Successful strategic leadership: the contribution of governance

When I was asked to contribute a chapter to this edition I looked through the first edition of the book published in 2007. It became very clear to me how much the landscape in higher education (in England) has changed in the intervening ten years. A new system of fees was introduced to largely replace the previous system of public funding through the then Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). It was intended that this new system would result in price competition between institutions, but in the event, with a very few exceptions at the time of implementation, the sector as a whole introduced fees at the maximum level. Reimbursement of these fees to the Exchequer would be through the Student Loans Company. The management of student numbers through HEFCE was abandoned by the removal of the student number cap. The pursuit of undergraduate student numbers became a major recruitment objective of many institutions in order to generate income. Fee levels remained fixed for a number of years until the Government proposed the introduction of a Teaching Exellence Framework (TEF). The intention was to link the achievement of teaching standards with modest increases in fee levels. The TEF was introduced; however, the ability to raise fees was withdrawn even though the requirement to comply with the standards for comparative purposes remained.