Changing focus

When it comes to vocational education advice, no government seems able to do without Alison Wolf. But the King’s College management professor tells Miriam Frankel that she’s changing focus to tackle what she claims is a ‘research vacuum’ in higher educaton policy.

How did the International Centre for University Policy Research, of which you are the first director, come about?

King’s College London decided to put a fair amount of effort and indeed cash into creating something called King’s Policy Institute [of which the centre is a part]. The idea is to really capitalise on the work that various people are doing [at King’s]. That was the catalyst. So in a sense it grows out of the fact that higher education policy is a research interest of mine since way back. But I guess we were also really conscious that there’s surprisingly little quantitative and internationally comparative work in the area.