10 January 2018 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
If you’ve been following the news of the prolonged cabinet reshuffle this week you’ll be aware that we not only have a new Education minister but a new Universities minister as well. On the Education front, Damian Hinds has replaced Justine Greening, who resigned after refusing to be moved over to the Department for Work and Pensions. The new Secretary of State for Education will pick up the brief at a challenging time, with “pressures over school funding and decisions about university tuition fees”, according to the BBC.
The new Minister for Universities, Sam Gyimah, is an Oxford PPE graduate who worked for five years at Goldman Sachs before entering politics. According to David Morris in the Guardian, he has a tricky job on his hands, as the universities brief is no longer the easy junior minister role it once was. Mr Morris believes a review of HE funding is more likely, and the continuation of TEF less likely, with former minister Jo Johnson no longer in post.
David Kernohan, associate editor of Wonkhe believes Mr Gyimah’s primary role will be to take some energy out of the system, and “calm down a sector that has lurched from media storm to media storm since the snap election”. Wonkhe also takes a moment to reflect on ‘Jexit’ – the legacy left by Jo Johnson in the HE brief.
