10 - The New Realities of Accounting and Assuring

Summary

The RCM had invested so much institutional energy into preserving its independence that it had paid insufficient attention to the changing world of higher education. Now, higher education institutions were more directly accountable for the public funding they received under a new regime of quality assurance in curriculum matters and of financial assurance in respect of how funding was spent and the institution’s overall financial health. These new audit systems (with their specialist methodologies and terminologies) imposed a significantly greater administrative burden on the College which previously had been only lightly monitored by the Department of Education. Janet Ritterman was appointed Director with the specific brief to modernize the RCM administration and to enable it to meet the demands of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. This chapter looks at how Ritterman turned the College’s situation around with new administrative protocols that were initially resisted by long-established staff. At the same time, the College implemented new strategies to recruit overseas students (now financially necessary) and to establish a College Hall to house them.