I indicated last month that in future I would identify five blogging days each month this year. To do that I have resorted to 'random numbers tables' to decide on dates - but have given myself Saturdays and Sundays off by excluding them.  The dates for February are today, Friday 11, Friday 18, Wednesday 23 and Monday 28.

We are now over halfway through what we are calling 'Project 2012' to position the university for the introduction of the new fees regime in 2012. Much of today has been taken up with that Project.  At 0915 I met three senior colleagues to consider aspects of how we may further strengthen our widening participation activities. I went straight from that to a meeting of the project workstream that is considering ways of enhancing the student experience.  Like several of our other workstreams, this has student union officer membership as well as representation from several faculties and from a variety of professional services. This particular group is now moving quite quickly towards a series of suggested actions, many of them effectively being the spreading of existing good practice around the university.  We deliver every aspect of high quality in some part of the institution, but the challenge is to deliver such aspects consistently across the whole institution.

At 1200 I then chaired the University Executive Board meeting as a Project 2012 Board.  Much of our two hour meeting was spent going through a detailed piece of work that has been done looking at individual departments' competitive position in terms of student satisfaction, employment prospects, applications, and a variety of other metrics. These data will shortly be released to departments for their consideration - particularly in relation to what needs to be done to improve our position.  Another Ruseell Group VC recently told me that he intended to ask every department to justify a possible fee level and then to put in place an action plan to put them in the position whereby in future they could justify the highest fee currently being suggested by a department.  We are not putting our VC in such a 'star chamber' role in front of departmental supplicants, but the opportunity to drive up quality is something we certainly want to grasp.

After the end of our UEB meeting I had one-to-one discussions with two Faculty PVCs on a variety of matters, but many of them revolving around Project 2012.  There followed a catch-up with the staff of the Vice-Chancellor's office over diary commitments for the rest of the week (the VC is currently unwell and I am taking over as many of his engagements as possible). And then at 1715 I chaired a meeting with Principals from South Yorkshire FE colleges to get their take on the higher education landscape beyond 2012, on our role in it, and on our connectivity with their activities.

Thus it was only at 1845 that I started on the e-mail traffic of the day.  I will not be unhappy when we come to the formal ending of Project 2012 and decide on our proposition in the new marketplace, our commitments over widening access, and our fee structures.  But I have a feeling that this calendar year is going to be very busy well beyond that April deadline.  The current shake-up of higher education funding is the most significant for nearly 50 years, and its ramifications are very considerable.