Clearing 2012: How wrong was I, and why?

Back in July, I wrote a little blog post confidently predicting that this year’s Clearing would be less interesting than was widely expected:

Somebody, somewhere will have a bad experience in Clearing because somebody, somewhere always does, but there is no reason to expect a pattern or trend. Those who do badly this year may do well next. Life staggers on much as before.

Mark Leach was kind enough to post it on WonkHE, so it gained rather more prominence than my typical blog post. Since then, anyone watching the press will have read about the unmitigated disaster that has rolled over institutions high and low. It seems I was too sanguine.

London Met Again

Last week’s post about London Metropolitan leaped almost instantly into my top-ten of all time, as measured by pageviews. Not that it takes a whole lot of pageviews to achieve that in my case, but it is enough to persuade me to write a follow-up post.

Most people will be aware that London Met has taken legal action against the UKBA. The form of this legal action will take is judicial review. Judicial review is a process which does exactly what it says on the tin: the decision taken by a public body (in this case the UKBA) is reviewed by a judge. There is no nonsense here with a jury. If the judge determines, on review, that the decision was wrong he (or she, but as this is an English judge we are talking about, almost certainly he) may quash it.

The business at London Met

There are so many issues in London Met’s unfortunate encounter with the UKBA that I scarcely know where to start: so much blame to be distributed, so many consequences to be guessed at. You have to eat the elephant one bite at a time.