22 February 2017 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
If you’ve struggled to follow the recent debates around the HE Bill and the TEF, then we often point readers to the excellent Wonkhe website, which this week has added some insight on the OfS (courtesy of the Commons appearance of proposed OfS chair, Michael Barber), to recent articles on the TEF, including our favourite ‘Incredible Machine’ diagram. Of course amendments are still being filed the Bill in the Lords, where further opposition is promised, and so it could still be that the Bill we end up with looks somewhat different to the one originally presented in the Commons.
If you want to understand more about the ideological opposition in the Lords, then usual FT columnist Martin Wolf’s article in the Times Higher this week is well worth a read. In Why Universities are Not Supermarkets he outlines, in no uncertain terms, the flaws he sees in the current proposals. One sentence in particular is quotable; “Anybody who thinks this will end with more diverse, more innovative, more courageous and more independent institutions is simply a fool.”
In related news, the Guardian HE Network takes a look at the concerns for the element of the HE Bill that encourages the increase in the number of new ‘Private Providers’ of HE.
