Universities UK

You know, We need to realize that that is pushing, that is a political party that sits outside the mainstream of discourse.

But when UUK turns up at their conference and sits and has a cozy chat with them, they are making them a respectable party.

They're not engaging with a party that is already respectable.

Their reputation laundering for them.

So perhaps you could give us a flavour of how universities reacted to those comments.

I think it's important to explain the context in which that question was asked, because Malcolm Press, he is the president of Universities UK and the vice chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University.

asked Chris McDonald explicitly where he saw funding for the arts and humanities in terms of research.

And Chris McDonald was quite explicit in that he didn't really see this as a priority for him.

And then also, of course, Liverpool's winning start to the Champions League doesn't get better than that.

So it has been Universities UK's conference today and we've had our friends out at Wonky pick up the vibes.

DK, what's going on?

Well, yeah, I mean, this is the annual Universities UK conference.

It's the one where they wheel in the ministers of the day to offer some words of support and hopefully, but probably not, a little bit of policy as well.

So we'll be hearing later from Jackie Smith and from the new science minister and professional teecider, Chris McDonald.

There's also, for some reason, we're going to get the Conservative Shadow Education Minister, which, as all of our listeners will know immediately, is Saqib Abadi.

It's not a name I was familiar with until I prepared for this podcast, so I don't know what that tells you about how good a booking it actually is.

Vice-Chancellors are going to be getting together to talk about what the policy environment is and what UUK's agenda is.

Obviously, Universities UK has the Future Universities programme of work.

We're expecting something to come out particularly around graduate jobs.

What scope is there for the sector to start to shift the narrative or tap into that narrative? Strategically, what are the right choices for universities in response to the Burnham agenda?

It's, you know, NUS, when it went out and bought its shark costumes, was jumping on the coattails of a story rather than a story being generated.

The thing, though, that I think is the missed opportunity is how can it be, for example, that in Scotland, the Programme for Government has been published this week, and the SNP has got away with completely dropping and imagining that it never happened, its previous programme for government commitment, which was to tie the maintenance package to the living wage.

How can it be that that has been allowed to happen? Well, there are lots of factors, but when the sector drives a funding gap conversation and publishes some numbers that people can steal from, and all of that funding gap is the university funding gap for often the people who participate in university, Well, guess what happens next? And I think there's a historical, long-term, universities UK and the mission groups look at the university budgets and someone else will look at student budgets, which is so daft because it's never going to be vice chancellors that are felt sorry for on page two of the broadsheet.

It's going to be the family and the student that's really struggling.