Don's diary
Wednesday About one week to go to the end of the BT Global Challenge. After sailing over 30,000 miles around the world I shall arrive in Southampton, wind willing, aboard yacht Commercial Union. My...
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The fizz in college freedom
Ronald Barnett writes that "the university, as an organisation, takes on the economic and instrumental rationality of the wider society" (THES, May 30, 1997). Knowledge is valued for its...
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Tuition fees are not the end of the story
In 1984, when the National Union of Students presented its annual grant claim to the minister for higher education, I learnt the best political lesson of my life. As leader of the delegation, backed...
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Loose change
Tony Blair said in Parliament on Wednesday that Dearing provides the way ahead "for further education." But elsewhere, there was no doubt what it was about - money. So central is the finance chapter...
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Appointments
Manchester Metropolitan Barry Plumb, professor, pro vice chancellor and dean of the faculty of science and engineering, has been appointed academic director from September 1997; Richard Moody, former...
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Trust me, I'm an MP
They may be missing Neil Hamilton, but MPs are careful to guard their collective public reputation. The best laugh of the Dearing debate came when Liberal Donald Gorrie complained the press had seen...
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Blunkett stitch-up
The Government has been assiduously promoting its spin on Dearing, but blew things badly on launch day by its treatment of the education press. It gave them David Blunkett's statement on the report...
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Shirley not?
But Sir Ron did not have to go to the trouble of memorising his hundreds of paragraphs and conclusions. At the launch meeting for "stakeholders" he summoned the details with one word - "Shirley"....
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Ring leader
Proof positive that Scottish higher education is in dire financial straits. Paul Corrigan, new president of St Andrews University students' association, was to be in London for the Dearing launch,...
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Barr to popularity
Even farther afield is Nick Barr, London School of Economics expert on education finance, whose views Dearing sought. He is in Australia advising on reform of the HECS student finance scheme, admired...
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Volume growth
The university sector may have grown, but be thankful reports on it are growing in price and size a little more slowly. Dearing costs Pounds 135, a little more after inflation than Robbins in 1963....
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Degrees go Ron and on
Alumnus to be proud of no 117 is, to your amazement, Sir Ronald Ernest Dearing, who can boast nine degrees. Only one, in economics from the University of Hull, was secured by the conventional route....
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Howells unveils tracking device
RIGOROUS ways to "identify and track" youngsters' education are being explored by the Government, including plans to compile data on students' progress through higher education, which may be used to...
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A point on acupuncture
The Government has long been urging complementary therapy organisations to "get their house in order" (THES, July 11). The British Acupuncture Accreditation Board was established in 1990 to accredit...
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A full Roman assemblage
The World of Rome