Higher Education White Paper is welcome step to more University competition, says IoD

Dated: 28 June 2011

Commenting on the publication of the Government’s higher education White Paper, Miles Templeman, Director-General of the IoD, said:

“We support the stated intent of the White Paper – to create more competition and give greater consumer power to students. Measures to open up the sector and make it easier for new universities to become established, and measures that facilitate successful institutions to expand, are very welcome. Providing better information for prospective students is just common sense, as it underpins the effective exercise of choice. Overall, the proposals point in the right direction.

“However, it is hard to escape the feeling that today’s announcements are in part necessary because of earlier compromises in the Government’s reform agenda. The decision to impose a cap on the fees universities can charge led to predictable clustering at the upper limit and effectively shut off the possibility of a genuine market in higher education. Having sidestepped the quickest road to effective competition, the Government now finds itself agonising over how best to create the market we should have had in the first place.”

ENDS

Contact Points

Edwin Morgan
Media Relations Manager
Institute of Directors, 116 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5ED
Tel: +44 (0)20 7451 3392
Mob: +44 (0)7814 386 243
Email: edwin.morgan@iod.com
Website: www.iod.com/policy

Notes to editors

  • The IoD (Institute of Directors) was founded in 1903 and obtained a Royal Charter in 1906. The IoD is a non-party political organisation with upwards of 45,000 members in the United Kingdom and overseas. Membership includes directors from right across the business spectrum – from media to manufacturing, e-business to the public and voluntary sectors. Members include CEOs of large corporations as well as entrepreneurial directors of start-up companies.
  • The IoD offers a wide range of business services which include business centre facilities (including ten UK regional centres [three in London, Reading, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Belfast] and one each in Paris and Brussels), conferences, networking events, virtual offices and hotdesking, issues-led guides and literature, as well as free access to business information and advisory services and a comprehensive Information Centre. The IoD places great emphasis on director development and has established a certified qualification for directors – Chartered Director – as well as running specific board-level and director-level training and individual career mentoring programmes.
  • In addition, the IoD provides an effective voice to represent the interests of its members to government and key opinion-formers at the highest levels. These include ministers, constituency MPs, Select Committee members and senior civil servants. IoD policies and views are actively promoted to the national, regional and trade media.
  • For further information, visit our website: www.iod.com
  • You can also keep up to date with the latest views from the IoD on twitter.com/The_IoD and at blogs.iod.com