I have spent some time today preparing background materials to have with me during a visit tomorrow from four colleagues from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) - the government ministry that ultimately operationalises English government policy on universities (note, not UK policy, since higher education is the responsibility also of the devolved administrations).  The lead visitor is the Director of Higher Education Policy, someone I have met before through Russell Group activities.  BIS was created only 5 or so years ago, before which university policy lay within the much wider remit of the Department for Education and Skills.  And in preparing for tomorrow's meeting, and having conversations with various colleagues about it, I was set to reflect again on the split that we now have in England between education up to the age of 18 and education beyond that age. 

That split at 18 is getting wider in many ways.  The divide in ministerial responsibility is symptomatic, in my view, of something much wider than civil service convenience.  At one time universities were primarily taken as contributing to education - which was seen as a good thing in its own right.  They belonged with other aspects of education starting at pre-school age.  Now universities are seen as contributing to economic drive and growth - and are therefroe placed alongside considerations of business development and workforce planning.  Where once the discussion in universities was dominated by questions of 'what should a graduate in .. (fill in a disciplinary name) ... know', discussions today take the form of 'what are employers looking for.' 

I don't deny that this more instrumental view of what a university education is about has great benefits - not least for graduates who should be more prepared to enter the labour market. 

But in looking forward to what our graduates will do in the future, we have in many cases stopped looking backwards to the education they have undergone before they arrive at university.  Just as BIS sometimes appears not to talk to the DfE (Department for Education), universities have lost many of their talking points with schools. Yes: we do outreach activity and seek to encourage more aspiration for a university education from those with deprived backgrounds.  But university staff are no longer centrally (or even peripherally) involved in the setting of school curricula; they no longer act as examiners for A level or other exams; careers whereby many university staff have at some period in their lives taught in schools are now long since gone. (Some of my older colleagues when I first started lecturing had had that experience.)

It has been suggested to me that a future meeting of the Russell Group Pro-Vice-Chancellors should invite a DfE official along in the effort to reconnect with government policy-making on schools: I think I shall put that idea to my PVC colleagues when we next get together in Birmingham in a copuple of months' time.