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 service to regular commuters!

During Universities Week, as you know if you are a regular reader, we held a policy roundtable to bust myths about university. It was a very successful event: 35 senior university leaders, policy makers and representatives for schools and colleges met to debate this overarching question:

> How can we provide more accessible and accurate public information about universities in order to create realistic and manageable expectations?

The debate was lively and wide-ranging, some of the issues raised were:

• the need to create a better understanding among students, the public, politicians, media and other stakeholders about what universities are for, what they do, and what they contribute to national wealth and national health;
• the need to create a better understanding of the current university system, how it is funded, how it assures quality, standards and opportunity;
• the need to produce more transparent and comprehensive information about universities and admissions processes in order to ensure that as good a match as possible is created between what universities are looking for, and the applicants that apply to them;
• how the provision of fuller information around all aspects of what universities do helps to manage, sometimes to temper, and sometimes to raise, the expectations of students;
• the need not just for information, but also for advice and guidance (see my recent blogpost: information, information, information (is not enough).

Here are some pictures from the event. As you can see Goldsmiths hosted us in a lovely building (called Deptford Town Hall – no longer a town hall, and not in Deptford, which initially made finding it on a map a bit of a challenge for those of us not from London!).

Pictures from the roundtable at Goldsmiths