This fact is largely missed by the so-called Research Assessment Exercise, which is the government’s way of assessing the quality of research in our university sector. The RAE is obsessed with the average person in each department in each British university. Yet, if we are to be intellectually honest, and there is not much point in having universities otherwise, then we have to recognise that textbooks are filled with the ideas of only a small number of people.In Britain as a whole, we now have just 80 out of the world’s best 1200 scientists. The ISI company measures this by studying the bibliographies (that is, the reference lists) of published articles. These trace citations and thus the twisting thread of ideas through the generations. I happen to know that the government has been won over by such unpleasant facts – but I do not know how the politicians are going to react.When in doubt, go back to psychology. In trying to guess what the Cabinet will do about university funding, I thought it would be useful to find out more about the new Education Minister.

So I looked up Charles Clarke in Who’s Who, where I found that he lists his recreations as “accidental happenings” and “stimulating conversation”. This made me laugh, and everyone in the library then stared, muttering to themselves, presumably because the English, and especially economists, are not meant to be cheery in public places.However, it turned out it was the wrong Charles Clarke’s entry that I was reading (a Baron who runs Bibury Cricket Club). The compressed life story of the avuncular Member of Parliament in fact lay below, and, somewhat unpersuasively, because my hunch is that those in Who’s Who with the blandest list of recreations are the ones with the most exciting lives. Behind the plain prose, he lists simply chess, reading and walking Then I looked up Tony Blair Remarkably, the man has no recreations.

How do we put all this together? A chess player and a workaholic meet up to solve a problem. The chess player says: “If we go for fees we are going to lose half the middle-class vote because they are interested in their wallets, not logic or fairness”. The workaholic says: “You worry too much and forget that the British are a sensible race and I can persuade them if I put my mind to it and expend enough energy and go on TV enough”.”No Tony,” says the chess player.”OK, let’s have a bit of both,” says the workaholic.In such a way will “fees tax” probably be born, which will be very British, and probably confuse everyone.The writer is professor of economics at Warwick Universityeducation independent.co.uk. IN SOME ways, Nikolai Rukavishnikov was one of the most unfortunate of cosmonauts, a man who should have achieved worldwide renown for his feats of space endurance and achievement, yet who will be best remembered for his courage and forbearance in times of adversity.