UK higher education – policy, practice and debate during HEPI’s first 20 years

This has resulted in a shift in the balance of the income streams for the higher education sector in each of the four countries of the UK. [...] The Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council was Professor Sir Howard Newby, formerly Vice- Chancellor of the University of Southampton and future Vice- Chancellor of the University of the West of England and of the University of Liverpool. [...] The Dearing report of 1997 had recommended a reduction in governing body membership to 24 and a strengthening of the governing body’s strategic role but the essential climate of university governance, particularly in the pre-1992 foundations, still lingered on the cusp of change in 2003.5 The introduction of full tuition fee marketisation was to transform the context of university governance in th. [...] When constructing the regulations to define the powers of the OfS, it was not the universities that were consulted but the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Prudential Regulations Authority of the Bank of England. [...] The sheer size and complexity of running the modern university has led to the growth of powerful vice-chancellors’ executive committees at the expense of the powers of the larger and less business-like senates.