On my self-determined schedule, it's time to produce a chronicle of some of the more thought-provoking things of the coming week.  It's worth briefly reporting first on some of the more interesting things in my diary since my last posting.

1. I spent quite a bit more time taking revision tutorials for my final year students - and then marking their exam scripts.  A reflection after using inquiry-based learning as the basis for my teaching for the last 4 years is that the collaborative activities students undertake seem to have raised the lower levels of performance, so that there are fewer students who just don't engage at all and who then perform very badly: but at the top end of the range there seems less individual brilliance coming through.  Maybe that is a reflection of group work, and the fact that many students effectively end up with the same set of learning experiences in which the real innovators have some of their flair knocked back a little.  I'd be interested in others' views on this.

2. I participated in a London conference on excellence in learning and teaching, where Anthony McClaran (the new Chief Executive of the Quality Assurance Agency) and I started the day off.  Something that I don't think the vast majority of academic and professional services staff around the university realise is the very high esteem in which Sheffield is held by colleagues elsewhere in higher education.  That certainly came out in comments during the day, and in a later visit that Anthony McClaran paid to Sheffield when he spent two hours with the VC, the Registrar and me.

3. Something else many people probably don't realise is the significance of two specific articulation routes in bringing overseas students to Sheffield.  Between them the Northern Consortium (which oversees preparation programmes in a variety of countries around the world, but principally in China) and Sheffield International College accounted for 39% of new overseas undergraduate entrants to the university this session.  Whilst attending a trustees' meeting for the Northern Consortium in the Council Chamber of what used to be UMIST I had the strange experience of glancing up to find a portrait of our former VC, Bob Boucher, staring down at me.  (Not a good portrait, I'm afraid, but no worse than that which now hangs in Firth Hall here in Sheffield.)  A week or so ago we also had a major event to celebrate the opening of an extension to SIC's premises at North Campus.  I will now endeavour to alert all colleagues to the 39% figure I produced above.

4. One of my most interesting annual tasks in recent years has been lecturing at the Royal College of Defence Studies in Belgrave Square, London.  The audience is a group of around 70 high-ranking service personnel from around the world, undertaking a course on global strategic issues.  I lecture to them on global demographic change and international migration.  The question session is always fascinating, and this year I had to parry points raised by (among others) participants from China, Australia, Morocco, Nigeria, the USA and India as well as the UK. It is one of the pleasures of the dual role of a PVC that from time to time one can step back into one's disciplinary life in this way.  But the lecture preparation takes a long time each year - to update the whole thing to take account of the latest UN demographic data. During the 7 years I've been doing the lecture China has crosseed the line from having a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban population, and Turkey has seen its population fertility reduce to below-replacement level, for example.

5. Finally another 'different' event was an alumni do at the Reform Club in Pall Mall in London, where Sir Peter Middleton (the University's Chancellor) introduced current MBA students to alumni who have made significant careers in finance and management.  It was a particular privilege to be able to hear Sir Peter's personal reflections on being in charge at the Treasury during the 1976 IMF crisis - this in response to a question from an MBA student who I suspect was far too young to know what Peter was talking about.  I also cast my mind back to my teenage years when, as a Londoner from a modest background, I never imagined that I would ever cross the threshold of the grand clubs in St James's (and 'grand' is certainly the word for the Reform Club!

There is a bigger picture to the last month too - the growing recognition, as a result of ministerial pronouncements and press comments, and the publication of a letter from HEFCE, that universities will face some challenging times in the next couple of years.   Everyone is becoming aware of issues developing in a number of institutions, and I detect an attitude that is not so much 'fatalistic' as 'realistic' about the decisions we will all have to make or be part of.  The national admissions position for this summer seems to represent a particular example of dislocated thinking, with a cut of 6000 places across the country at precisely the time when applications have risen by around 22%.  We are in for a very unstable period.  No doubt aspects of that will be reflected in what happens, and what I will feel moved to talk about, not just in the coming week but in succeeding months.