{"id":6167,"date":"2014-11-28T10:44:58","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T10:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6167"},"modified":"2014-11-28T10:44:58","modified_gmt":"2014-11-28T10:44:58","slug":"pity-hefce-to-think-it-was-once-world-leading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2014\/11\/28\/pity-hefce-to-think-it-was-once-world-leading\/","title":{"rendered":"Pity Hefce \u2013 to think it was once world-leading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer, ELSA, the <em>English Learning and Sustainability Alliance<\/em>, wrote to David Willetts MP (now reshuffled off the ministerial coil). \u00a0The focus, broadly speaking, was to wonder whether the Department for Business, Industry and Skills\u00a0[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/organisations\/department-for-business-innovation-skills\">BIS<\/a>] might pump\u00a0some lead into Hefce's increasingly limp sustainability pencil.<\/p>\n<p>The response took many months, but\u00a0the delay happily allowed Greg Clark MP (the new Willetts) to trot out a bunch\u00a0of odorous nonsense to the effect that, because Hefce has been feted by UNESCO's recent end of term\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.unesco.org\/new\/en\/unesco-world-conference-on-esd-2014\/esd-after-2014\/desd-final-report\/\">report<\/a>, all must be well. \u00a0As such, we are invited by Clark to:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"...\u00a0<em>share [his]\u00a0delight in the recent favourable verdict on Hefce's work in ... sustainability<\/em>\".<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, I won't, as I\u00a0see that aspect of the UNESCO report as utterly\u00a0self-serving in these matters; that is, those who've been on the receiving end of Hefce largesse\u00a0over the years have contributed to the\u00a0report saying, unsurprisingly, how well Hefce has done. There's a word for this sort of thing.<\/p>\n<p>The point is that the ELSA enquiry was about the future, whereas Clark's lazy\u00a0response is all about the past. \u00a0Hefce used to walk the talk in these matters; now, it doesn't even talk it. \u00a0From world-leading to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2014\/11\/07\/a-reply-from-hefce\/\">world-trailing<\/a> in short order. \u00a0Quite a triumph for BIS, Hefce, and its sustainability-sceptic leadership. \u00a0All very sad\u00a0and quite unnecessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer, ELSA, the English Learning and Sustainability Alliance, wrote to David Willetts MP (now reshuffled off the ministerial coil). \u00a0The focus, broadly speaking, was to wonder whether the Department for Business, Industry and Skills\u00a0[BIS] might pump\u00a0some lead into...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}