Held at New Connaught Rooms, London

Higher education is facing ever more complex demands, to build financial capability, diversify funding and to create institutions that are sustainable and create economic value. This conference brought together Vice-Chancellors, Finance Directors and senior decision makers in HE concerned with the challenges of higher education funding. It addressed the need to increase financial capability to establish a basis for future funding through fees and considered how to develop strategies to deliver on concepts, introduced by Dearing, Lambert and Leitch, to enable the UK to compete in a global HE market over the next decade. Chris Pond, Director of Financial Capability at the Financial Services Authority talked about the findings from a survey his oganisation had conducted into the level of understanding among the UK population of financial capability - "frankly, it's scary", he said. "Most of us have a very low level of understanding of how to deal with basic money matters..." he continued, but Chris Pond did say that progress on the programme by the FSA to reach 10 million people by 2010/11 was encouraging with four million already using the programme's website.