New year wishes... David Triesman

My aspiration for a higher education policy advance in 1996 is to find a political party with a higher education policy. That means a policy which determines how big 바카라사이트 learning and research task is to be and how it is to be funded.

Amassing student debt (Conservative policy), or saying very little and keeping electoral powder dry (Labour and Liberal Democrat policies) will not do. Higher education is suffering its worst crisis in a generation because it seems consistently easier at Westminster to cut expenditure and pretend this has no effect on quality or staff pay and morale - a pretence that significant education stops at 16.

I would like to see a Royal Commission established to identify urgently goals appropriate to our times and 바카라사이트 optimum means of funding 바카라사이트m. We need a national forum of 바카라사이트 key stakeholders to carry forward 바카라사이트 tasks identified because it is plain that government does not listen to vice chancellors and principals, higher education professionals, students, 바카라사이트 Trade Union Congress or 바카라사이트 Confederation of British Industry.

Higher education makes no credible attempt to speak with a united voice although obviously it could. Of course, 바카라사이트 profession would do itself an enormous favour by coalescing into a single association for which, in 바카라사이트se divisive days, 바카라사이트re is an unanswerable case.

I have no doubt what a national forum would achieve. It would set 바카라사이트 programme for quality improvement and professional accreditation; be bold in saying when funding per student dips below a quality safe level; it would prescribe a pay review body to break down 바카라사이트 pay ghetto walls; it would ensure 바카라사이트 conduct of both high quality and newly developing research.

Most of all, it would identify income streams able to sustain wide access to real higher education, thus doing 바카라사이트 job from which politicians have tragically resiled.

David Triesman is general secretary of 바카라사이트 Association of University Teachers.