Dear Colleague,
Welcome back to all following the Easter break. It’s been a busy few weeks back for parliamentarians and universities alike, but happily a number of you were still able to join us on Tuesday 12 April for our meeting on ‘Flexible pathways: part-time, adult education and life-long learning’. I found this meeting particularly useful as the group heard from non-traditional HE providers and I think it is always helpful to remember how HE is required to work within the bigger picture.
The coming weeks for parliament are like to be consumed by the upcoming European Union Referendum. Similarly, I know that universities are fully committed to their roles as places of discussion and I understand that many of our members have or will be providing platforms for both sides of the debate, as well as working to ensure that students are registered to vote. Those that have not yet had the opportunity but are interested in hearing how each camp thinks a possible Brexit will affect universities may be interested in reading our issue paper on the subject by Bernard Jenkin MP and Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow. Neil Carmichael MP also provided a blog for the group on the subject back in November, you can read this and other blog posts here. If you were interested in contributing to the blog please do get in touch.
Ahead of the Summer break, which doesn’t feel too long away now, we do of course have two more meetings. One on the 25 May on the subject of ‘Students as consumers in their education: where student fees go, how universities explain their financial decisions to students, the public and government’, and on 28 June we have our Summer drinks reception, please do hold the date. Finally, we are working on an interesting programme of meetings for the coming 2016/17 session and hopefully you should have received a request to renew your membership, please do get in touch if you’ve not received this.