I have written before (most notably on 16 June 2011) about my membership of one of HEFCE's Stratgeic Advisory Committees (SACs).  There are five such SACs - one each on Research, Teaching, Widening Participation, Enterprise and Skills, and Leadership and Governance.  Once each year all five committees come together, along with other members of the HEFCE Board, for a 26 hour meeting (lunch time one day to lunch time the next).  This year's meeting started today and is being held at a rather modern conference centre attached to the University of Loughborough.  This afternoon, apart from a welcome from Shirley Pearce, the Vice-Chancellor of Loughborough, we had a very thought-provoking and broad overview of the current HE landscape in England from the Chief Executive of HEFCE - Sir Alan Langlands - followed by a series of very stimulating workshop sessions in which members of the five Strategic Advisory Committees were deliberately mixed up: my group was tasked with consdiering issues around increasing competition from new providers.

When I wrote on 16 June I said how important I felt it was for all of us involved in universities to have some understanding of the issues as they affect other parts of the overall system.  It is easy to get embroiled in our own particular neck of the woods, yet in many ways higher education in any coutnry stands or falls according to the strnegth of the overall system and not just the individual institutions.  As was said this afetrnoon, the English system is marked by a relative flatness of the quality profile - for example in comparison with some other countries where there is a massive variation between the best and the worst institutions.  The USA is arguably in this latter camp, with recent scandals affecting for-profit providers indicating the weakness of overall quality control to preserve the standards of high education - and the interests of students - across the country as a whole.

Interim thoughts from today's meeting reinforce my reflections from June.  There is a significant level of interdependence between all institutions, even in the face of what is now being seen as a more competitive market place.  Decisions made by institutions in very different parts of the sector impact on us all.  The knock on effects of choices to deliver or not deliver particular degree subjects, the impacts of fee setting, the timings that will be made over the release of candidate offers, the impressions created in schoolchildren by the outreach activities of their local universities - all these things have wide ramifications.

In the face of this level of interdependence it was perhaps not surprising that a very diverse set of individuals at my table for dinner this evening prolonged our discussion well beyond the time when our plates had been cleared away - only finally breaking up to go off to see the enws of Gaddafi's death on the 10 o'clock news.  Without naming names, we were a pretty diverse group: the VC of a Million+ university, an ex-president of the National Union of Students, the Principal of an FE college that also delivers HE, a Deputy Vice Chancellor (DVC) for Learning and Teaching from a 94 Group university, a DVC International from a Russell Group institution, a Russell Group PVC Research, the chair of HEFCE, a permanent staff member from the National Union of Students, a head of Widening Participation from a Russell Group institution, and me.  Actually, on second thoughts there was perhaps an over-representation of Ruseell Group universities on my table!  Perhaps birds of a feather do flock together, whatever I say.