November weather

Will we see an attempt this week to break the Whitehall higher education planning blight?

“If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now,” as Shakespeare once wrote. We do not know which degree Hamlet studied at Wittenberg, but we suspect it might have been one of those “low-quality” humanities ones so beloved by the children of heads of state—more of which later.

First, if the rumoured higher education white paper is to materialise by the end of November, it is pretty much now or never. Judging by the weekend broadsheets, the chances look slim.