Six months on: Michelle Donelan as universities minister

How the government’s higher education minister has fared in a tumultuous first half-year

The first six-and-a-bit months in office for universities minister Michelle Donelan have been tumultuous and testing. The lockdown induced by the global Covid-19 pandemic descended on the UK in March this year, just a month or so after Donelan took office on 13 February.

Undoubtedly it is in the context of the coronavirus outbreak that her first months in office must be considered. Nobody has had an easy time of it. But how has Donelan been received by a sector that has arguably endured a decade’s worth of government intervention and diktat during the universities ministers first half-year in post?