Agenda bender

Sir Ron Dearing's report is just five weeks away. How can universities contain their excitement? No sooner will Sir Ron reveal all, than all those difficult funding and policy decisions which have been on hold will miraculously be resolved. Or so we have been told.

But one vice chancellor has said that the appearance of gridlock gripping the sector in anticipation of Dearing is false. "The main thing the committee was set up to do was to keep higher education off the election agenda," he says. "It has therefore successfully completed its main task already."