ABOUT

These are interesting times in many parts of the world. Uncertainty has become a feature of higher education in more than the usual ways, and, as we have found recently in the U.K., uncertainty breeds a multitude of opinions and initiatives which then add to the uncertainty in a seemingly endless feedback loop. Of course, opinions are bound to flow freely in such a period of uncertainty since no one can be quite sure what is going on: I often think that there must be a conference in the U.K. most weeks pronouncing on the state of higher education, often with many of the same luminaries in attendance. Consultancies and think tanks add their opinions in to the brew. So be it. But it is a different matter when it comes to actual initiatives. If they multiply at the same rate as opinions, the process can be insidious, even destructive.

What British higher education needs most now is a period of a year or two in which it can take in the extensive changes that have been made and work with them. The changes may, as some commentators have argued, produce nowhere near as much change as has been claimed. Or they may produce really quite extensive change. But what we do not need is yet more initiatives on top. A mark of the kind of uncertainty generated by this initiative-itis and the consequent initiative fatigue is that, by one count, there will be 30 (yes, 30!) government consultations over the next six months to follow on from the raft of consultations of the last six months. Institutions like Warwick dutifully answer most of them but the load on universities is severe and all too often diversionary.

The situation is made worse by the current position in the U.K. in which the role of the chief governor of higher education, the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE), is in question. No doubt, some things might have been done better and with less bureaucracy but, on the whole, HEFCE has done a pretty good job of keeping the sector balanced and sane.