the reality is that the summer is generally rather busy in higher education, for both professional services staff and academics. No one ever believes me when I tell them that the busiest month ever for traffic on the HEPI website was an August, though I promise you it is true.
Only last week, we had the Government’s ‘crackdown on low-value degrees’. There was a lot of tough talk, an official advert of a sledgehammer smashing ‘rip-off university degrees’ and favourable headlines in the papers that Conservative MPs care most about. There was a clear impression created that the Government wants to limit attendance on certain courses. The announcement may have won the desired headlines, but it was arguably something of a damp squib. Rather than imposing number caps themselves, the question was farmed out to the Office for Students, which – it turns out – already has the power to limit recruitment to certain courses, a power which it has already used, albeit sparingly. So in one sense, last week may seem like win/win: the Government left people with the impression that they were raising standards in higher education while nothing much actually changed.
