At Wonkhe’s Festival of Higher Education conference I was struck by several calls made over the course of those two days for a return of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
It got me wondering what people were really crying out for when they called for HEFCE’s return.
I joined HEFCE in 2012 as a policy advisor, eventually working my way up to Head of Skills around the time HEFCE morphed into the Office for Students. I left OfS in late 2022 to join Birmingham City University. Poacher turned gamekeeper, indeed.
During my 10 years at HEFCE and OfS, I designed, delivered or managed most of the funding body’s competitive funding programmes. To do that, I worked closely with universities and colleges across England. I look back at that time very fondly, remembering how much I valued those engagements and the insights they provided to the development of those programmes.
