The higher education week ahead

Good morning. The President of China arrives in the UK for a full state visit in which he'll be visiting a few UK universities, Policy Exchange recommends a cut to HE funding, a Higher Education Bill gets its second reading and before you ask, we're not expecting to see a government Green Paper on HE this week. 

Policy Exchange sets cat amongst pigeons
This morning, centre-right think tank Policy Exchange has published a report with the eye-catching proposal to cut £532m from universities and re-direct the money to the cash-strapped further education sector. The report recommends that universities should be able to pay for things like student opportunity funding from their reserves which should also be kept at lower levels. The timing is interesting, coming as it does ahead of next month's spending review. The sector is even more sensitive than usual about what BIS funds (and how it funds it) as it is widely expected that the department will need to find a saving of around 30%-40%, and so proposals like the ones put forward by Policy Exchange are likely to be seriously considered. It is also interesting to see a centre-right think tank propose a big boost to further education, even if in this case it will come at the expense of HE. As you'd expect, we've got lots of debate about all of this on site and there's more to follow - but for starters:

• Jonathan Simons, one of the report's authors, makes the case for cutting HE so that technical education can be better funded. 
• Karmjit Kaur of UUK offers a response which argues that HE and FE shouldn't be pit against each other.

Chinese state visit rolls in to town 
On Tuesday the President of China Xi Jinping flies in to London for a full state visit - and the red carpet is being visibly rolled out by every part of the British state. You may remember Xi Jinping did well in our Power List earlier this year, ranking 6th place because of the huge influence of his administration over universities in the UK and around the world. Indeed, the President will be visiting universities while he's in the UK and can expect a warm welcome from a sector that does a great deal of business with his country. Jinping will visit Imperial College on Wednesday, drop in to a Confucius Institute conference hosted at UCL Institute of Education on Thursday, and on Friday is making a pilgrimage to the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester, accompanied by George Osborne. 

To mark the occasion, Dewi Knight from the British Council assesses the state of UK/China education relations.

Higher Education Bill before Parliament
No, you're not reading a Monday Morning Briefing from the future. It's something of a red letter day for HE Bill aficionados because there is finally a Higher Education Bill now working its way through Parliament thanks to South Cambridgeshire MP Heidi Allen. Allen was successful in a ballot of Private Members Bills in June and is proposing the Higher Education (Information) Bill which would require universities to be more transparent in explaining how tuition fee income is spent. Parliament summarises its modest measures: "to require information to be made available to prospective undergraduate students about what is provided to students for the tuition fees charged, how tuition fee resources are expended and what is expected of students; to establish transparency in how tuition fees are spent; and for connected purposes." The Bill has its second reading on Friday.

You might have missed
Has HEFCE had its chips? was the question I posed last week in the Guardian HE about the future of HEFCE, as the spending review and potential quango bonfire approaches. HEPI published a report about the impact of students on the general election, which found that students didn't make as much of an impact as had been expected - our Policy Watch piece on the study is here. And it was one year ago last week that Registrarism joined Wonkhe and so Paul Greatrix marks the milestone with a round up of his most popular registrarial comment and observations from the last 12 months. 

The rest of the week's agenda
Monday October 19^th
REPORT: Policy Exchange: Higher, Further, Faster, More
Tuesday October 20^th
State Visit – President of China (until Friday)
EVENT: ARMA Routes to Impact workshop, York
EVENT: Transforming the Delivery of HE Through Online Learning, London
EVENT: ECU Opening Doors conference, London
EVENT: APPG Universities and Europe seminar, London
EVENT: LFHE GDP: Roundtable 1 - Lessons for good governance
EVENT: HEFCE Strategic advisory committees conference 2015, Birmingham
REPORT: Universities Wales - economic impact of Welsh universities
Wednesday October 21^st
EVENT: HEFCE HEAPES15 beginners/refresher seminar, London
EVENT: Inside Government Internationalising UK HE forum, London
Thursday October 22nd
EVENT: Westminster Forum The future for PGT conference, London
EVENT: British Council Annual Meeting 2015, London
EVENT: ARMA Pubic Engagement with Research workshop, Bristol
PARLIAMENTARY: House of Lords debate on 'creating the right education and employment opportunities in the UK'
Friday October 23^rd
PARLIAMENTARY: Higher education (information) Bill 2^nd reading

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