So the starting gun has been fired on what is being billed as the closest General Election for 36 years – and there seems little doubt that Education will at least get a mention, for the first time really since another young man with excellent presentational skills referred to it (in triplicate, no less) on the 1997 hustings.

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With HE making headlines about funding cuts, FE can easily be overlooked. Yet this sector drives the economy by providing skilled technicians and that's what most companies want.  Funding is also tight for FE, and leaders in the sector will have to learn the lessons others have learned before them.  Apart from the miserable business of cost cutting, there are a number of pro-active steps which can be taken and which can lighten the gloom. 

Is branding still important? Most certainly, yes. Stakeholders have to understand what a college is all about, what its core brand values are, what it stands for, what benefits it brings to stakeholders. New college structures will undoubtedly emerge, as a result not just of mergers, but of the formation of federations and other groupings and the need for powerful branding which presses the right buttons with employers and stimulates them to pay for training will be paramount.

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An interesting piece in the New York Times at the weekend pointed out that, with the appetite for higher education showing no signs of abating among the growing Asian middle class, more countries in Asia are positioning themselves to attract students.

While the United States, Britain and other Western countries continue to draw the most Asian students, a Unesco report released in July also showed that Asian students were increasingly attending universities within their own regions.

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