From the widespread news coverage this week, it is evident the context for higher education is getting increasingly fraught. And Mandelson describing academics as “set in aspic” doesn’t help the cause. There is great uncertainty about the size and extent of impending funding cuts and indeed why HE appears to be singled out for such cuts so early. Although 2010-11 may not be too draconian, 2011-12 will be where the brunt of reductions in the teaching grant will be worst felt.

Whatever cuts are to come, it’s critical that we plan for the longer-term and not take knee-jerk actions which might damage the fabric. Our move into the new building will already ensure that Ravensbourne is positioned to be more fleet-of-foot, and more flexible in its operations – but we are also embarking on a new, longer-term, planning process.  At our Governors annual strategy day earlier this week, we discussed business models for the future of Ravensbourne post relocation, with presentations from me and strategic management consultants Graham Hitchen and Mike Boxall.

Spent last Friday evening at the first celebration of Greenwich becoming a Royal Borough (which won’t actually happen until 2012, the year of the Queens Diamond Jubilee). Council Leader Chris Roberts gave the best speech I have heard him give. I was especially pleased that he cited Ravensbourne as the borough’s most visionary project! Guests included Laban Director, Anthony Bowne – delighted that Anthony has been appointed Principal of Trinity Laban from September.

Yesterday saw the developed designs for the new Ravensbourne branding. They look terrific.  Johnson Banks are doing a great job, and I look forward to the brand rolling out out from the end of March.

This week, in my talk to the British Computer Society’s symposium Ideas Before Their Time, I outlined our vision for relocation and how we have created a building from scratch to meet the needs of a digital future. Today’s students are no longer the people our education system was designed to teach. They want to simulate industry practice, learn and study on demand and utilise the best in technology and mobile computing. This makes possible a variety of learning styles in virtual spaces as well as physical ones, where collaboration can be spontaneous as well as deliberate.

Our journey is far from easy – building an appropriate, engaging, challenging, ambitious and effective world-class learning environment is highly complex. Such complexity is not well understood, well documented or well implemented. And there are few models to work from. But we are trying, and are confident we will get there. It was good to see so many society members showing a keen interest in our ideas.

Made another visit this week to the new site with some staff and external visitors – these visits are now linked to internal discussions with course staff exploring potential issues in academic delivery. One of the issues causing concern in broadcast engineering has hopefully been resolved through the design and construction of a test trolley, which will allow the engineers to deliver at various locations around the building. A great idea in response to mobile learning.

I’ve already mentioned the substantial investment in Ravensbourne agreed by Greenwich Council in the last few weeks. One third of which – in the form of a £500K grant – will fund a specialist sector Skills Centre at Ravensbourne. It will be an important new facility, which will offer entrepreneurs, businesses and learners access to specialist digital facilities, expertise, teaching space and courses at Ravensbourne for a ten-year period commencing September 2010.

Through the [working title] Greenwich Digital Skills Centre, Ravensbourne will continue to develop and diversify leading edge business support and non-accredited skills programmes, which will benefit industry, raise educational achievement in schools and improve progression onto accredited courses. Ravensbourne will offer training that innovates to meet the challenge of the constantly evolving media industries in line with the ambitions set out in the Digital Britain report last year.

In HE we are all facing the pressure to diversify our products and delivery models to adapt to fundamental changes in education policy and funding. Let’s hope Ravensbourne is staying one step ahead of the curve.