It is right and necessary for me to begin with last week’s awful news about Her Majesty the Queen. As for many people my age, one of my earliest memories is the Silver Jubilee of 1977, when I was just five. Little did we realise at the time that this was merely an early staging post on the way to this year’s Platinum Jubilee and the Queen’s successful 70 plus years on the throne.
I have been asked to speak about higher education, given my day job is running the Oxford-based Higher Education Policy Institute. So let me start by noting the Queen’s contribution to universities, of which she was a huge supporter both here in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth.
