Professor Paul D. Ryan:

With regard to the metrics relating to the link between academic training and employability, a project is winding up in Europe that is linked with the United States which is good at trying to develop such metrics. That report should soon be available and I can make it available to the committee because it might give us somewhere to start. If providing access is a declared mission of an education system, it is part of the EU multi-rank assessment which assesses how well people meet their aims and stated objectives.

I agree with the point made about strategic international alliances. If we are to benefit from the changes we have undergone and the improvement in higher education, one of the benefits will be these alliances. The problem is we do not have a structured way of doing this. It all boils down to the individual academics finding enough time between marking papers, giving lectures and undertaking research to write an application, which takes two weeks. Setting up the administrative procedures if one is changing students is complex and multi-layered and, as a nation, we are not oiling these wheels. We have such a fabulous product that we should do this.