Nadine Dorries has just tweeted:
@NadineDorriesMP: Written to former Labour Minister, now head of Bedfordshire University since 2012 to ask why university has done so badly in league tables
It’s an interesting way for an MP to hold a local university to account.
It doesn’t seem inherently unreasonable for an MP to do this, and 140 characters do not allow for nuance, so perhaps there was a lot in the letter that is missing from the tweet. (Though I note there was still space in the tweet for a party political swipe.)
But it does beg all sorts of questions.
–Which league tables does she think Bedfordshire should be performing well in? There are lots of them and they measure different things.
–What allowance will she make for value added while at university? It’s not really valid to judge all universities by the same criteria if they have different resources, a different student intake and a different mission.
–Most pertinently perhaps, what is she doing to support and encourage her local university to greater success?