Matti Alderson could become an unlikely hero for lecturers who fear that red tape is damaging their ability to teach and research.
As chairwoman of the Cabinet Office task force looking at the regulation of universities, she faces high expectations from a sector bogged down by financial audit, quality assurance, research bidding, "something-for-something" funding, league tables and performance indicators.
A former chief regulator to the advertising industry, Ms Alderson stressed that she was engaging with all higher education's stakeholders, especially a government keen to ensure that universities were accountable for their public money, as well as employers, students and their parents, who wanted access to high-quality and independently audited information.
Her public-relations minder insisted that her Better Regulation Task Force report on university regulation, due this summer, would not totally liberate academics from bureaucracy. Despite this caution, and the consultation still to come, Ms Alderson has already concluded that higher education is over-regulated.
She said: "It is pretty clear higher education institutions have to provide whole sequences of data and information for a number of different sources. We have to strike the right balance between accountability and trust. We have to ask if things could be simplified or streamlined?"
Ms Alderson leads a team of three working on university regulation for the task force. Her report is underpinned by five principles of good regulation, specially tailored for higher education: transparency, accountability, targeting, consistency and proportionality.
One target is research funding. The research assessment exercise does not seem to fit the principle of proportionality. "Departments have worked very hard for several years to achieve good RAE ratings, but it has not necessarily meant that funding is to be improved."
The task force is also set to tackle the research councils. Ms Alderson is concerned about the dash by departments for small pots of money. Effort may be wasted if applications fail. Even if they succeed, the cost of bidding and of ensuring the money is properly spent can outweigh the benefits.
"We have to look at the cost and benefit," she said. "No one would want to remove the individual choice of the institutions, but is there a way in which it could be more transparent what the outcome would be and what the cost would be?"
But the Quality Assurance Agency is likely to escape fundamental scrutiny. The new QAA regime, signed off by ministers earlier this year after almost a decade of wrangling, will not begin until next year and cannot be evaluated.
"It is impossible to leave the QAA alone in the report," Ms Alderson said. "It is such a significant part of the system. But I don't think it has been running in a way that would allow us to make judgements as to its success or failure."