Universities in England have this week received a rather surprising letter from the Minister for Higher and Further Education.
It is of course not uncommon for Ministers to write to universities and regulators to set out their expectations of how institutions should, in their view behave, and what their priorities should be in return for all that lovely public money being pushed their way (you can see a vital and incomplete historical collection of these here on Wonkhe).
Most of the previous letters referred to here tend to be a lot longer than this one. Indeed most of this Minister’s letters during the pandemic period, to vice chancellors, to students (that really is a heck of a mail merge) or to the Office for Students are notable for their brevity, with most coming in at two to three pages long.
