Mary Curnock Cook has been Chief Executive of UCAS since January 2010 and by virtue of the job, is a regular in the media speaking about universities and education more broadly. The platform gives the forthright CEO a uniquely influential place – by talking directly to the future students (as well as their teachers and parents) that universities will be desperate to recruit. The HE sector should, therefore, take careful note of what is said.
However, Curnock Cook falls a few places this year because the admissions service has been shaken by the new government’s policies which have been far more prescriptive about what UCAS should or shouldn’t do than the organisation might feel comfortable with. How Curnock Cook and UCAS rise to the government’s challenge to drive a “transparency revolution” remains to be seen – as does the shape of the final settlement for the organisation when the uncapped recruitment market starts to bed in, and the dust settles on the Higher Education and Research Bill.