Truss is the steward for the public finances, tasked with doing the groundwork for next year’s Comprehensive Spending Review. Sure, the Chancellor will lay out its parameters in the Budget but it will be Truss, with the Cabinet Office, who is designing the process and overseeing the preparatory work across Whitehall.
So the spending review will be a battleground for HE in 2019, at the mercy of the known unknowns discussed across our Power List: ONS, the post-18 review; Brexit, as well as wider political and economic flux.
But we do know HE will be a low priority set against NHS, social care and the rest. There remains a hard-baked assumption universities have “had it easy” over the last decade, despite many institutions facing the financial squeeze and few Treasury operators have much truck with unrepentant, high-earning vice-chancellors.
It means the sector needs to be very smart in its sales pitch for public investment. It must target boosting productivity, regional economies and job creation and skills in a united front with the wider tertiary sector. It will be crucial to show efficiency and value to the taxpayer, particularly if ONS rules more HE funding must be counted in the day-to-day national accounts. And it will be good politics to frame all this as contributing towards a ‘Brexit dividend’ – which ministers will be desperate to “supplement” from other sources.