The new regulatory framework

It’s been quiet on this blog lately, as I haven’t managed to put together the time to start and finish a whole blog post. The new regulatory framework may not seem quite as newsworthy as it did when I started this post, but to be honest it was never very exciting anyway – the focus of this blog is on regulation and funding in English HE, so we only ever aspired to the lowest values of ‘newsworthy’.

The new regulatory framework for English Higher Education, to be honest, looks a bit of a mare’s nest. Here it is set out on one side of A4 courtesy of HEFCE’s recent publication on the subject.

Yet another post about UCAS data

UCAS have now published their data for applications to the 15 January deadline. By this stage, almost all school-leavers who are going to apply have applied, and a significant proportion of the Overseas and older applicants have also applied. Because the data are taken with reference to an actual deadline this dataset, unlike the earlier UCAS data releases, provides a reasonably firm basis for taking stock of this years’ recruitment position.

Marks out of Ten

A good habit I have picked up from Brad DeLong is to go back over one’s work from time to time and identify the things one has gotten wrong. He calls this ‘marking my beliefs to market’. Reading through the last year’s blog posts I can see a number of pieces about the UCAS recruitment cycle. I’ve already published my self-defence on that one here, and I continue to think that the 2012 recruitment cycle was a lot less than catastrophic.

On the other hand I posted a number of pieces on the degree awarding powers of the University (ex-College) of Law confidently predicting that they would not be transferred with the sale of the College’s teaching business, but I proved to be completely wrong about that. The Government decided that the degree awarding powers did not pertain to the Chartered corporation once called ‘the College of Law’, but pertained to the actual teaching business which the College used to run. Therefore a change of control of this business automatically meant a change in control of the degree awarding powers.

UCAS Data: 2013 Cycle

UCAS have now published their mid-December data on the 2013 cycle, and the press coverage has been mainly downbeat, perhaps because UCAS has not tried the faintly ludicrous ‘late surge’ spin that they put on the equivalent data last year.