One of the great things about my current role is taking part in the wider HE network. I attend conferences, I meet VCs and PVCs, I go to Westminster, and I interact with colleagues across the sector by a variety of means. For example, the ‘Times Higher’ launched a #loveHE campaign, in their magazine and [...]
If I had wifi access on my train journey in and out of London I would probably have put this blog post together much sooner, but I don’t, no idea why, other First Great Western trains seem to, but oh well, my enormous season ticket price is obviously not enough to provide that kind of [...]
Yesterday saw the long-awaited (by me anyway!) Policy Roundtable event, which took place during Universities Week at Goldsmiths, University of London. It was a very well-attended affair, particularly good given, as the Chair pointed out, that we were South of the river. Around 30 senior representatives from across the higher education sector attended, including policy [...]
As I mentioned last Friday, one of the conferences I attended last week was Meeting Student Expectations – Academic progress, reputation and complaints. An extremely interesting conference with sessions on student satisfaction, improving student information, and communication and reputation. All of course very relevant to the Student Expectations of University JISC-funded project! You can watch [...]
What a busy week of networking I’ve had, and network railing too: Monday: 06:30 train to London (aka the ‘oh my’ it’s early train); tube to Charing Cross to spend some time in the office; before taking a bus to Tavistock Square to talk to Universities UK about the project; then off to Goldsmiths (tube [...]
Following on from last week’s post, about what the future holds, at the moment the future is looking rosy, well actually red, UCAS red, but that’s not a well-known expression is it. Following a late night in London, for the Board meeting and working dinner, which meant I only got home at midnight, I went [...]
So four months into this job how are things progressing? I wrote myself a project plan back in January, and I’ve been busy, chugging along like Ivor the Engine (pushticuff, pushticuff!) to get things done: project set up (blog, web-page, press release & official launch) – tick! desktop research (what do universities do, what do [...]
Last week and this week have been all about what the future holds, with a whole range of people on tenterhooks: First of all there was the General Election, and the ongoing discussions about a hung parliament > I’m looking forward to finding out who the Minister with responsibility for HE will be, whichever coalition [...]
No, I’m not a politician, I’m not doing the rounds of the country kissing babies, but I am meeting (and greeting) a lot of people in relation to the Student Expectations of University project and canvassing for opinion. Yesterday it was Keith Herrmann at CIHE (that’s another acronym for our collection: the Council for Industry [...]
Myths abound about university, and indeed applying to university: When I worked at UCAS a colleague was running focus groups called From Myth to Reality with students. One of the discussions was about language used, such as Entry Profile, which did not chime with the reality of a course description (which is sort of what [...]
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