21 February 2018 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
If you’ve followed the HE news over the last few months you will have seen plenty of queries from curious commentators wondering where the comprehensive review of HE funding that the Prime Minister promised in the Autumn had got to. It took a while but, in a speech on Monday, she outlined the terms of the review which explicitly focuses on four areas – student choice, funding arrangements (or ‘Value for Money’), access for disadvantaged students, and skills provision in line with the industrial strategy.
The review “will be informed by independent advice from an expert panel from across post 18 education, business and academia” and, while it is pitched as ‘wide-ranging’, there are a number of red-lines that have been explicitly ruled out. These seem politically obvious at first, but create quite a narrow space within which the panel will need to recommend changes. The review cannot look like a ‘backward-step’ to any system that has come before, which would be an admission of failure. Neither can it be more expensive than the existing system, and nor can it be free for students. At the same time, the terms prohibit any “recommendations related to taxation”, which rules out a graduate tax.
As usual with this kind of thing, the best commentary for a HE audience comes via Wonkhe who, along with their main summary, have a couple of other interesting reads. In the Times Higher, former education secretary Justine Greening pitches for what she’d like to see in the final list of recommendations, while the Guardian is hoping for respite from the ‘market mess’.
