THE first nationally regulated standards for university degrees could be in place as

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THE first nationally regulated standards for university degrees could be in place as early as next year, vice-chancellors said yesterday. University heads meeting in Manchester overwhelmingly backed plans to establish "programme specifications" governing the content and quality of all undergraduate courses. The first national standards could be piloted in Wales and Scotland next year, with the system extending across Britain by 2001. The move marks a profound shift for universities, which have always jealously guarded their right to set degree standards.Yesterday the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals rejected claims that the new standards represented a national curriculum for degrees and said they would safeguard standards for all students.Student leaders said the move would help ensure that people paying the new pounds 1,000 a year university tuition fees got value for money.Under the proposals, to be discussed tomorrow by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, academics will draw up broad specifications for each of the hundreds of subjects taught in universities.The standards will show the areas graduates will be expected to cover, and lay out the depth of knowledge they must gain. The quality of individual courses will be measured against national standards.Specifications will be set by academics working with the Quality Assurance Agency, the quango monitoring the quality of university teaching. Work on the first subjects, chemistry, history and law, has started.A system of "academic reviewers" - effectively lecturers acting as expert inspectors - will oversee the traditional system of external examiners who ensure standards are maintained.The proposals, expected to be approved by the English, Welsh and Scottish funding council within weeks, have been extensively revised.Jim Gardner, vice-president of the National Union of Students, said: "It's not a national curriculum. It's trying to ensure that a degree from Bognor is the same as a degree from the Ivy League."Professor Ivor Crewe, vice-chancellor of Essex University, said: "This is generally supported because it shifts the emphasis towards standards but does not impose a grotesquely heavy burden on universities."Universities should transform themselves into powerhouses of enterprise, Richard Caborn, minister for the regions, told the vice-chancellors yesterday.He said academics were doing too little to convert Britain's world-beating expertise into commercial success. He said: "Higher education has a very important role in regional policy."New regional development agencies would bring academics and businesses together to stimulate economic growth and hi-tech industry, he added..

RADIO 4 is to scrap some of its new lunchtime quizzes and bring back the 9am news bulletin after complaints from listeners about changes made five months ago to the station's schedule. The best of the quizzes and panel games will stay but, from next January, factual feature programmes will be run after The World at One two days a week. Radio 4 has broadcast a wide range of panel games at lunchtime, trying to find what it calls "the new classics". However, calls to the station's helpline, letters and e-mails have shown that programmes such as Mastermind, Puzzle Panel, Full Orchestra and X Marks the Spot are too much for listeners when they are on five days a week.Features on arts, music and rural subjects are being commissioned for next year.The 9am news bulletin immediately after the Today programme was abandoned when the new schedule was launched in April, to try to carry more listeners through into the post-9am programmes. "They wanted something controllable."A DfEE spokeswoman said there was no question of the scheme being "hijacked", and added: "The establishment of a unit within the department will help to secure the long-term future of the programme.".

Others complained that a good idea was being ruined by bureaucrats and had suffered a loss of vision Credible applicants had been ignored. "There was a risk that the civil servants would not be able to keep a powerful, energetic chairman in check," one said. But some groups are now accusing civil servants of hijacking it and watering down its aims.Advertisements for a millennium volunteers chairman brought only 35 applicants and none was deemed suitable. It has been reported that Victor Adebowale, director of the Centrepoint charity for homeless people, and John Baker, chairman of National Power, were approached but turned down the post.Now it will be run from a unit in the Department for Education and Employment that is being headed temporarily by Chris Wells, formerly in charge of the department's millennium projects.Mr Blair is expected to launch nine pilot projects for which contracts have been let, ranging from community service volunteers schemes in Sunderland and Southwark, south London, to a British Trust for Conservation Volunteers programme in Exeter.Community service volunteers in Southwark are helping to raise reading levels in schools, working in parks and helping police with crime prevention.Elisabeth Hoodless, executive director of community service volunteers, has written to Mrs Hodge asking for help after being told that government funding will not meet the pounds 80,000 annual cost of its programme. PLANS FOR an army of "millennium volunteers" to revitalise sink estates and cut crime have become mired in controversy after the failure of attempts to recruit an unpaid chairman for the project. Tony Blair is now expected formally to launch the national scheme this autumn.