Firstly last week, it was announced that here would be further changes to regulation of higher education, with HEFCE taking on a regulatory oversight and coordination role.

HEFCE will be:

• developing a register of higher education provision in England 
• consulting on proposed revisions to HEFCE’s Financial Memorandum 
• operating of a new system of specific-course designation for alternative providers
• implementing further changes to student number controls, including extending them to alternative providers from 2014-15

In other news HESA released employability data for 2011-12 graduates, showing that “Overall, 90.8% of full-time first degree leavers were in employment and/or further study six months after graduating”. It’s pleasing to note an improvement in the value our employability indicator for this year, and we might expect that the implementation of Staffordshire Graduate could in future years, push this further up. Clearly this is an area that needs more work.

Also HESA provided information on indicators of annual research output. Interesting here is the number of PhDs we award compared to the amount of QR income we receive. As we know, QR is  low for this university, however, we do seem to use it extremely effectively when looking at the ratio of PhDs to QR income. Of course, other universities with significant QR will be using it for more than studentships and may have significant capital outlay as well, but this still looks like we are using this fund as efficiently as possible.