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On 16 June, Alex Chisholm, chief executive of the Competition and Markets Authority, wrote a letter to Sajid Javid, the new secretary of state at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, on ¡°regulation in higher education¡±. The CMA favours the introduction of ¡°a sector-wide regulatory baseline¡±. In three pages, ¡°regulation¡±, ¡°regulate¡± and ¡°regulatory¡± appear 22 times. ¡°Baseline¡± occurs five times.

Readers of the Higher Education Funding Council for England¡¯s Quality Assessment Review consultation, now published a month late, may be struck by its own 33 ¡°baselines¡±. The incentive to give a ¡°yes¡± response to all those ¡°Do you agree?¡± questions is the suggestion that for ¡°established providers¡± above the ¡°baseline¡± there need be no more Quality Assessment Agency-type institutional review visits every six years. But will regulation by Hefce really be less onerous? Hefce is a funding council. It hands out money and can withhold it. It now proposes to build the proposed new dual-purpose regime for quality ¡°assessment¡± (102 mentions) and ¡°assurance¡± (82 mentions) for England on a financial memorandum requirement that places an ¡°annual¡± (18 hits) reporting expectation on the governing body.

Hefce has long admitted off the record that governance for institutions is often dysfunctional. There have been high-profile catastrophes in recent years. And the governors are expected to rely on ¡°student outcome data, including feedback and complaint information¡± ¨C notoriously inexact measures.

Every five years, Hefce will make its ¡°visit to check the evidence and processes used¡± to produce the annual statement, ¡°as is done currently for financial management¡±. Satisfaction about this would form part of ¡°the terms and conditions for payment of Hefce grants¡±. How will financial punishments be calculated? Even the best regarded are not perfect. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were both the subject of some significant ¡°recommendations¡± after their last QAA visits.

G. R. Evans
Oxford