Time to leave the ivory tower

STUDENTS are seldom happier than when protesting about Tory higher-education reforms. In 2010 as many as 50,000 hit London’s streets to oppose a near-trebling of the cap on university-tuition fees. So it may come as a surprise to them that the government has for once come out in their defence. A consultative “green paper” published on November 6th suggested that too often students do not get the teaching their fees deserve. It went on to propose measures to shake up the sector in a way that, the government hopes, would make universities more responsive in future to students’ demands.

Under the plans, universities would be overseen by a beefed-up regulator known as the Office for Students. A new “teaching excellence framework” (TEF) would rate universities on the quality of their teaching, replacing various patchy existing indicators and thus helping to clear some of the fog that surrounds the university application process. Setting up new universities would be made easier, increasing the competition faced by incumbents. Most intriguingly, universities that did well in the TEF would be allowed to raise their tuition fees in line with inflation.