A quiet week for me, though there were a few events running this week, including Jisc’s Connect More. I did get to the Bristol office for one day.

I finished writing my blog post on bookable and unbookable desks, PCs, and sun loungers following a couple of BBC News articles.

Reminds me why I never used PC booking software when running my libraries. Students would reserve PCs with their “towels” and then never turn up. The PC was unused and unavailable for others to use.

News of another higher education merger hit the headlines, with KCL and Cranfield planning to merge next year. I suspect we will hear about more mergers over the next couple of years. I also suspect we might see some higher education institutions close after the OfS and HESA published financial information about the sector, and in some cases the optimism of the sector, which if doesn’t come to pass may see places close. The Office for Students says that there is widespread and persistent over-optimism about sector finances. What this means is that if plans don’t come to fruition then the only choice might be closure (or forced merger).

The WonkHE analysis (as usual) was excellent.

David Kernohan digests this year’s OfS summary of annual financial returns, and the parallel release of HESA finance data

The priority will be the students.

In LLE news we saw 130 providers approved for LLE provision.

These providers will be able to offer short courses with a January 2027 start date that are fundable (pro rata to academic credit) via the LLE.

So not quite the broad range of providers that the promise of LLE said would happen.

I was doing some planning for TNC 26 even though I am not attending the conference.

I was editing a post on the blog from May 2019 (there was an issue with one of the images) when I read this.

…it was an earlier start than normal as I had a meeting with some European colleagues about a workshop we’re running at TNC in June in Tallinn in Estonia.

Now I know I didn’t attend TNC 19 in Estonia, so when I did some digging into my email archive and saw that there was quite a bit of chat and conversations. The core of which was the creation of GÉANT’s TF-EDU (Task Force Education) including a draft proposal for the group. I didn’t realise (well didn’t remember) that I was involved back then. Getting old!