By the time you read this it probably be all over and we will have a result. It’s been a general election campaign full of twists and turns, but what has been notably absent from the debate is what the parties really have planned for higher education. Universities have been the silent subject of the Tories and Labour, despite both parties having signed up the Lord Browne review of HE funding. The Lib Dems have come out with a proposal to gradually phase out student fees, but have yet to offer any detail on what an alternative funding mechanism would look like.

This weekend’’s leak in the Sunday Times, repeated in Tuesday’’s Guardian was that the Browne review “was hawkish”, creating a free market in fees. This would enable universities to increase student fees gradually until a market price was reached, defined by what students are prepared to pay. For science subjects this could lead to fee charges of nearly £15k per annum, with arts subjects considerably less. It costs Ravensbourne about £10k per year per student, with the maximum student fee contribution about one third of this. We wait to what happens in the Autumn when the report’s first draft is published.

Only three weeks left until we officially close our site at Chislehurst and prepare over the summer for our move to Greenwich Peninsula. It will be strange bidding farewell to a building that has served us well and been our home for so many years. But our future is almost here. The new building is looking amazing now that all the exterior tiling is complete, the construction plan remains well on schedule and we can’’t wait to take possession of the building at the end of June to complete our internal fit-out by September.