Today's news tells us that for global higher education: "Harvard is still top, while Cambridge moves up from third to second place. Oxford slips from fourth to fifth rank."

Good, but no ground for complacency.

This morning I raised the issue of the postgraduate sector at a meeting at the Party Conference.  We need more British postgraduate students as they will provide the basis for our academic achievements in the future.  We also need to make sure that the fiasco over student loans is not repeated next year, as this will affect the number of people entering or staying in higher education in the first place.

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8295336.stm