Unlike his Blair years education policy colleague Michael Barber, Andrew Adonis sits outside the higher education power structures. But an unexpected – and at times unorthodox – series of public interventions in debates around fee levels and institutional spending catapult him into the list by sheer omnipresence. Regularly cited as the architect of fees, Adonis has turned his back on the arguments he so successfully deployed during the days of the 2004 Higher Education Act. Citing the “venality and greed” of vice chancellors, he now advocates for the dismantling of the “Frankenstein’s monster” that he feels his funding model has become.
Our modern Prometheus has clearly come a long way since his days as a Labour activist in Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington. But the eagle that surely pecks at his liver is the realisation that his gift of fire to the higher education policy debate has yet to achieve much genuine change against an increasingly strident and political defence, or seen much take-up amongst his own former caucuses in London Labour – who are now attempting to manage the unravelling of parts of their own HE election promises.
N.B. This award is provisional as it is based on only a short period of activity – a full year of data is needed for this placing to be confirmed. To stay on the list or rise up would necessitate his working with rather than against the existing and planned regulatory structures.