Clearout is urged

UNIVERSITIES would need a wholesale clearout of senior staff if Sir Ron Dearing's vision of a seamless interplay between higher education and the business world is to be realised, writes Phil Baty.

The warning comes at the end of the Pounds 60 million, eight-year Department of Education and Employment's Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative.

Peter Hawkins, author of Mastering Change - learning the lessons of the enterprise in higher education initiative, said the report's publication this week provides timely lessons in anticipation of the Dearing report.

The initiative was the Government's largest higher education project of the decade and was set up to stimulate innovation in teaching, and to entrench graduate employability issues and transferable "key" skills in the curriculum.

"I'm very cynical. Dearing is going to say these initiatives are a great idea, but he is not going to say how we can achieve it," Dr Hawkins said. "It will take a radical overhaul of the infrastructure."